The Mets Strike First In the Subway Series

Timely hitting. Solid relief pitching. if the piece ended right there you might be thinking I was talking about the surprising Yankees. But shocking I am not. This would sum up the Mets Monday night as they beat the Yankees in game 1 of the 4 game subway series at Citifield 2-1.

The Mets used spotty but effective starting pitching by Jonathan Niese, who danced around 8 hits in 7 innings. Brandon Lyons and Bobby Parnell each pitched an inning of scoreless ball to secure the win. Parnell now has 9 saves and Niese appears to be coming out of his early funk.

The Mets got timely hitting from David Wright and Daniel Murphy. Wright clobbered a 7th inning home run off  starter Phil Hughes who had dominated the ballgame until that massive blow by Wright. It ties the game at 1 and set the stage for the late heroics by Daniel Murphy.

With 2 out and a runner on 3rd in the 8th inning, Murphy took a pitch from Yankee 8th inning specialist David Robertson and lined a clean single up the middle that plated Jordanny Valdespin with the game winner.

Parnell pitched the 9th and despite a 1 out walk, a 4 pitch walk to Ichiro Suzuki he got out of the inning with no further damage. Parnell struck out Lyle Overbay on high cheese then got Travis Hafner to pop out to David Wright to end the game. How many Met fans had nightmares of the pop that Luis Castillo dropped? I know I did as Wright circled under the ball.

Game 2 of the series very well could be the highlight game as both teams throw their aces to the mound. Hiroki Kuroda and Matt Harvey square off at Citi in game 2 of the series Tuesday night.

Monday's opener by the way featured the smallest crowd ever for a subway series game as only 32,915 decided that seeing this game was something they wanted to do on Memorial day. Clearly a product of the Mets mostly lousy play so far this season. I would expect the pitching of Harvey will bring in a few more customers for game 2 on Tuesday night.