MET NOTES
MONTREAL – The past three days, Rey Ordonez picked more things off a carpet than a hotel maid.
“Lately, he’s been moving better,” Bobby Valentine said before last night’s 4-2 win over the Expos. “He seems a little quicker.”
The latest Olympic Stadium evidence came in the second inning when Ordonez prevented a run.
With two out and a man on third, Tomas De La Rosa shot a ball deep into the hole at short. There, Ordonez went to one knee, backhanded the ball and then fired across the diamond to end the inning.
“It is a good style, not to mention efficient,” Desi Relaford said of the play.
*
Darryl Hamilton produced the Mets’ insurance run. Pinch-hitting to leadoff the seventh, Hamilton beat out an infield single to second. After being sacrificed to second by Darren Bragg, Hamilton scored on Robin Ventura’s single to left. Hamilton beat Mark Smith’s throw that had more hops than a Molson. . . . Expos starter Mike Thurman left the game after two shutout innings because his right thumbnail popped loose while fouling off, appropriately enough, an Al Leiter cutter. . . . Ex-Met Masato Yoshii relieved Thurman and gave up Edgardo Alfonzo’s solo shot in his three innings. . . . Turk Wendell in the seventh and Armando Benitez in the ninth pitched shutout innings. It was Benitez’ seventh save.
*
Without much, if any protection in the lineup, Mike Piazza, who was given a rest last night, is in a 7-for-48 (.146) slump. He hasn’t hit a homer in 13 games and has just three RBIs during that stretch. His average has dropped to .254.
*
Bobby Jones, the local lefty, is scheduled to start Saturday for Port St. Luice and then he’ll move to Triple-A Norfolk. When will he be a Met?
“All I know is I’m leaving Port St. Lucie,” Jones told The Post in a phone conversation.
Jones will throw 80 pitches Saturday in an effort to build up his arm strength that was robbed when he was sidelined with left rotator cuff tendinitis in the spring.
