Just Mets

The Mets defeated the Rockies by the score of 4-0 on Tuesday night at Citi Field. Here are my takeaways from the win…

A dominant Harvey Day.

He’s back, folks. The Dark Knight of Gotham, Matt Harvey, has been stellar in his last 10 starts, and perhaps none were better than his performance tonight. Harvey dominated a potent Rockies lineup at Citi Field, pitching eight shutout innings–his second consecutive start without allowing a run–while giving up just four hits, only one of which reached the outfield, walking none and striking out four.

Harvey was locked in from the get-go tonight. His fastball was sizzling, his change-up was diving and his breaking stuff was sharp. Not once in this game did Harvey allow more than one baserunner in an inning and the Rockies had just two runners in scoring position against him all night.

It looked as if Harvey was going to get a shot at the complete game and shutout tonight, which would have been the second of his career (both at home against the Rockies), however when the Mets loaded the bases with two outs in the bottom of the 8th, Terry Collins opted to pinch-hit Curtis Granderson in Harvey’s spot, thus ending the Dark Knight’s… well, night.

After tonight’s shutout performance, Harvey’s season ERA is now down to 2.61.

Little early, more late.

The Mets didn’t do much against the Rockies on offense for the second straight night, scoring just one run in the first seven innings against baseball’s worst pitching staff, but much like Monday night, they exploded late against the Colorado bullpen.

After going 0-for-their-first-7 with runners in scoring position in the first five innings of this game, Ruben Tejada broke through with a two-out, RBI single in the bottom of the 6th against Rockies starter Chris Russin.

It wasn’t until the Mets faced that shaky Rockies bullpen in the 8th where the offense once again took off, scoring three runs against the Colorado relief corp for the second straight game. With the bases loaded and two outs, Boone Logan came in to face Curtis Granderson in the exact same situation that occurred the night before. On Monday night he hit Granderson to force in a run and tonight, after nearly hitting him a few pitches prior, he walked him in to force in the Mets second run of the game.

Juan Lagares, starting his first game in a week, then ripped a two-run double to deep left field to break the game open and that’s all she wrote.

It wasn’t much, but once again the Mets did what they had to do on Tuesday night. They offense hasn’t clicked on all cylinders the last few days, but they’ve now won the first two games of this series, and that’s all you can ask for.

Other notes from Tuesday:

Mets pitchers didn’t issue a walk for the third straight game and for the 20th time overall this season, expanding on their franchise record for one season.

Juan Lagares had his first three-hit game since June 14th.

Daniel Murphy went 2-for-5 tonight, raising his batting average to .281 this year.

Ruben Tejada is now hitting .316 with 8 walks since the All-Star break.

With his pinch-hitting appearance in the 8th inning, Curtis Granderson has now appeared in every game this season for the Mets–the only player on the club to do so.

Tonight marked the Mets’ 10th shutout win of the season.