Mets entering September in no-Maine’s land
Filed Under Curtain Rods | Posted on August 27, 2008
Jerry Manuel says the Mets are in the fight of their lives. John Maine was knocked out of the ring yesterday, another blow to the Mets in their battle to win the NL East.
The bone spur in the back of Maine’s right shoulder is too painful to deal with and he was placed on the disabled list before last night’s 9-1 blowout of the Astros at Shea. Now it’s on to Philadelphia for the main event.
There’s nothing like an injury down the stretch to keep a team focused. Last year at this time the Mets were in their dream world, thinking the division belonged to them. They learned the hard way. Now the Maine injury has put them on notice.
Manuel and the Mets rode Maine hard in the middle of the season and they are doing the same with Mike Pelfrey. All the talk about getting Pelfrey extra rest is out the window.
Pelfrey came up huge again Monday night, shutting down the Astros on 109 pitches and earning chants of “PEL-Frey!” from the crowd. The big right-hander won his second straight complete game. He has surrendered four runs in his last three starts, a span of 25 innings. He even scored from first on Jose Reyes’ eighth-inning triple.
“Sometimes we get too caught up in that pitch-count thing,” Manuel said. “Where we are at now, complete games are huge for us.”
Said Reyes, “We lost Billy (Wagner). Now John Maine, it’s tough man, but now is not the time to think about that. We just have to find a way to win.”
Reyes singled in the first and came around to score on Carlos Delgado’s three-run home run down the left-field line. Given that early cushion, Pelfrey dominated with his power sinker.
Delgado homered again in the seventh, and took his curtain call, something he didn’t do in April. This curtain call was deserved and accepted.
Maine was the main man for Manuel after he took over, making five straight starts on four days’ rest. Under Willie Randolph and Rick Peterson Maine never had that kind of workload. The Mets are saying that the bone spur can be fixed quite easily after the season with surgery.
Pelfrey (13-8) has been a wizard against everyone except the Marlins. There was talk that Pelfrey would skip the Marlins this weekend to get extra rest, but Manuel put an end to that, saying, “No, you just got to go with your best. And your best got to face the best, got to face your toughest foe. That’s where I am at this point.”
Pelfrey said he will do whatever the team wants. He talked to Manuel about it before the game, saying: “I guess that rest thing is over. Whenever they give me the ball I’m going to take it and try to win.”
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