Just Mets

The Mets will look for their fourth straight win as they face the Padres tonight at 7:10 PM at Citi Field.

Here is today’s starting lineup for New York:

Curtis Granderson – RF
Daniel Murphy – 3B
Kelly Johnson – 2B
Lucas Duda – 1B
Michael Conforto – LF
Kirk Nieuwenhuis – CF
Wilmer Flores – SS
Anthony Recker – C
Bartolo Colon – RHP

Here is today’s pitching matchup:

Bartolo Colon (9-9, 4.60 ERA) will start for the Mets.

Tyson Ross (6-8, 3.45 ERA) will start for the Padres.

Here is what I’m looking for from the Mets tonight…

Don’t stop now.

The Mets are on the upswing. After calling up Michael Conforto prior to Friday’s loss and adding Juan Uribe, Kelly Johnson and Tyler Clippard in the last few days, this team is rejuvenated. They’ve won three straight games now and have cut the Nationals division lead to a single game on the back of both their stellar pitching and an offense that has improved. As they face a Padres team trapped in mediocrity, they need to keep their foot on the gas pedal.

Is Lucas Duda ready to breakout?

While he’s hitting just .196 in his last 15 games with 19 strikeouts, it actually appears as if Lucas Duda could be on his way to breaking out. The batting average and high K rate is obviously a concern, but other numbers indicate that he could in fact be on the uptick. In this time span, Duda’s on-base percentage is .297–100 points higher than his average–but more impressively, he’s got a .500 slugging percentage as he’s hit five home runs in his last 15 games and three in his last seven. The average needs to go up and the strikeouts need to go down, but it’s possible that the Mets slugging first baseman may finally be on his way back.

Old reliable.

After struggling mightily for the better part of three months, the 42-year-old Bartolo Colon is coming off one of his best starts of the season. In his last outing against the Dodgers, Colon went eight innings allowing a run on five hits and no walks while striking out four. He took the loss, as he was opposed by the nearly unhittable Clayton Kershaw, but this was the kind of start we haven’t seen from Colon since his splendid month of April of this year. Starting in the friendly confines of Citi Field against what has been a meandering Padres offense, let’s see if Big Bart can show some consistency with back-to-back good starts.