Pitching, Defense Help Snap Losing Streak as Mets Pelfreyize Brewers

On a day former Mets closer John Franco ripped the team for their lack of leadership and mental mistakes, the Mets finally put together a good pitching and good defensive effort in today's 1-0 shutout of the Brewers, salvaging one game in Milwaukee and snapping their 5-game losing streak on the heels of a really nice outing by Mike Pelfrey.

Pelf struck out 6, walked 2 and went 7 2/3 innings for his sixth win against three losses. Sean Green came into the game in the eighth to record a huge "hold" - his biggest hold of the season no doubt - and KRod pitched the ninth for a huge Q-Save (that's a "quality save") to preserve the victory.

Not much happening with the bats as that's still a major concern for this team going into tomorrow's makeup game with the Pirates, and then on to Philadelphia for a 3-game set against the Phillies. The Mets have scored just 13 runs over their past 6 games (and remember 5 of them were charity), but in today's game, Ryan Church had the big RBI single in the sixth to drive in the lone run of the afternoon.

And with Prince Fielder on second base in the seventh (single and second on Pelfrey's fifth balk of the season), Brian Schenider quick-threw back to second to try to pick him off. Fielder knew he was deadmeat, so he tried for third instead and was thrown out on a nice tag by Wright. That was a huge defensive play that probably saved the game.

Interestingly enough, today's win was the Mets third 1-0 victory of the year, having gone all season last year without winning a 1-0 game. Strange... And trying to force team unity by making the entire team travel to the stadium by bus isn't really my idea of motivation (forcing people to do anything rarely solves any problems), but maybe Jerry's closed door session brainstorm idea yesterday is working. On to Pittsburgh!!!