It started out well. With most of Brooklyn in his player's box, Nelson Figueroa made his debut as a Mets starter by allowing only two hits in six innings. The Mets offense strung together a three-run 4th inning, which was enough to get Figgy the win, even after his 87 mph fastball started getting timed by the Brewers' many sluggers. Aaron Heilman (gasp!) and Billy Wagner both delivered perfect innings to sew up the 4-2 victory.
Game two of the series on Saturday was a different beast altogether, with Johan Santana, a man with expectations set far higher than they were for a guy who hadn't started a game since 2004, facing his counterpart ace, Ben Sheets. Neither pitcher was sharp early, with the Mets taking an early 2-0 lead punctuated by a Carlos Delgado near-homer double off the right field wall. The Brewers got a run back in the 2nd on a safety squeeze by Sheets, and then Big Ben settled in. Johan, not so much. While Sheets was retiring the next 19 batters in a row, Santana was giving up enormous home runs to Bill Hall, Rickie Weeks, and the crushing blow by Gabe Kapler that knocked him out of the game. David Wright hit one out to the picnic pavilion in left in the 8th to end Sheets' streak, but the Mets couldn't dent the shaky Brewer pen, and lost it 5-3.
The finale on Sunday was a tedious, sloppy, and ultimately dispiriting 9-7 defeat. The Mets trailed early, on another Gabe Kapler homer (I really think you should go back to managing, Gabe. Please.), but re-took the lead on Wright's third HR of the season in the 1st and a two-run bottom-of-the-order rally in the 2nd. New York appeared to start to pull away in the 3rd when Carlos Beltran and Brian Schneider each had RBI hits to make the score 6-2. Pitcher Oliver Perez barely missed an extra-base hit to the right field corner off Brewer starter Jeff Suppan, and then struck out to end the inning, or the Mets might really have put it away. I don't know if it was the near miss at bat, or the fact that the Brewers can flat out rake, but Perez fell completely apart in the top of the 4th, allowing Milwaukee to tie the game on two 2-run singles by Jason Kendall and Ryan Braun.
The score remained tied until the 6th, when reliever Jorge Sosa gave up another towering drive to Weeks, and then nearly wriggled out of a jam before Corey Hart ripped a single to left to score Kapler to make it 8-6. The Brewers hitters just keep coming in waves. If these guys can keep their pitching healthy, which is a huge if, they can hang with anybody.
Kapler added another RBI double off Joe Smith, and the Mets got a Damion Easley RBI single in the 7th, and then continued hitting into more double plays in more varied and interesting ways than had ever been seen by most of the patrons present (starting in the 4th inning, it was 3-unassisted, 4-6-3, 1-6-3, 4-6-3, 3-2). Old friend and boo-receiver Guillermo Mota and former and current bullpen mate Eric Gagne finished up with two shutout innings.
Obviously, the encouraging aspect of the weekend, perhaps the only one, was Nelson Figueroa. It'll be interesting to see how he does on the road when only maybe his wife is there to cheer for him, as opposed to the better part of a borough. He was not at all overpowering, but he changed speeds, had good command, and was poised and confident. He was kind of like, well, El Duque, although we can probably find Figueroa's birth certificate. As I mentioned, the Brewers bats caught up the third time around, which will probably be a recurrent theme in Figueroa's tenure on the staff.
Nobody took charge in the NL East this weekend, with Florida maintaining their tenuous 1-1/2 game edge over us and the Phillies. The Nats finally won after nine straight losses, defeating the Braves on Sunday, which put Atlanta two games back. The Mets get an off day today, and then we try to start another losing streak for the Nationals.
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