TWO questions were repeated to Met personnel before yesterday’s series opener against Philadelphia. Do you think you could hurt the Phillies’ confidence by beating them? Do you think the Phillies are for real?
Four hours of game later, only one question remained: Why the hell are we asking these questions about the Phillies?
After all, following a 5-3, 10-inning Phillie victory, it was the Mets who trailed first-place Philadelphia by 10 games in the standings and sat seven games under .500. Shouldn’t we be wondering about their confidence? Shouldn’t we be skeptical if they are for real?
Memorial Day is viewed as the unofficial start of the pennant race and, in case you were not paying attention to the first nine weeks of the season, here are the Cliff Notes on these two teams:
Phillies, good. Mets, bad.
“I don’t know if they look like a team 10 games ahead of us, but it is a fact, they are 10 games in front of us,” Bobby Valentine said.
A disappointing crowd (33,791) for a holiday game against a first-place team left Shea disappointed because the Mets failed to capitalize fully on Philadelphia mistakes or on wonderful relief from Dennis Cook, John Franco and Jerrod Riggan, or on Mike Piazza’s second poignant homer in as many days.
They lost because they went 3-for-17 with men on base, including 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position. Their inadequacy was most pronounced in the fourth and fifth innings, when nine of 14 Mets reached safely and they scored just two runs.
The Mets drew four walks in the fourth, one by the woeful-hitting Al Leiter that loaded the bases, produced two hits, and center fielder Doug Glanville botched a ball for a run-scoring error. Yet between a failed suicide squeeze and the lack of a clutch hit the Mets scored only twice. That was better than the fifth, when they had second and third with no out and did not score at all.
And they also lost because Armando Benitez surrendered his sixth homer in 23 innings, or as many as the whole Yankee bullpen had permitted in 139 1/3 innings going into last night. Some Met personnel think Benitez does not concentrate the same in non-save situations. He now has yielded five homers and nine runs in 15 non-save innings compared to one homer and one run in eight innings of eight save chances.
Benitez entered a tie game in the 10th because Piazza, whose eighth-inning homer Sunday sparked a win over Florida, hit a one-out homer in the ninth off Phillies closer Jose Mesa to make it 3-3.
Benitez walked the 10th-inning leadoff hitter, Bobby Abreu, who stole second. With one out and first base open, Valentine considered walking Pat Burrell, who had two homers and two walks in four plate appearances vs. Benitez, but decided against that strategy. Burrell clobbered a two-strike pitch and the Phillie lead was both 5-3 and 10 games.
“I just can’t imagine they’d shut it down in June,” Glanville said. “We can make it hard for them, make it an uphill climb. Put it this way, I’d rather be in our driver’s seat than their passenger seat.”
The Mets have 18 games left against the Phillies, five more in the next 10 days. That gives hope. But is it false hope? The Phillie rotation is a lot like the one that helped San Francisco to the NL’s best record last year, without an ace, but filled with able No. 3 types.
The offense should get better because Abreu and Scott Rolen should hit better. And the team enthusiasm was evident in how their personnel stood against the dugout top-step railing for the entire game.
The Met dugout did not have the same overt energy. The exuberance that marked the 2000 NL champion is lacking, and so is the quality overall play. No Met spoken to felt the Phillies could hurt their confidence and no Met said their team was not for real.
But what else can they say publicly? Consider that on May 10 the Mets began a stretch in which they would play 13 of 16 at Shea 7 ½ games out of first place and with management ready to use this span to determine if it should add payroll to make a postseason run.
So far, the Mets are 8-6 in that period and have fallen 2 ½ games further behind first place. They have two games left in this stretch, both against Philadelphia. The first 2001 matchup of the Phillies and Mets provided more evidence Philadelphia is a robust contender.
The Mets? For now they seem to be defaulting on their NL title rather than defending it. They finished Memorial Day double-digits out of first place. The only thing real about them just might be that they are in real trouble.