The Mets try to turn this all around starting tonight with Jon Niese vs Adam Wainwright. The Mets are coming off of an abysmal road trip with a lot of questions coming to this week. There are ton of off the field issues going on (coaching, trades, releases) but ultimately it is about what is done on the field and while the Mets pitching of late has been spot on, the bats have been whack.
Niese has a 6-4 record this season with a 3.54 ERA. He wasn't as good in his last start as he has been in previous allowing 3 ER over 5 innings but he still managed to strikeout 6 batters. In the month of July he has a 1-2 record while pitching 26.2 inning with a 2.70 ERA. Niese's only start against the Red Birds was a memorable one for all the wrong reasons. He was cruising through 1.2 innings until he went to cover first base, get injured and was gone for the rest of the year. During his young career, only a few Cardinals have AB's against Niese. Holliday and Ludwig are both 0-1 while Pujols is 1-1 with a double.
The Mets bats will have to face a now infamous foe in Mets history, Adam Wainwright. More specifically, we could have a rematch of that moment that ended the 2006 season. To make matters worse, Wainwright has been terrific this year with his 14-5 record and 1.94 ERA. In fact, in the entire month of June he has allowed one earned run. The Mets scored more runs on him than that the first time this season (3) however Wainwright picked up the win in a complete game outing where the Cards edged the Mets by the score of 5-3. To give you an idea how long ago that was/feels, that was the series of the 20 inning game and right before the Mets called up Ike Davis. Anyway the Mets have these numbers on Adam:
Blanco 4-7, 2 2B
Pagan 2-5
Reyes 0-5
Wright 0-5
