Mets 2, Marlins 1 - Welcome Back, Have an Oh-for

Go back to Marlinland with its mile-high atrocity

Ok, well that's over.  After all of the chatter speculating as to the kind of reception Jose Reyes would receive in his first trip back to Citi Field, the Mets and Marlins were finally able to get down to the business of playing the actual baseball game...but not before the Mets presented Reyes with a video tribute of his team on the team.  

I'm kind of ambivalent about it, since I'm a fan of Reyes and can't really blame him for leaving, giving all of the...unpleasantness the Mets found themselves in this past offseason.  I'm not sure if it was the right time, maybe this would not have been as ill-received if, say, they had presented it to him during his farewell tour in 8 years or whatever.  

Anyway, after all of that, Reyes thanked the Mets in turn by going 0-for-4.  I think he might be below .200 at this point.  Johan Santana and Josh Johnson had themselves an awesome little pitching duel and when Daniel Murphy was thrown out at home attempting to break a scoreless tie to end the fourth, I assumed the worst.  

The Marlins had two balls scalded to start the seventh inning, but they were perfectly handled by Murphy and Wright, but after that, things sort of unraveled.  Giancarlo Stanton hit a broken-bat single through the hole into left and Gaby Sanchez, who kind of owns the Mets, followed that up with a double off the wall to score Stanton and chase Santana.  So once again, the Mets failed to score a single run for Santana, which is a disturbing trend in this early season.  

However, the Mets responded nicely in the bottom of the seventh by drawing four walks from four different Marlins pitchers to tie it up.  Then in the bottom of the eighth Kirk Nieuwenhuis, who had another amazing catch in the field and is quickly becoming the story of the Mets in the early goings - apart from Ike Davis' extreme troubles at the plate (he was pulled for a pinch hitter in the seventh and did NOT look happy) led off with a single, moved to third on Daniel Murphy's one-out single and scored when Lucas Duda ricocheted a line drive off of the Marlins pitcher that hit him and bounced under him and it was kind of awesome.  

Then Frank Francisco came in to close it out in impressive fashion, considering he has been a real butt in the past couple of appearanced and the Mets once again went a game above .500 and, more importantly, got a win against a division rival. 

Tomorrow its St. Dickey vs. Mark Buehrle with an estimated game time of 56 minutes.