Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Mets defeat Cardinals 5-1 behind dominant performance from Gee

On a night where David Freese and his Cardinals offense just couldn't come up with any timely hits, Dillon Gee had one of his best starts on the mound so far this season and the New York Mets defeated St. Louis 5 to 1 at Shea Stadium on Wednesday night in a Major League Baseball regular season contest.

Freese, who entered the contest with a league-high hitting streak, finished the night 0 for 4 from the plate and seen it end after recording a hit in 20 consecutive games.

Gee had a dominant performance from the mound in his start tonight though, as he gave up just one run on six hits in 6 and 2/3 innings pitched. He improved his overall record on the season to 5-6 while he also finished with just two walks and seven strikeouts against the National Leagues' best offensive unit.

The Mets bullpen did a great job in a short-but-time role to finish the game out though as the used a total of three more players who combined to give up no runs or even a single base runner in 2 and 1/3 innings. Scott Rice pitched just two-thirds of an inning, while both Brandon Lyon and Bobby Parnell pitched one full inning each as Parnell closed out the ballgame with a quick 1-2-3 frame in the top of the ninth.

Despite the final score and the result for St. Louis though, rookie pitcher Shelby Miller had one of his more impressive starts so far this season -- at least in my honest opinion. Even though he seen his record fall to 7-4 for the season, he finished with a season-high in strikeouts with 10 -- and even more impressive to go along with it, he didn't walk a single batter. It was a start in which he made very few mistakes, but them very few mistakes turned out to be crucial.

Cardinal manager Mike Matheny only used two members from his bullpen though, as both Seth Maness and the closer Edward Mujica appeared in the loss for a combined two innings. Maness gave up the only other run in the game as Marlon Byrd homered being the first batter he faced in the seventh as Miller went six innings.

New York got on the scoreboard right away as both David Murphy and Lucas Duda got RBI singles in the first to put the Mets up 2-0. Then in the bottom half of the fourth, Duda homered deep to right center off Miller and made it 3-0 after four innings of play.

Allen Craig got the Cardinals on the board in the top half of the sixth inning though as he hit a deep long bomb to left field. That proved to be St. Louis' only run of the game in the loss -- while Yadier Molina went 3-for-4 in the game.

The two teams both finished with six hits each, but three home runs from New York proved to be the difference. David Wright hit a homer to center field in the sixth inning and then Marlon Byrd hit one to deep left in the bottom of the eighth. New York scored in the first inning (2), fourth inning (1), seventh inning (1) and in the eighth inning (1).

With the loss tonight, the Cardinals fell to 4-2 head-to-head against the Mets in the season series so far and sets up tomorrows game as a rubber match for the current three game series as St. Louis will be sending their ace Adam Wainwright (9-3, 2.34 ERA) to the mound, while the Mets still have Matt Harvey (5-0, 2.10 ERA) listed as their probable starter. The game on Thursday will be televised live on FOX Sports Midwest at 12:10pm Central Time.

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