Kings of Comedy Keep It Up

Mets Continue Inconsistent Play To Start 2nd Half Schedule

CARDINALS 7

METS 1

Ahhhh, the Mets. Ahhh the buffonery! Ahhh, another loss! That was the story for the Mets in Game One of a HUGE week of baseball, as the St. Louis Cardinals easily destroyed the Mets 7-1 Monday night.

It was bad from the outset as John Maine walked the lead-off man Skip Schumaker on five pitches and then gave up a single to right to Aaron Miles. Minutes later Albert Pujols, who has returned nicely from a stint on the DL, singled to right to bring home Schumaker, and just like that it was 1-0 Cards. (BALL GAME OVER!!!)

After Maine walked Rick Ankel to load the bases, the Mets made another bad defensive play. Troy Glaus grounded right to short stop Jose Reyes, and instead of going home with the throw, Reyes flipped the ball to Luis Castillo who then flipped it to Carlos Delgado for the double play. Nice to get two outs, but the Mets allowed a second run to score in a game, where they could ill afford to give up more than one or two runs.

The Cardinals scored in each of the first five innings, which was capped off by a two run homer by the struggling Chris Duncan.

Kyle Loshe mastered the Mets all night for seven strong innings, surrendering only five hits and a run, while striking out four. Loshe is now 10-2 on the season.

A nice story that came out of the game for St. Louis was the return of Mark Mulder. Mulder who has been battling various injuries over the last two and a half seasons returned to close down the Mets in an impressive ninth inning. The Cardinals, who lead the wild card by a slim margin over the Milwaukee Brewers, need Mulder badly, considering they have two relievers in their starting rotation.

If Mulder can work his way back to five innings of work, then Tony LaRussa can put him back in the rotation, and maybe put Branden Looper back where he belongs, in the bullpen. BOXSCORE.