Mets Game 60: Win Over Brewers

Mets 2 Brewers 1

This was an old-fashioned pitching duel, pitting two savvy starters who kept batters off-balance and pitched to contact. In the end, the Mets prevailed.

Mets Game Notes

The pitching matchup was mirror-like: two sinkerballing slop-throwers who rely on control and guile to get by, sitting in the upper 80s and fooling hitters with the change-up as their bread and butter. Additionally, both had Tommy John surgery in 2008.

Chris Capuano was terrific again, allowing only one run on 6 hits and 2 walks in 6 solid innings. He struck out 5.

Prior to the game, SNY showed a quick clip of Capuano making high-arc long tosses in the outfield. Now we know at least part of the reason why he needed Tommy John surgery twice in his life. Kids: if you pitch, do not waste your time with what most people define as “long toss” — i.e., heaving the ball high in the air and over a long distance. It does very little, if anything, to improve your arm strength for pitching, and in fact, it has been scientifically proven that such an activity puts significant and damaging stress on the elbow. Instead, I recommend limited and monitored long distance throwing — throwing on a straight line / downward plane, and no more than 120-150 feet at most. Once you start throwing on an arc, your mechanics change and the body parts you use change; neither of these changes improve the mechanics you use at 60 feet, 6 inches.

While we’re on the subject of mechanics, Shaun Marcum puts tremendous strain on his arm by remaining upright in his follow-through. Because he stays almost standing up throughout the motion, his arm is decelerated by the shoulder and other parts of the arm. What a pitcher wants to do is get his head over his front knee at release, and allow his entire body to continue down and forward — then, both gravity and the larger muscles in the back, buttocks, and legs can get involved in both powering the baseball and slowing down the arm.

Jose Reyes hit a two-run triple to put the Mets ahead in the top of the 7th, and had a chance to score when Justin Turner followed with a grounder to second base. However, Rickie Weeks made a perfect throw to home, and Reyes was tagged out as he came in standing up. Had he slid, he would have had a great chance to score. Why didn’t he slide? Because Jose Reyes does not know how to slide feet-first, and he knows that sliding head-first is too dangerous in that situation. This is a failure on both Reyes and the Mets organization, who have taught Reyes the intricacies of the game since he was a 17-year-old. It doesn’t take any special skill or god-given talent to slide properly — it merely takes instruction, repetition, and a policy to ensure that all players (including pitchers) do it. And, I blame both the previous and current management regimes, because the simple art of sliding takes all of three days to teach and implement.

Reyes enjoyed his 29th multi-hit game and that was his 11th triple — but the first one not hit in Citi Field.

Francisco Rodriguez bounced back to convert his 17th straight save opportunity. Yes, he’s been shaky lately but I’m convinced it’s a mental thing — K-Rod cannot pitch his best in a non-save situation. I don’t care what he claims, his mindset, focus, and approach are different when the game is on the line.

This was the Brewers’ 24th one-run game. It was also only their 8th loss at home (against 21 wins).

Next Mets Game

The Mets and Brewers do it again on Wednesday night at 8:05 PM EST. Mike Pelfrey faces Mets nemesis Randy Wolf.