Quotebook: Cardinals 8, Mets 7
That was the game-changing at-bat that got us right back in it. Guys were tired. There had been some long innings and that was a lift.
– Troy Glaus on Chris Duncan’s pinch-hit, game-tying home run
Jerry Manuel must’ve been tired, too. How else to explain some of his moves? To be sure, the Met players lost the game on their own merits (or lack thereof), but Manuel’s backward managing didn’t help them. In the first, after Jose Reyes singled, Manuel turned over any momentum that created by having No. 2 man Endy Chavez sacrifice Reyes to second. With all due respect to Joel Pineiro, the Mets don’t need to be playing for one run in the first inning of the game. Of course, the root problem may be that Chavez is batting second for the Mets in the first place, but if you’re going to be bunting Reyes over in the first inning against Pineiro, wouldn’t the same strategy hold in the third inning, when Reyes led off again with a hit?
At any rate, fast-forward to the eighth, when Chris Duncan came to the plate representing the tying run (read: high-leverage situation!). The Mets must not have done enough homework on Duncan: Although in the regular season, Duncan was previously hitless against Feliciano, Duncan had homered off the lefty in a pinch-hitting appearance in the sixth inning of Game 5 of the 2006 NLCS (how soon we forget!). It’s easy to criticize in hindsight, but why not use your best reliever — who happens to be lefthanded — in the most important situation of the game? We’re happy to say that reports of Chris Duncan’s demise have apparently been greatly exaggerated.
It was just one of those nights where I missed 50 percent of my spots.
– Joel Pineiro
Pineiro threw 59 of his 89 pitches for strikes, or 66.3%. That’s about where his season average is (66.7%), so we’re not sure what he was getting at. Even though his line didn’t look that impressive, he actually pitched his third-best game of the season by FIGS:
| Date | Opp | BF | HR | BB | SO | FIGS |
| 04/24/08 | PIT | 26 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 69 |
| 06/17/08 | KC | 27 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 67 |
| 07/02/08 | NYM | 26 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 65 |
| 05/10/08 | atMIL | 26 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 61 |
| 06/12/08 | atCIN | 19 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 58 |
| 05/20/08 | atSD | 24 | 1 | 3 | 7 | 58 |
| 04/29/08 | CIN | 25 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 56 |
| 06/27/08 | atKC | 36 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 54 |
| 06/22/08 | atBOS | 26 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 53 |
| 05/15/08 | PIT | 22 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 51 |
| 05/05/08 | COL | 16 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 49 |
| 04/13/08 | SF | 21 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 49 |
| 04/19/08 | SF | 27 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 49 |
There’s no justice in this game usually, but today there was.
– Tony La Russa
What does this even mean? Perhaps TLR simply meant that the Mets deserved to lose the game.