Good Heavens - Mets 9, Padres 8

Nobody's pinching his legs!

Mark it down.  Any day that the Mets put Jose Reyes on the disabled list, Lucas Duda will get a big hit.  It is known.  He did it against Mariano Rivera to set up the Mets comeback against the Yanks back in July, and he hit the two-run winner last night against one of the better closers in the league in Heath Bell.  

The Mets are clearly not going to be playing October baseball, but they've displayed an  admirable resilience this season by playing some of their most inspiring baseball in the aftermath of awful news. Their best win of the year came the day after Reyes' MVP bid was derailed by his first hamstring injury of the year, they put together a five-game win streak in the midst of the Beltran trade, and on Monday, the day they put Reyes on the DL for the second time in about a month, and genuine nice guy Daniel Murphy (and his .320 batting average) was lost for the year, they came out red hot, hitting three homers in the first three innings, (Jason Bay doin' things) before giving up the lead and more, going from a 4-1 advantage to trailing 8-4. 

We've been waiting all year for the final gasps, the point when we can clearly say  "Yeah, THIS injury was too much," or "Man, that loss REALLY hurt," and that might have happened tonight if they didn't rally.  In the short term, it means nothing, the Mets still blew their shot to get back into the Wild Card race this past weekend, but the next two months are going to be fascinating as we see who carves out a spot for themselves next year, hopefully with some more thrillers like this one.  

Finally, getting back to Murphy, I feel just horrible for him as all he wants to do is hit.  Blocked at his two most comfortable positions (first and third), the organization experimented by putting him in left, which was just a mess, before sending him down last season to learn second base.  Murphy never balked, just doing whatever he could to get back in the starting lineup, and had his 2010 season cut short while he covered a dirty slide and tore his ACL.  Fast forward a year later, and he's healthy, showing what he can do in the lineup, and it happens again.