Mets Lose it Late

Johan Santana was on the mound for the first game of a double header with the Braves Saturday afternoon and Mets fans had to be feeling pretty confident. There hadn't been much action in the game until the Mets found themselves with the bases loaded in the bottom of the fourth inning. Damion Easley stepped up the bat and smacked a single to left field , scoring Carlos Beltran and keeping the bases juiced. Next up was Brian Schneider, who grounded into a double play, but allowed Carlos Delgado to score. Johan Santana ended the inning by grounding out to second, stranding Fernando Tatis at third. The game went into cruise control for Santana and Mike Hampton after that until the Mets made a bid to score in the bottom of the sixth inning. After a Carlos Beltran walk, Delgado belted a double deep to left field. Fernando Tatis, the next batter was intentionally walked, so now the bases were loaded once again for Damion Easley. Looking to add on to the lead, Easley hit a ground ball short, which was thrown straight to Brian McCann, the catcher, for the force out, and then thrown over to first base to get the difficult double play. Brian Schneider was up next and was intentionally walked to get to Santana who can hit the ball alright for a pitcher. With two strikes, Santana took a big hack and struck out. Santana began the eighth inning, but was unable to retire the first two batters, allowing to single to center field. Scott Schoeneweis came in for relief, mustache and all and immediately gave up a single to load the bases. That was all for him and on came Brian Stokes. Facing his first batter of the day, Stokes gave up a single to Jeff Francoeur which scored two and just like that, the game was tied. Those two runs would be charged to Santana, but before the inning was over, the Braves would score again when Omar Infante hit a sacrifice deep to center field that scored Casey Kotchman. I hate to be a downer, but nothing else really happened after that, the Mets were stuck with a 3-2 defeat, unable to pick up a win with their ace on the mound. After a nagging loss, the Mets looked to rookie Jon Niese to bring things back to speed in the second game of the double header.