NewsMets look to take series behind Santana
New York (36-34) vs. St. Louis (40-33), 1:10 p.m. ET
By Tim Britton / MLB.com
06/25/09 1:55 AM ET
NEW YORK -- Two shutouts down, one to go?One night after Joel Pineiro blanked the Mets on two hits, Fernando Nieve and three relievers shut out the Cardinals, 11-0, on Wednesday.
Thursday doesn't portend to be a good day for hitters for either team, not with Johan Santana battling Chris Carpenter in a matchup of Cy Young Award winners. It could be a race to one.
Santana and the Mets will once again look to reverse their luck closing out a series in the finale. The Mets have lost four straight series finales -- a large part of the reason they've lost four straight series.
The good news is the Mets are promised at least a split in this four-game set, having taken two of the first three.
The other good news? Santana is on the hill.
The southpaw bounced back from a string of increasingly poor performances with a solid outing on Saturday against the Rays. Santana lasted 7 1/3 innings, yielding just two runs on three hits, assuaging fears that he was injured. A seventh-inning Carlos Pena home run was the difference on a day Santana was outdueled by James Shields, 3-1.
The bad news for the Mets? Carpenter is more than capable of handing Santana another tough-luck loss.
The 2005 National League Cy Young Award winner is 5-1 with a 1.53 ERA in nine starts this season. Carpenter has yet to give up more than three runs in an outing, and he's allowed just 17 hits in 29 2/3 June innings.
Manager Jerry Manuel compared Carpenter to Pineiro, who induced 22 ground-ball outs in his shutout on Tuesday.
"He's going to be sinking it and he's a veteran pitcher that knows what he's doing out there," Manuel said. "It's going to be another big challenge. We just have to do what we can and take it as it comes."
The Mets' offense was certainly clicking Wednesday, putting up a season-high 11 runs on 16 hits. The makeshift heart of the order -- comprised of David Wright, Ryan Church and Fernando Tatis -- combined to go 9-for-12 with three doubles and five RBIs.
Nick Evans chipped in with a two-run homer in his first start of the season.
"It's going to be a battle," Church said of facing Carpenter. "Hopefully this gives us some confidence and momentum."
But for Wright and the Mets, it all starts on the mound. Fernando Nieve was the star on Wednesday; now it's Santana's turn to perform like the ace of the staff again.
"Starting pitching jump-starts us," Wright said. "When you get that kind of performance, you want to go out there and score some runs."
Or at least one run. It could be enough.
Pitching matchup
NYM: LHP Johan Santana (8-5, 3.22 ERA)
Santana rebounded from the self-proclaimed worst performances of his career with his longest outing of the season against the Rays on Saturday. He allowed two runs on three hits in 7 1/3 innings, but a bases-empty home run by Carlos Pena in the seventh was his undoing in the Rays' 3-1 victory. Santana now has lost three of his four most recent starts after winning seven of his first nine decisions. He has started against the Cardinals once in his career -- a complete game July 27 last year. He limited the Cardinals to a run on six hits in a 9-1 win.
Despite missing nearly a month with a strained rib cage muscle earlier this season, Carpenter is making a case to be on the mound for the All-Star Game at Busch Stadium next month. He was nearly flawless in his last start Saturday against the Royals. He pitched seven scoreless innings before allowing a run in the eighth. Carpenter departed after allowing one run on three hits in 7 2/3 innings. His fifth victory came one start after he suffered his first loss, June 14 against the Indians. His ERA in six road starts (37 1/3 innings) is 2.15, but not at all comparable to his ERA in three starts (21 innings) in St. Louis -- 0.43. He has faced the Mets once in the past three years, on Opening night in 2007. It was his only big league appeareance until last July.
This date in Mets history -- June 25: The Mets won 14 of their first 21 games after Joe Torre replaced Joe Frazier as manager in 1977. But the distraction of the trades that exiled Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman, and the general deterioration of the roster eventually caught up with Torre's first team. The Mets' record, 15 games under .500 when Torre took over, reached 29-37 on June 21 before the bottom fell out. The Mets lost six straight and 15 of 17. The worst loss came on June 25 in Wrigley Field. After a home run by Ed Kranepool gave the Mets a 4-1 lead in the eighth inning, the Cubs scored four times against Skip Lockwood and Bob Apodaca in the ninth to win, 5-4.
On this date in 1984, Keith Hernandez had two hits, including a home run, walked twice, scored three times and drove in three runs in the Mets' 10-5 victory against the Phillies at The Vet. Ron Darling was the winning pitcher. Six years later on this date, the Mets beat the Cardinals, 3-2, in St. Louis with a run in the ninth. The victory was the seventh in a streak of 11 -- one of four 11-game winning streaks in Mets history -- for Buddy Harrelson's first team. In 1997 on this date, Tom Glavine gained one of his 16 career victories against the Mets -- he lost seven times to them -- in a 14-7 Braves victory at Shea Stadium. Bobby Jones, who had a 12-3 record before the game, was the losing pitcher.
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• WFAN 660, WADO 1280 (Español) Up next
• Friday: Mets (Mike Pelfrey, 5-2, 4.74) vs. Yankees (CC Sabathia, 6-4, 3.71), 7:10 p.m. ET
• Saturday: Mets (Tim Redding, 1-2, 6.08) vs. Yankees (A.J. Burnett, 5-4, 4.24), 7:10 p.m. ET
• Sunday: Mets (Livan Hernandez, 5-2, 4.05) vs. Yankees (Chien-Ming Wang, 0-6, 11.20), 8:05 p.m. ET
Tim Britton is an associate reporter for MLB.com. Marty Noble contributed to this story. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
