A few things stuck out for me last night as the game progressed.
- Since when can the Marlins play defense like that? I can think of at least 4 exceptional plays to the Marlins made in the field last night in order to keep the Mets offense on hold last night. I felt like the Mets as a team had a very good beat on Nolasco the whole night and were just getting extremely unlucky last night in terms of hitting balls well but well within the range of a defender or falling victim to fantastic defensive plays. The Mets as a team had a .214 BABIP last night against Nolasco, which indicates a lot of problems with luck against him. You could tell by the way the offense was making contact that they would eventually break through, and eventually they did enough to win the game.
- Niese was just the opposite last night in terms of contact against him. I can't think of more than one or two very solidly hit balls against him all night. He was a bit unlucky in the first inning with Brad Emaus failed to get Chris Coghlan on that infield single he had. After that rough first inning he started to absolutely cruise, setting down the next 11 batters to face him. His breaking pitches were hitting the corners beautifully the whole night and as a result he breezed through his final 6 innings. I, like most people it sounds like, felt he could've gone out for the 8th inning. He had only thrown 87 pitches to that point. Parnell ended up coming in and throwing up a spotless inning, so no harm done. And I can see how Collins just wants to save Niese for the rest of the season. We saw how he sort of broke down in the last month of the season last year.
- Had Francisco Rodriguez completely given that game away in the 9th last night, he would've technically finished the game. Not the way we would hoped, but it sounds like that would've counted as a game finished for him in his quest to finish 55 games and have his option vest. How much would that have stunk?
- Last night was a great example of how the fans really just need to chill out. This was obviously not everyone, but a very vocal segment of fans voiced their displeasure quite clearly after the first game. Just because David Wright had a bad game on Opening Night, that doesn't mean he'll be bad the entire year. You can't get too high or low in baseball. There are just way too many games to played. The Mets will hit, they have too much talent not too.
