Well, that might have been the quickest baseball game I’ve ever seen. It was the New York Mets’ Bartolo Colon against Los Angeles Dodgers’ ace Clayton Kershaw, and as much of a pitcher’s duel it was, there was just too much Kershaw for the weak Mets’ lineup to handle. The Dodgers took care of business at Citi Field in front of a very restless crowd 3-0.
Colon threw 8 incredible innings, giving up just 5 hits, 1 run, walking zero and striking out four. Outside of an old friend Jimmy Rollins hitting his 9th home run of the season, he was spotless all night long. He knew that Kershaw was on the other side and that he needed to pitch like he was double parked. Offensively? Well, there’s not much to say on the side of the home team.
Kershaw was on another level from the first inning to the ninth, as he just blew by this Mets lineup. It was almost too easy. He gave up just three hits, walked zero, struck out eleven, and threw just 104 pitches in his complete game shutout. The 27 year old left hander had a perfect game going into the 7th inning when Curtis Granderson broke it up with a single, but New York’s lineup had no chance to get anything going. He has become the first pitcher since 1900 to give up zero runs while striking out 10 or more hitters in three consecutive starts. Just unbelievable. Along with Greinke, they have become by far the most dominant 1-2 punch in the Major Leagues as they have both had historic seasons, but this is just another regular season for the left handed MVP. Kershaw is now 8-6 with an earned run average of 2.51.
As masterful as Kershaw was and has been for….seven years now, tonight’s game was over before it started. It was over the second I saw the lineup card for the New York Mets. When John Mayberry, who is hitting .165, is your cleanup hitter, that right there is a red flag. That’s just one red flag. Eric Campbell, who is hitting .176, is batting 5th in the order? Three of the eight position players in the lineup tonight were hitting below .200. I mean this is just becoming a joke, because most of these guys don’t belong in a batters box against a great pitcher like Kershaw, and he reminded them of it multiple times. Those are just a couple of the many problems I have with the lack of depth to manager Terry Collins’ disposal. I hope General Manager Sandy Alderson has been watching real closely lately because this offense was ranked worse than the 1962 Mets! He needs to pull the trigger to get this team and these great pitchers some help, because they might be just three games back of the first place Washington Nationals, but they are going nowhere as currently constructed.
Oh, and Colon did a great job tonight bouncing back from his tough one in St. Louis. Tough luck loss. Mets’ starting pitchers know all about those. He fell to a record of 9-9.
