Astros 5 – Mets 2
HOUSTON – By tomorrow afternoon’s trade deadline, maybe the Mets will have added a player or two. The current group, though, is hardly playing like an outfit that’s headed for October baseball.
The Mets dropped their second straight game and fourth in the last five last night, going down 5-2 to the blazing Astros. They have fallen to seven games back of the first-place Braves and four behind the wild card-leading ‘Stros, who have won 12 of 13.
As Cliff Floyd noted, the Mets can’t keep this up for much longer and expect to still be hanging around in contention.
“You only get so many opportunities in a season,” Floyd said. “When you get opportunities to come through and put yourself in a position to make a run for it come September, you get a month and it’s over. It could be over real quick.”
“Either you get it turned around or you look forward to a miserable September. And I don’t think we really were looking forward to that because we’ve done too many good things this season to let a few games ruin what we worked so hard for. So it’s up to us. You can’t talk about it.”
The Met offense continued to struggle, getting just five hits. And after going 0-for-10 with men on base Thursday, the Mets went 1-for-13 in that spot last night.
Pitching-wise, the Mets have blown two advantageous mound matchups here so far. In the opener, they had Pedro Martinez going against Ezequiel Astacio and they lost (not because of Pedro). Then last night, they again had the edge, with Kris Benson facing Wandy Rodriguez. The Mets lost once more due in large part to Benson.
Benson, who had been excelling lately, went only 5 1/3 innings, his shortest outing since his first start of the year on May 5. And after allowing just three homers in his previous seven starts, Benson was hammered for three long balls – the homers accounting for all five the Astro runs.
“The gopher ball obviously hurt him,” manager Willie Randolph said.
Said Benson, “Basically just chalk this up as a bad start.”
Now that the Mets failed to take advantage of their starting pitching edges, they’ll have to see if they can overcome Houston’s. Andy Pettitte and Roy Oswalt will go tonight and tomorrow, respectively, while the Mets throw Tom Glavine and Kaz Ishii – their two least effective starters this year.
For the fourth time in this five-game road trip, the Mets gave up a run in the first inning as Craig Biggio took Benson deep for a solo homer. Two innings later, Benson gave up a two-run shot to Lance Berkman, making it 3-0.
It was too bad the Mets didn’t have someone like Manny Ramirez for their offense, as the bats could not do anything for the first five innings against Rodriguez, who came in with a 6.18 ERA. Finally, in the sixth, the Mets were able to slice the lead to 3-2, thanks to David Wright’s sac fly and Mike Piazza’s RBI single.
But in the bottom half of the inning, Benson negated the Mets’ two-run top, serving up Morgan Ensberg’s two-run homer.
Individually, Carlos Beltran had a better evening in game two of his return here than in the series opener. Beltran went 0-for-4 Thursday and though he was still booed last night, he went 1-for-3 with a walk, a stolen base and a run scored.