Mets Game 3: Win Over Marlins

Mets 9 Marlins 2

Break up the Mets!

Everything went right for the Mets, while everything went wrong with the Fish. Or more appropriately, the Marlins DID everything wrong — the Fish made three errors that were charged, countless others (physical and mental) that couldn’t officially be tallied. Meanwhile, the Mets executed flawlessly, and took advantage of nearly every Marlin mistake.

Game Notes

R.A. Dickey flipped his flutterball for six scoreless innings, allowing five hits, walking three, and striking out 7 in a 106-pitch effort (69 strikes).

Chris Capuano was a little shaky in his Mets debut, throwing a flat fastball, struggling with command, and allowing a run on three hits and a walk in two-thirds of an inning. He needed D.J. Carrasco — also in his Mets debut — to come in and bail him out of a two-out, bases loaded jam by striking out John “Grand Slam” Buck.

By the way, were you thinking what I was thinking when Buck strolled to the plate with bases filled and the Mets up by 5? Lightning couldn’t strike in the same place twice, could it?

Dan Murphy — it’s just plain “Dan” now, not “Daniel” or “Danny” — handled a few chances flawlessly and rocketed an RBI double to dead center in his first MLB start at second base and first MLB start since 2009. Welcome back, Mr. Murphy.

Willie “Wham-Bam” Harris continued his Babe Ruth impersonation with a two-run homer to get things going in the first frame.

The Mets drew 9 walks in the contest, including 3 by Angel Pagan. Dave Hudgens and the OBP fan club in the front office had to be happy with that. Sadly, Jose Reyes drew none of those walks, but he did see 4 pitches per at-bat, collected two hits, and scored once.

If there was a negative, it was that the Mets went 2-for-15 with runners in scoring position and left 11 runners on base. But with the Marlins falling all over themselves trying to give the game away, those factors didn’t matter.

As for the Marlins, they looked like an A-ball club, throwing to the wrong bases, throwing the ball away, not touching the bag on force-outs, and so on. When is this organization ever going to put a premium on fundamentals?

Compounding the Fishy play was the fact that Javier Vazquez stunk. For his sake I hope he simply had a bad day, but he doesn’t look anything like the guy who was in the running for the Cy Young two years ago. If he’s going to stay belt-high and above with a 90-MPH, flat fastball, it will be a long year for him. He looked like he was throwing batting practice when Ike Davis jumped out of his shoes and demolished a 3-0 pitch into the right-field seats.

The one bright spot for the Fish was, unsurprisingly, Gaby Sanchez, who had three hits including a double. Sanchez was 6-for-13 in the series with three doubles. As the SNY booth asked, how do other teams get this guy out?

Something I noticed about Taylor Buchholz: he shakes his arm after every time he throws a curveball (but not after throwing fastballs). Is this just a random habit or does it mean something?

Speaking of Buchholz, he finished the game for the Mets, which means Francisco Rodriguez didn’t. That said, K-Rod is quickly running out of opportunities to get that $17.5M option to vest — he has only 159 chances left to finish 55 games. To put that into perspective: he needs to finish one game out of every 2.89 going forward.

Next Mets Game

The Mets get a well-deserved day off on Monday, during which they can bask in the delight of their current position of second place in the standings (tied with the Braves). On Tuesday, they travel to Philadelphia to play the first-place Phillies in a 7:05 PM game. Chris Young makes his Mets debut against Cole Hamels.