Santana, Heilman, & Ayala Stop Astros

METS 3

ASTROS 0

Pitching wins championships! That is the common phrase that describes how baseball games are won and lost at any level, and tonight at Shea Stadium in Queens N.Y. we had ourselves great pitching on display, as Johan Santana hooked up in a duel with Houston's Roy Oswalt.

Both pitchers were fantastic. Oswalt gave up only three runs early in the contest, but was effective for the rest of the game, as he didn't allow a hit in his final six innings of work. The Mets had to get Oswalt early in this one, and they were lucky to.

In the first, the Mets used some small ball to get a run across. Jose Reyes singled to lead things off, and later took second on a wild pitch. Argenis Reyes then moved Jose over to third with a sac. bunt. Then, David Wright singled to right to drive in Reyes. It was Wright's 99 RBI of the year.

In the second, two former Washington Nationals did some damage on the Astros' ace. Ryan Church, who returned for the first time after spending two months on the DL with a concussion singled to right. Later, Brian Schnieder launched his third homer in a week into the Mets bullpen to give New York a 3-0 lead.

That was all Santana needed. Santana didn't have his best stuff, throwing 121 pitches in seven innings, but he worked through the high pitch count to stimmy the Astros. In fact his 119 pitch was recorded at 94 MPH, meaning that Santana still had a lot in the tank.

After a slow start to his 2008 season, Santana has really caught on and is showing all of us why he is one of the game's great pitchers. Santana has now thrown 16 straight shutout innings, and is now 12-7 on the year with a 2.64 ERA.

Aaron Heilman came into the eighth inning and got threw the middle of the Astros' order with complete ease. Finally, another ex-National contributed as Luis Ayala closed down the Astros in the ninth, strking out two on just 11 pitches. Of his 11 pichtes, Ayala threw only one ball!! Fantanstic effort for the Mets, who will maintain a 2.5 game lead on the Philadelphia Phillies.