The Fun Bunch!

The Mets turned a blatant letdown game on Friday night into another 9th inning rally. While this one came up a bit short, it served notice that, once again, the Mets can't ever be counted out. This afternoon, in spite of some disgusting heat, the Mets once again appeared cool and collected and made sure such a comeback wouldn't be necessary. Behind Dillon Gee, who threw his best game in several weeks, the Mets knocked out a pair of Home Runs and then let their defense do the rest.

I suppose nothing particularly special can be said about this game, but this is sort of the formula that has served the Mets well all season. Get a few runs here and there as you can, hopefully someone can get a long hit (Today it was Jordany Valdespin and Ike Davis supplying the power), make a few good plays on defense (Ruben Tejada's 9th inning sparkler stole the show) and get good pitching. Dillon Gee had been playing the role of 5th starter to a tee, fizzling out with a number of inconsistent starts, some bombings, some no-decisions, some decent outings submarined by poor defense or no offense, but today he seemed to put it together, recapturing a bit of the form he showed in the first half last season. At that point, I thought Gee to be a very solid contender for Rookie of the Year, before the league caught up to him a bit in the 2nd half. This was Vintage Gee, if Vintage can be used to describe the performance of a pitcher only in his 2nd full season. His 8 inning effort today was his longest outing of the season and gave the bullpen a much-needed break following a pair of middling outings from Dickey and Santana.

With the All Star Break approaching and the Mets not letting up on any front, it appears like maybe this year, the 2nd half of the season may bring much more fun times than the last couple of years, when the Mets couldn't keep things going.