O'Day and Morrissey, courtesy of Angels blog Halos Heaven

Rotoworld is reporting that the Mets have designated reliever Darren O’Day for assignment. O’Day – a Rule 5 pick – will be placed on Rule 5 waivers. If he clears waivers, he will be offered back to the Angels.

O’Day’s departure will make room for Nelson Figueroa, who will start in place of Mike Pelfrey in Sunday’s series finale against Milwaukee.

I’m surprised Omar Minaya is so quick to scrap a piece of the bullpen that has been dominant so far this season. In four games with the Mets, O’Day had not allowed an earned run.

Given Pelfrey’s youth and his workload last season, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t put him  on the DL, retroactive to his last start. He’d only end up missing one extra start and the bullpen could remain intact.

Then again, maybe the Mets weren’t high on O’Day in the first place and/or maybe they have a late inning reliever in mind to replace him once Pelfrey gets back.

See no baseball, hear no evil. Or something.

While the Yankees are getting absolutely shellacked on Fox’s National Blackout Game of the Week, the following INTERESTING games have been unavailable to baseball fans across the country, Mets fans in the NY Tri-State area, regardless of how much they are paying for MLB’s Extra Innings package:

• The Marlins came back from an early 6-2 deficit to defeat the Nationals 9-6 in 11 innings
• The Cardinals and the Cubs are tied at 5-5 in the 10th inning…
• Tim Lincecum and Doug Davis matched zeroes for eight innings, before the Giants bullpen imploded and handed the D’backs a 2-0 victory. Lincecum struck out 13 in a no-decision.

Meanwhile the Indians have scratched out 21 runs on a measly 21 hits and currently lead the Yankees 21-4 in the top of the 9th inning. In fairness, it is nice to know Joe Buck uses the same smarmy, cardboard deadpan delivery in 21-4 games as he does during the postseason.

So far, this 3pm blackout game idea isn’t going so well for Fox or MLB. Last week, the Red Sox/Angels game was shoved down the nation’s throat while here in New York, Mets fans couldn’t watch the start of the Mets/Marlins game until 7pm. Joe wrote about that here.

UPDATE (9:00pm EST) – According to MetsToday spies in Chicago, the Cubs/Cardinals game was also covered by Fox and was shown in Chicago. It would seem that since Fox was already covering that game, they would have switched to it once the Yankees/Indians game got out of hand in the second inning. Of course, Fox would still leave the game on in the NY and Cleveland regions. Assuming all this is true, that means only one thing: Mets fans got screwed by MLB/Fox for a second consecutive week.

Instead of watching the Yankees attempt a three touchdown fourth quarter comeback, watch this video. It’ll make ya laugh:

Photo from NJ.com

The Mets held on for a 1-0 victory over the Brewers, moving their record to 6-5 on the season. Johan Santana was dominant again – striking out 7 over 7 scoreless innings. Santana struck out 7 and didn’t allow a walk.

JJ Putz worked a scoreless 8th and Francisco Rodriguez closed it out in the 9th with a ‘strike ’em out, throw ’em out’ to end the game.

Game Notes:

• Jerry Manuel wisely put Gary Sheffield in left field, taking pressure off of Danny Murphy – who was largely responsible for Santana’s loss to the Marlins last Sunday.
• Sheffield still doesn’t look like he is firing on all cylinders at the plate or in the field, but he recovered on a misjudged line drive to make a shoestring catch. That alone was probably worth giving him the start, as Murphy probably would have had trouble on that play.
• Ramon Castro led off the 7th inning with a walk. Omir Santos ran for Castro and advanced to third when Rickie Weeks misplayed Prince Fielder’s throw to first on Alex Cora’s sacrifice bunt. Jose Reyes then followed with a line shot that knocked off pitcher Carlos Villanueva’s glove – which looked like it wasn’t even on his hand correctly – scoring the only run of the game.
• Danny Murphy was on deck to pinch hit for Santana in the 7th, but was called back when Castro walked… Jerry Manuel wisely decided to save Murphy from attempting another sacrifice bunt.
• The last batter of the game – JJ Hardy – inexplicably fouled off a breaking ball in the dirt when Ryan Braun had second base stolen. A few pitches later, Braun again attempted to steal second. This time, Hardy watched a fastball on the corner for strike three. Omir Santos threw a strike to Luis Castillo to throw out Braun to end the game.

The Brewers look like they could be headed for a 90-loss season with their shaky pitching and a combination of mental and physical errors in the field and at the plate. That said, the Mets have won consecutive one run games – this one being much cleaner and better played. Good teams are supposed to win ugly and clean games and that is exactly what the Mets have done in this series. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Tomorrow is the final game of the series. Jeff Suppan (0-2, 12.91) goes against Nelson Figueroa, who is making his first start of the season for the Mets. It should be a wild, high-scoring game.

MetsGrrl has a post about the new rules regarding fan access during batting practice:

You can no longer get behind the dugout unless you are ticketed for that section. You can’t get behind the photographer’s well, the next section over. You have to go all the way to the outfield corner. There was no reason given. In addition to being much further away from the players, it’s a much smaller area, so it’s now much more crowded. Yes, you can go in the outfield, but that’s kind of useless if you’re trying to get photographs of players, or if you’re a kid hoping for an autograph.

It is a very informative and extremely disappointing post. Read it all here.