B-Mets Game Notes

LAST GAME: With two former Major League pitchers on the
hill, fans at MerchantsAuto.com Stadium were in for a pitchers’
duel and that’s what they got as both Fernando Nieve and
Casey Janssen pitched six innings each giving up a run. Nieve
retired the last 15 men he faced and the game was decided
by the bullpen, with New Hampshire taking a 2-1 win thanks
to a David Cooper solo home run off B-Mets reliever Eric
Brown. Binghamton’s lone run came in the sixth off Janssen.
After Emmanuel Garcia doubled to deep right-center, Jonathan
Malo drove him in with an RBI single to shallow center to
tie the game at one. Edgar Estanga threw the final 1.1 innings
to get the save for reliever Brandon Magee, a starter working
out of the bullpen because of the rehab start. The two teams
combined for just eight hits and three runs in the B-Mets
shortest game of the season, going just 2 hours and 11 minutes.

STARTING PITCHING MATCHUP: LHP Mike Antonini will make
his team-leading seventh start of the season tonight. Antonini
has won four of his last five starts and is coming off his
strongest start of the young season. He went a season-long
6.2 innings May 7 against Portland, allowing only one run on
five hits with six strikeouts to beat the Sea Dogs. For the year,
Antonini is 4-1 with a 4.88 ERA in 31.1 innings. This will be his
third start of the season against New Hampshire. In his first
start April 26 in Manchester, he threw a quality start of six
innings giving up three runs to beat the Fisher Cats 4-3. However,
at NYSEG Stadium, Antonini was roughed up for six runs
in four innings as New Hampshire won 14-4. He was the Mets’
18th-round pick in 2007 out of Georgia College & State University.
LHP Ricky Romero will make a Major League rehab start for
the Fisher Cats tonight. Romero has spent part of the last
three seasons as a member of New Hampshire’s rotation and
is the franchise record-holder for starts with 51 from 2006 to
2008. He made 21 starts with the Fisher Cats last year, going
5-5 with a 4.96 ERA in 121.2 innings. In three starts with the
Blue Jays this season, he is 2-0 with a 1.71 ERA. He is coming
back from a right oblique muscle strain. Romero was the first
pitcher taken in the 2005 draft out of Cal State Fullerton in
the first round.

BLISTERING BOWMAN: Thanks to a second inning single off
Fisher Cats’ starter Casey Janssen, Bowman extended his
season-long hitting streak to 10 games. The streak is tied for
the longest in the Eastern League right now with Steven Lerud
of Altoona. In his last 10 games, Bowman is batting a stellar
.450, 18-40, with three homers and seven RBI. The longest
hitting streak of his career is 18 games from last year.