Mets 8 – Cards 3
ST. LOUIS – This year Paul Lo Duca has been hidden from the spotlight. But the Met catcher had another crucial hit last night.
On Saturday, Lo Duca won the game for the Mets in the ninth inning with a solo homer. In the seventh last night against the Cardinals, with the game tied and two outs, Lo Duca lined an RBI double to right, driving in Jose Reyes for the go-ahead run.
After an 1-hour, 41-minute rain delay following the inning, the Mets added four more runs for an 8-3 victory.
“I want to be up in that situation,” Lo Duca said, adding, “I think we’ve struggled a little bit with guys in scoring position, and I hit it in the right spot.”
The Mets also added a game to their first-place NL East lead, as the blazing Phillies lost. The Mets are now up two.
“This is a big win for us,” Lo Duca said. “We’ve lost some tough games on this road trip, and to win the first game here is big.”
Meanwhile, Tom Glavine pitched six innings, giving up three runs and marking the 24th straight game he’s gone at least six frames. He’s now 6-2 and tied with Arizona’s Brandon Webb for the NL lead in wins.
“It’s the kind of thing that it’s hard not to be aware of it,” Glavine said. “But it’s not the kind of thing that I’m paying a whole lot of attention to or obsessed by or anything like that.”
Said Lo Duca, “We owed him this win. He arguably could be 8-0, if you think about it. He’s thrown that well, so we owed him this one.”
After the Mets took a 4-3 lead in the seventh, the tarp came on at Busch Stadium (it had been raining since the sixth). Once the game resumed, the Mets brought in four runs in the eighth inning to go up 8-3. Since they’re not the Texas Rangers, they weren’t in danger of blowing it.
In the eighth, Albert Pujols committed a run-scoring error to give the Mets a two-run lead. Julio Franco, Reyes and Carlos Beltran added RBI singles to make it 8-3.
The Mets got their first three runs thanks to two players who made up for their initial missed chances.
In the first inning, Reyes reached on an error but was picked off. But in the third, Glavine drew a one-out walk. Reyes then swatted a two-run homer for a 2-0 lead.
The other Met who picked himself up was Xavier Nady. The right fielder struck out in the second with two outs and Cliff Floyd on second. In Nady’s next turn up, though, he contributed an RBI single, putting the Mets up 3-0.
Glavine didn’t allow any runs in the first four innings, but the Cards tied it with two runs in the fifth and one in the sixth.
Glavine struck out only one over the first four frames, but when he did, he slid into an impressive historic context, pulling even with Sandy Koufax for 37th place. He then struck out another in the sixth, moving past Koufax and tying a somewhat lesser legend in Kevin Brown.
When Met manager Willie Randolph was asked in pregame yesterday about the way to retire Pujols, he replied, “We’re going to try to figure it out in the next three days or so.” But 72 hours weren’t required – the Mets held the superstar to 0-for-4 last night.
