9/1/19

Brooklyn wins 11-3, tied for wild card, one back of first, Cano two hits. Syracuse loses 5-3, no hits for both Nimmo and Lowrie.

Brooklyn got back to winning by beating Staten Island 11-2 Saturday (box).

Prized 2019 draft pick, Matt Allen, started for Brooklyn giving up two runs in two innings.  Four Brooklyn relief pitchers then held Staten Island in check as Brooklyn came back. The biggest blow for Brooklyn was a seven run seventh inning highlighted by Joe Genord’s three run homer. 

Genord had 5 RBIs on the night and now leads Brooklyn with 44 RBIs for the year.  Robinson Cano went 2 for 4 in the rehab start scoring the run that put Brooklyn up 3-2.  Brett Baty in his second game with Brooklyn went 0 for 3 with a walk. 

While Brooklyn won, Hudson Valley beat Aberdeen to put Aberdeen and Brooklyn back into a tie for the wild card.  However, since Aberdeen won the season series, Brooklyn is right now outside the playoff picture.  They need to win the next two games against Staten Island as Aberdeen and Hudson Valley continues their series. 

The Yankees-Cyclones series heads now to Staten Island before ending in Brooklyn on Labor Day.  It has already been announced that Robinson Cano will continue his rehab in that Monday game. 

Syracuse loses 5-3 to the Rochester Red Wings (box). 

Tough night for Chris Flexen in Rochester.   The 25-year-old right hander gave up 7 hits and 4 runs in 1.1 innings to put Syracuse in a 4-0 hole.  Luckily, Eric Hanhold limited the damage in the second by striking out two batters leaving two men on base.   Peterson, Pounders, and Hart then followed to keep the damage at four until Nick Rumbelow gave up a run in the bottom of the ninth.  Stephen Nogosek added a strikeout to end the eighth keeping his AAA scoreless streak alive.

On the offense side, not much happened for Syracuse as they were held to 6 hits on the night.  Brandon Nimmo went 0 for 3 with a walk and Jed Lowrie went 0 for 4 with a sacrifice fly.    

While Syracuse lost, Yankee’s Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Rail Riders beat Buffalo 9-4 putting Syracuse one game out with two games to play.  If the teams end up tied in the standings, they will meet in a play-in game Tuesday in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre home park. 

6 comments:

Tom Brennan said...

Happy first of all that Nimmo and Lowrie are getting needed ABs. Now they need to start hitting. They are needed in Queens.

Allen did OK in his first outing against much stiffer competition. Good to see he kept it to two runs allowed.

John From Albany said...

Actually would have been one except for some miscommunication between the outfielders on one play.

John From Albany said...

No Haggerty last night for Syracuse. I understand taking guys out so MLBers can rehab but why take out your hottest hitter?

Tom Brennan said...

Getting guys back to Queens is priority 1 - but Haggerty should have been in there somewhere, anyway.

John From Albany said...

Krizan has been hot lately too. He played first, one for three with run scored

Anonymous said...

After having watched last night the ending to the Mets/Nats game, I have these two observations that came into my mind.

First, the Mets offense is very much alive and well. Everyone contributed to the scoreboard and hit parade last night, and it is a really good thing to have seen. Kudos all around there to the NY Mets offense.

And secondly on the "bullpen selection and order" of relievers. It isn't working and probably does need further consideration. So what's the problem here?

Simply this, there are four types of relievers in a really top shelf good bullpen. Each reliever tends to define himself as far as their own ultimate usefulness from the bullpen. It is based mostly on game situation and their respective success probability.

First, the long relievers.

These pitchers are best suited to come into ballgames when mainly the starting pitcher before them has had an off night. They come in early into the game, but never beyond inning number six when they hand off the baseball to the middle relievers who are more trained and capable to take the ballgame into the seventh inning.

The middle relievers are the relievers that have simply better stuff than the long relievers, a better assortment of pitches to throw. In other words here, the middle relievers tend to get the more crucial outs, often the strikeout to end big innings. Their role is to get the baseball to the set-up reliever, whose skill set normally includes more dominant pitches to fool opposing team batters. The set-up man normally comes into the ballgame in the eighth inning. He has really good command on his pitches and a dominant cutter, slider, and/or fastball. He gets a lot of strikeouts.

We all know what the closer does, his pitches are brutally difficult to hit. He has the best stuff going from the bullpen.

The key with all this is to not push relievers into roles that oppose who they really are. And the problem with this particular NY Mets team right now is simply that they have used pitchers that were clearly challenged from being out of their better defined roles.

Who would I consider right now as the NY Mets best pitcher for closer? Belief it or not, probably Justin Wilson the lefty. His stuff has been quite dominant and he has the experience to handle this role and do well with it.