Mets Bats Come Alive in the Nation's Capital

The Mets jumped over Nats pitcher J.D. Martin, who made his MLB debut, with five runs in the first two innings on their way to a 6-2 win. Daniel Murphy and Jeff Francoeur supplied the offense in the 1st with RBI doubles, and Angel Pagan, Luis Castillo, and Murphy each had RBI singles in the 2nd to give the Mets a 5-0 advantage. New York tacked on a run in the 9th on a mammoth home run to left field off the bat of Francoeur, who was 3/4 with a single, double, home run, and two RBI's.

Then Livan Hernandez did what he does best: beat his former team, the Washington Nationals. Hernandez pitched seven innings of two run ball for his 8th straight win against the Nats to improve to 6-5 on the year. He is now 3-0 against Washington this year with an ERA around one. He did a great job staying ahead of hitters, and he worked around trouble in the 2nd inning and settled down the last two innings after allowing a pair of runs in the 5th off a Josh Bard two RBI double.

The play of the game came in the 8th inning, 1st and 2nd with nobody out and Adam Dunn coming to the plate as the tying run in a 5-2 game. Pedro Feliciano got the lefty to hit a ground ball in the hole on the right side, where Murphy made a fantastic play to his right to start a 3-6-1 double play. After that Sean Green came on in relief to get the Mets out of the inning, and then Francisco Rodriguez pitched a 1,2,3 9th in relief to secure the victory.

Overall the Mets did a great job jumping over a nervous Martin in the first few innings. The Nats righty was not topping 88 mph on his fastball and everything was in the strike zone and very hittable. The Mets did a great job stroking the ball all over the field, and it was nice to see this time hit a few doubles down the lines. Another great sign was the great hitting of Jeff Francoeur. He fouled off a lot of pitches in the at-bats where he got hits, and while he seemed late on some pitches, he eventually found a pitch he liked and hit it with authority.

I was at Nationals Park tonight for the game, and it was a ghost town with only 14,000+ in attendance, even though it says the paid attendance was 19,169. I attended the Nats/Red Sox game on June 25, and the Nats set a single game attendance record with 41,000+ on hand. There was a huge difference in the atmosphere, and it was surprising the Nats could not get more fans considering a lot of Mets fans made the trip south. I saw many Mets fans in my hotel, and they still made the trip in bunches despite the team's poor play over the past month.