MONTREAL – The Mets raise a pennant flag at Shea today. If they want to get another one any time soon, they will need to raise their level of play considerably.
Who would have ever thought the Mets would look at the Braves coming to town as a break in the schedule? Given the way the Expos had their way with the defending National League Champions, the Braves represent a welcome change.
The Mets did little right in getting swept out of Olympic Stadium in three games over the first weekend of the season.
There is no kinder way to put it than to say the Expos made the Mets look old and tired. The Mets looked like a team that had been away from home for two months and is ready to feast on some home cooking.
“We’d rather go home on a three-game winning streak, but it’s good to get home, great to play before our fans and great to get out of the suitcase,” manager Bobby Valentine said after the conclusion of the 2-4, season-opening trip.
The flop of a trip won’t taint today’s ceremonies any more than having the show with the Braves in town will enhance them. It’s the flag that makes it special, not who’s watching it raised or what a team’s record is when it’s hoisting it.
“I’m going to enjoy it, no matter what,” Robin Ventura said.
Even when the Mets did something right yesterday, it turned out wrong, such as in the early innings of yesterday’s 5-2 loss to the National League’s most improved team.
Al Leiter breaks as many bats as anybody with an unforgiving cutter. Normally, that’s a good thing for a pitcher. Yesterday, a couple of the spears he created led to the Expos’ first two runs.
In the first, Jose Vidro reached on a broken-bat bloop hit to center and went on to score.
In the second, Leiter sawed the bat of Fernando Tatis. The barrel and the handle, as well as the baseball, flew toward Ventura at third. While avoiding the spear that could have killed him, Ventura failed to field the baseball and was charged with a harsh error as Peter Bergeron scored from second on the play.
Bad breaks happen. It takes an explosive offense to overcome them. The Mets don’t have one. Poor speed and one home run hitter short of powerful, the Mets will need to pitch better than a year ago to make it back to the postseason because as the lineup is constructed they aren’t going to score as many runs.
Outscored 25-8 in the sweep at the hands of the more lively Expos (5-1), the Mets looked lost without Jay Payton’s crisp bat.
Payton’s a nice player on the come, but he’s not a hitter whose absence should turn a lineup soft. For the Mets to look so lost without Payton means they were one bat short with him.
Payton was forced out of the entire series by an illness that left him with a stinging throat and monster headaches.
He was the first of the Mets’ outfielders to go down.
Benny Agbayani, drilled on the hand by a third-inning pitch, was next. Timo Perez left in the fifth when he suffered a leg injury that prevented him from throwing the ball in from right when Tatis tagged from second.
They finished the game with an outfield of Darryl Hamilton in left, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, a graceful, rangy center fielder gifted with an absolute cannon of an arm, and Joe McEwing in right.
The problem isn’t how the outfield shapes up when the second string is in. The problem lies with the power of the first string. The Mets are one hammer short. Everybody in baseball knows it. Every GM holding a spare hammer will try to exploit the Mets’ weakness.
The Mets had the right guys up at the right times, they just don’t have enough of the right guys. Two men can’t be counted on to carry them all the time.
With the Mets trailing by three runs in the sixth, Edgardo Alfonzo came to the plate with two men on and two men out. Guillermo Mota was brought into the game to put that fire out.
Two innings later, Mike Piazza represented the go-ahead run when he came to the plate with the bases loaded against Scott Strickland. Piazza popped up to first base and it was at that point that a sweep felt inevitable.
Left-hander Chris Peters earned the win for the Expos and pitched only 5 innings to get it. That’s all the Expos needed from him because they have a bullpen packed with electric arms.
If the Expos somehow can piece together an adequate rotation behind Javier Vazquez and Britt Reames – a big if, to be sure – they have what it takes to battle the Braves and Mets, a pair of powerhouses who resume battling each other today.
Raising the flag should make postseason memories fresh for the Mets. This past weekend at the Big O, they seemed more than one country removed from a postseason-caliber team. They seem a world away.