July 12th -- Pirates 3, Mets 2 -- 11 innings

Friday night in Pittsburgh, Jordy Mercer singled off  Gonzalez Germen scoring Andrew McCutchen as Pirates beat the Mets 3-2. Jeremy Hefner started for the Mets and continues to pitch amazing baseball. His only mistake came in the bottom of the first inning when Pedro Alvarez touched him up for a 2 run homer (#24) to make it 2-0 Bucs.  After that  Hefner, only allowed one more hit for the rest of his outing allowing the Mets to tie it. David Wright came through with an rbi single in the top of the 6^th to cut the lead to 2-1. In the top of the 7^th, Kirk Nieuwenhius hit a solo homer (#3) off Charlie Morton to tie the game at 2.  In the bottom of the 9^th the Pirates had 1^st and 3^rd and no outs but the combination of David Aardsma, Scott Rice, Greg Burke and Josh Edgin got out of the inning to force extra frames. Edgin took the Mets through 10, then in the 11^th rookie Gonzalez Germen  came in and with runners on 1^st and 2^nd yielded an rbi single to Mercer to give the Pirates the win. Germen is now 0-1.  Hefner went 7 he allowed just 3 hits the 2 runs he walked none and struck out 3.  Hefner’s era drops to a quite tidy 3.33! The Mets now stand at 40 -49 on the year and 23-22 on the road as their 4 game win streak ends. Saturday night is game two of the three game weekend series.  Carlos Torres (0-1  0.51) comes  out of the pen to start tomorrow as the Mets skip Matt Harvey’s turn.  AJ Burnett  (4-6  3.05) just off the disabled list goes for Pittsburgh. https://www.facebook.com/MetsForum