June 17th 2014 -- Cardinals 5, Mets 2

Tuesday night in St. Louis David Wright went 2 for 4 with a homer (5) and an RBI, but Michael Wacha and the Cardinal pen held off the struggling Met offense and come away with a 5-2 win.  Jon Niese, who’s been the Mets hottest starting pitcher, got the start. In the bottom of the 2^nd Yadier Molina hit a solo homer (6) off Niese to make it 1-0.  Wright returned the favor with his blast in the 4^th to tie it up.  The Cards got to Niese in the bottom of the 5^th scoring two times on a RBI triple by John Jay and an RBI double by Matt Holliday. In the bottom of the 6^th the Mets gave away a pair of runs with mental mistakes. Trailing 3-1, the Cardinals had 2 out and Jhonny Peralta at second.  David Descalso hit a knuckling pop to Daniel Murphy at 2^nd he botched it, but recovered in time to throw out Descalso at 1^st, but Lucas Duda had a vapor lock and wasn’t covering first. So the Mets had first and third with two out.  Kolton Wong pinch hit and singled to make it 4-1. Then Wong attempted to steal 2^nd with Descalso on third. Recker threw a seed to second and had Wong dead to rights but Murphy instead of applying the tag and ending the inning threw to third in a failed attempt to get Descalso. Then Peter Bourjos hit an infield single that scored Descalso with the 2^nd run of the inning. Lucas Duda went 2 for 3 with a double and a solo homer (9) that came in the top of the ninth off Jason Mott. Niese only lasted 6 innings. He allowed 8 hits, 5 runs (only 3 earned) he walked 1 and struck out 3.  He takes the loss falling to 3-4. Wacha allowed the solo homer in 6 innings and gets the win improving to 5-5.  Pat Neschek got the Cards out of a mini-jam in the 9^th for his 2^nd save. The Mets have now dropped the first two games of this 7 game road trip. They now stand at 31-40 on the year and 15-20 on the road. Wednesday afternoon it’s the get-a-way game for the Mets. Bartolo Colon (6-5  4.15) goes for the Mets, Lance Lynn (7-4  3.16) goes for St. Louis.