The Phillies are in Town

The Mets and Phillies are tied for first place in the National League East. By Thursday evening, one of these two teams will be in first by themselves. Seemingly, the momentum is on the Mets' side. In their last 10 games, the Mets have gone 8-2, while Philadelphia has played at 5-5. The Mets had their phenomenal 10 game winning streak broken over the weekend by the Reds when they lost 2 straight to them. Even Sunday's win wasn't very pretty. The team left a ton of runners in scoring position (RIP, RISP) but managed to pull through. The best game of the series was on Thursday night, when the boys scored four runs in the top of the 9th on some clutch hitting to extend their streak. With Jose Reyes not hitting until Sunday, they weren't ignited and did not win. On Sunday, Reyes did break Mookie Wilson's franchise triples record. At 25, Jose already has 63 triples in less than 3000 at bats. If things continue to go as they have been going, Mookie's 62 triples will be a very distant 2nd to Reyes' total for the Mets.
The big series (Jerry Manuel says so) against the Phillies starts tonight and the probables are: Blanton (5-12, 4.96) v. Santana (8-7, 3.10) tonight, Myers (3-9, 5.84) v. Maine (8-7, 4.22) tomorrow night and Moyer (9-6, 3.90) v. Perez (6-6, 4.36) on Thursday afternoon. It is about time the Mets got a run or two on Blanton, who has pitched 15 shutout innings against them. Hopefully the Santana that pitched on Thursday night won't show up tonight because that one awful inning, when the Phillies hit for the cycle plus an extra home run against him, could have cost them the game. Santana typically does better on normal rest, as opposed to extra rest, which he had from the All-Star Break before Thursday's game. Odds are that the Mets will break through tonight against Blanton. I'm sure the team would love to welcome him to the National League with a loss. Besides, the Mets owe Santana for his last start against the Phillies on the 4th of July, when he got a No Decision, giving up only 2 runs on 6 hits in 8 innings. That was no way to celebrate the birthday of our country. Wednesday night's match-up is intriguing because Myers is making his first appearance in the Majors after being sent back down to the Minors (ala Steve Trachsel after giving up 4 home runs in 1 inning). Hopefully, coming back to Shea will shake his confidence a bit, because Maine has not been the same cool, calm and collected pitcher that we saw in the beginning of the season. Wild Ollie Perez will go against thorn-in-my-side Jamie Moyer on Thursday and I just feel like Moyer is pesky enough to win this one.
I won't be making a prediction for the series because I feel like I'm jinxing the team whenever I do. Fingers crossed that first place will belong to New York by Thursday evening.
BTW
That t-shirt up there is from , which is a charity website started by the Mets announcers. Check it out.
~MissMet