Just About Every Player's Hitting Streak Stopped in Loss to Cards

When you think about the great pitchers in the game today, you gotta think of names like Santana... Beckett... Peavy... Sabathia... Pineiro...

Pineiro??? He sure looked it last night, baffling Mets hitters for a full nine innings of 2 hit ball and leading St. Louis to a 3-0 defeat of the Mets. Yes, that was 6 win, 8 loss, 70 mile per hour fastball Joel Pineiro doing a number on the Mets with a sinkerball that Mike Pelfrey could hopefully learn something from. And once again, a rain delay could not save the team from utter failure.

The following Met batters had whatever hitting streak they had going into the game stopped cold: Alex Cora (0-4), Daniel Murphy (0-4), David Wright (0-2), Fernando Tatis (0-3), Ryan Church (0-3), Omir Santos (0-3), and Fernando Martinez (0-3).

Just in case you didn't notice, that's pretty much the entire lineup for the Mets in yesterday's borefest. Of players starting the game, only Luis Castillo managed a hit. (of course he was thrown out trying to steal second). Clearly Livan Hernandez did not receive the offensive effort he deserved, as he once again pitched well enough for a win, but saw his record drop to 5-2 instead.

From a pitching perspective, it looks like Livan has become the number 2 starter on this team behind Johan Santana. We'll leave it to you to determine if that's good or bad news. Meanwhile, the Mets dropped to 3 games behind the Phillies in the standings, with Florida and Atlanta starting to make noise behind them.

This is starting to get very interesting...