Finally the Mets have made some moves to refill their depleted bench, placing both Ryan Church and Jose Reyes on the 15-day DL. To take their roster spots, the Mets received Wilson Valdez, a utility infielder from Cleveland, and called up 21-year old Fernando Martinez from the minors. Because of his age, the Mets were only going to call Martinez up if he was going to play every day. Consider yourself warned. . . The F-Mart era has begun!!
As for the game itself, the Mets defeated the Washington Nationals 6-1 at T-Shirt Night. They had a couple of firsts in the game. First, Fernando Martinez went 0 for 3 (with a HBP) in his major league debut, although he did get his first RBI, driving in Luis Castillo on a fielder's choice. He did look very anxious during the game (his 2 K's were ugly), but you have to cut him some slack. After all, he's just 21.
Second, Livan Hernandez became the first Mets starting pitcher this season to go into the 8th inning . . . and the 9th inning . . . and pitch a complete game. Hernandez, throughout his ML career, has been known to be an innings-eater. And although he might be getting up there in age, he showed that he could still go through a full game. While he did give up 9 hits, his only blemish was a solo shot given up to Adam Dunn (btw, Dunn got his 1,000th career hit in the 2nd inning).
Other players that had a good game for the Mets were Gary Sheffield (3-run laser shot to left field in the 7th) and Angel Pagan, who went 2-4 at the plate with a run and and SB, and also threw out Josh Bard at the plate in the 5th on a single to short center by Craig Stammen, the Nationals pitcher.
With the win, the Mets are now 5-1 in games I've attended, my only blemish being Opening Night. And while they haven't hit that well to games that I've gone to, they've pitched extremely well. My next game is almost a month away (unless someone invites me) so I'll be looking forward to that.
One final note about the game: the seats that my friend and I sat in were interesting (top deck, past 1st base). The aisle seat was facing 2nd base / short left field, while the second seat in the row (my seat) was facing in the direction of the pitchers mound. I applaud the fact that the Mets had all the seats set up so that they'd face the infield, but to have the aisle seat in the first few rows of this section face a different direction than the rest of the section? A bit weird.
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