Road Trip 2009: California and Fenway

From The Met Wiki

One of the more bizarre road trips in Met history. The Mets longest trip of the year both in terms of games (10) and distance (San Francisco, LA, Boston).

The trip, which had some of the seasons best and worst moments, broke into three parts:

• Offense explodes in San Francisco: The Mets scored 24 in their first three games in San Fran, winning all three despite giving up 16 runs.
• The Mets' offense disappears, and the club channels their inner '62 Mets for some embarrassing losses. The Mets score 6 runs in 4 games, to lose all 4 despite giving up just 12 runs. The nightmare starts in the finale in San Francisco as Mike Pelfrey commits 3 balks, which lead to the game's only two runs. It gets worse with the Mets' Ugliest inning ever, where the Mets' go ahead run in the eleventh is taken off the scoreboard when Ryan Church is called out for missing third base, and then a leadoff walk and two ugly errors give the game away in the bottom of the inning.
• Beating the Sox: Last time the Mets came into Fenway they got swept, and going in banged up and on an ugly four game losing steak things didn't look promising. But the Mets took advantage of some Red Sox mistakes, Santana and Pelfrey each pitched brilliantly, and the Mets ended their power drought. The highlight of the series was the ninth inning of the second game. With the Mets down 2-1 Jonathan Pappelbon walked [[Gary Sheffield] but then blew the red hot David Wright away on three fastballs. He then struck out Jeremy Reed, but then Omir Santos shocked everyone with a two run homer just over the green monster. The hit was originally called a double, but after video review the shot was ruled a homer. The finale was disappointing, with Tim Redding, Sean Green, and Brian Stokes taking turns getting lit up after the Mets took an early 5-3 lead. Nonetheless, the Mets and their fans left Fenway with stronger memories of their two emotional wins.

The Mets were terribly banged up during the trip, and played excellent teams. Considering how bad they were in the middle of the trip, the Mets felt quite fortunate to split the ten game trip.

The Injuries

Over the course of the trip:

• Carlos Delgado was sent for surgery. He'll miss at least ten weeks.
• Jose Reyes developed calf problems, and started just once.
• Alex Cora filled in admirably -- before he went onto the DL, leaving the Mets no backup shortstop. Ramon Martinez made two errors in each of his first two starts as a replacement (and hit poorly), but then improved.
• Carlos Beltran hurt his knee and needed to DH in all three Fenway games.
• Ryan Church left in the middle of Saturday's game at Fenway, and informed everyone that he's been suffering in silence since Spring Training and the problems are compounding.
• Francisco Rodriguez was taken to the hospital with back spasms the same day Church went down. The Mets needed to ask J.J. Putz to close. The big surprise was that the Mets had a save opportunity. Maybe a bigger surprise was that the Mets' defense bailed Putz out to close out Saturday's dramatic win.