"El" of a Return

Glad to have El Duque back in business. After a stint on the 15-day Carpenter, The Duke came back strong, slinging 6 innings of 2 hit, 0 run ball. He threw 88 pitches, 57 for strikes. Special thanks to the Phillies who did what we can't seem to do, and that's beat the braves. Well, if we had someone other than these guys calling games, maybe we could win a few.

Mets offense still in a bit of a funk. They scored their first run of the game on a douche bag play by the Daily Douche Bag winner. The bats came alive in the 9th with 5 runs, but Sergio Mitre did a nice job of keeping the lineup off balance all night.

Still waiting for Willie Randolph to promote Joe Smith to 8th inning hold duty. I hate to keep bagging on the guy, but Hell--dammit--Heilman is killing us. I realize he didn't cause Beltran to fall down in center field, but he did walk the batter, and he couldn't pitch down in the zone low enough to induce a ground ball, letting a sac fly tie the game in the 8th. By the way, if YouTube ever gets around to posting that slider that Joe Smith threw in the 7th, I will have it linked here. That was one of the nastiest moving pitches I have ever seen. I could throw like that with RBI Baseball 95 on Nintendo.

Petey was back in the dugout tonight. Looks like an August return for him. Will be good to have him back. Bet it was fun in the dugout with him back for tonights game too.

Looks like Jason Vargas will be back in AAA with El Duque coming back. When can we get Schoenweis on that train out of town??