Mets Fall to Nats as the Ship Continues to Sink

The down trodden Mets made there way into Washington Monday night looking to regain their footing amongst their opponent, the Nationals who were the bearer of the worst record in the MLB. The pitching matchup was Pedro Martinez vs. John Lannan, who I can still not say enough about, and New York looked to redeem themselves. Pedro had a shaky first inning after the first two batters he faced got on base. Ryan Zimmerman came up and grounded into a double play, which allowed Willie Harris to score and just like that, the Mets were losing again. Pedro finished off the inning without any more damage done and the Mets looked to get things tied up. In the third inning, Brian Schneider who had doubled and gone to third on a sac fly scored on a Jose Reyes ground out to shortstop. Now with a 1-1 score, we move to the bottom of the fourth inning, where the Nats struck again. With Lastings Milledge on second, Aaron Boone singled to center(he was thrown out a second) to score Milledge and New York was down again. Through seven innings, John Lannan had stifled the Mets, allowing only one hit and walking three batters. Lannan proved again that he could perform well against one of the league's better offensive teams and continues to put his name out there. Since I first saw him pitch against the Mets earlier this season, I have seen what great potential Lannan has. I'll put it out there again, the Mets should see if they can get him because if he were on a team that could produce runs more consistently then his record would be far greater than it is now. And John Lannan has pitched much better than his record shows. With two men on in the sixth, former Met Anderson Hernandez upped the Nats' lead to 4-1 with a two RBI single. Although the Mets offense had not been getting things going this game, you couldn't count them out with only a three run deficit with three innings more to play. However, things began to go from bad to worse in the seventh when Elijah Dukes took Duaner Sanchez deep for a three run homer. The Mets showed a bit of life in the eighth after Lannan came out, as they had got runners on first and second for Jose Reyes. Reyes took advantage of the situation and scored Luis Castillo with a single to center. Ryan Church came up next and singled to load the bases for David Wright who was coming off his two home run performance against Atlanta. Nationals fans looked on in terror as Wright stepped in but had no trouble dealing with his double play ground ball. There was a bright spot to the bottom of the eighth inning though. Mets prospect Bobby Parnell pitched the eighth and had a nice debut, surrendering nothing and pitching with some good velocity. Fernando Tatis doubled with two out in the ninth, but the Mets made nothing of it and fell to Washington 7-2. This was a game where the Metropolitan offense looked dead. As we saw the game before, the Mets had trouble converting with runners in scoring position and not many positives could be taken out of this game. After this loss, the Mets lead was down to a half game.