MVN - Most Valuable Network

Hands Down: Seeing Red Edition

The start of tonight’s game was delayed due to the Reds’ Hall of Fame ceremonies running longer than anticipated (apparently, Barry Larkin gave a rather lengthy speech), and after watching lots and lots of double plays and stranded runners and blown calls and sloppy defense, I don’t think I would have minded the delay lasting all night. This was a frustrating game of the variety that I had hoped the Mets had left behind after the winning streak - the whole “let bad pitcher off the hook, play down to the level of the competition or lower, implode after a particularly painful squandered rally” model is not fun to watch. This team often seems to look invincible one moment and incapable the next - you could say that it’s either sadness or euphoria (and if you got that reference, you’ll probably enjoy the Pinky Finger more than any other section of this particular Hands Down).

Thumb: I’m going to give this one to Argenis Reyes by default - in his one at-bat he did his best to get a rally going and wasn’t in the game long enough to have a chance to screw up.

Pointer Finger: Since the Mets played badly enough that the umpires were not the deciding factor in this game, the men in blue will be discussed here and not in the section where a night of shape-shifting strike zones and questionable at best/dead wrong at worst calls on a double play and foul ball would usually land them. There’s been some seriously bad umpiring this year if what we’ve seen in Mets games is any indication of what goes on everywhere else, and it’s to the point where I no longer hope that the umpires won’t screw up, I just hope that the Mets are able to survive the inevitable blown calls.

Middle Finger: There are quite a few candidates here - Pedro Feliciano retired just one of the five batters he faced, Aaron Heilman put the game on ice by allowing both of his inherited runners to score, three Mets grounded into a double play as part of an 0-fer - but Carlos Beltran stands head and shoulders above (or perhaps below) the rest. It’s not so much the strikeout with the bases loaded and the Mets down by a run that ended the seventh inning (after all, Beltran was far from the only Met to leave men on base tonight) as it is the two horrendous misplays in the field that both contributed to Cincinnati runs. Beltran is one of the best defensive center fielders in baseball, but his uncharacteristically bad glovework tonight was extremely costly.

Ring Finger: The Phillies and Marlins are facing one another this weekend, and so far they’ve split the first two games. If the Mets win tomorrow and the Marlins beat the Phillies, the top three teams in the division will be within half a game of one another (Mets and Phillies tied, Marlins half a game behind).

Pinky Finger: Since it was highly entertaining and it happened at Shea Stadium, I suppose this is a good place to discuss how awesome last night’s Billy Joel concert was. The heat and humidity were difficult to endure and the show didn’t start until about 8:45, but it didn’t take long at all to completely forget about both of those things once things got going. I’m glad that I was one of those fortunate enough to get through and buy tickets the morning they went on sale - being at Shea to see Billy Joel sing most of his big hits as well as quite a few of the lesser-known gems (including the one referenced earlier in this post) is something I don’t think I or anyone in my family will ever forget. Oh, and did I mention that Paul McCartney was there to close out the show with “Let It Be?” What a fantastic way to honor an important part of Shea Stadium’s history.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 8:04 pm and is filed under Hands Down, Argenis Reyes, Pedro Feliciano, Aaron Heilman, New York Mets, Cincinnati Reds, 7 Train. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.