Mets Wake Up In Time

METS 5

MARLINS 4

Well after nearly two hours and 10 minutes of boring baseball that saw the Mets sleepwalk through the entire contest trailing the feebel Florida Marlins 2-1 going into the ninth inning, a miricale happened in unlikely fashion.

Florida closer Kevin Gregg came into to close out the Mets in the ninth and just could not complete his job. He was wild with his control and left balls hanging over the plate. With two out in the inning and the Mets just about done, Luis Castillo, who is just coming off a long stint on the DL, singled innocently up the middle. David Wright followed up with a single of his own, and the snowball started to get bigger.

On the first pitch to Carlos Delgado, Gregg hit Delgado on the leg putting him on base to load the bases for Carlos Beltran. Now if anyone knows Beltran's history with runners in scoring position in potential game changing situations, he has come up small. Look back at Beltran's caught looking at Adam Wainwright's curveball in Game Seven of the 2006 NLCS as an example.

On the first pitch, Beltran wacked the pitch deep into the right field stands for a grand slam homerun. It was the second grand slam of the year for the Mets, Carlos Delgado had one in late June in a 15-6 win over the Yankees. Beltran, who has been struggling this year, is starting to catch fire and now has 20 homeruns and 91 RBI on the year.

One would think the game would be over, but that was not the case. Luis Ayala could not get out of his own way. With one out he allowed a single to Jeremey Hermida. Hanely Ramirez then singled with two out, and finally Mike Jacobs singled up the middle to drive home Hermida to cut the Met lead to 5-3. Jorge Cantu followed with a double in the left field gap, allowing Ramirez to score and moving Jacobs to third. But, Ayala found a way out, getting Wes Helms to ground out to shortstop to end the game.

The Mets are now two games up on Philadelphia who lost their thrid straight game this afternoon, a 3-2 loss to the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.