The Extender

When we think of the role and importance of an ace, we often think of his position as the team's "stopper", the guy who doesn't let a 3-game losing streak turn into four games.

When Johan Santana goes to the mound today, he'll assume a different mantle. His role will be to act as the team's extender, not their stopper.

The Mets have won consecutive games only once in the month of June. On it's face it's a pretty remarkable stat, but when you consider how badly the Mets have played this month, it becomes a lot easier to believe.

The Mets desperately need some positive momentum. For the past month all the talk has been of injuries and losses, one day the story is Johan getting shelled at Yankee Stadium, the next it's Carlos Beltran going down with an injury.

We hear soundbites from Alex Cora that kind of encourage you, then you hear others from Jerry Manuel that are a bit more realistic.

We've been hearing all season about this difficult stretch of games, with only one opponent with a sub-.500 record. To post a series win against St. Louis, a first place team, would be a real shot in the arm going into the weekend set against the Yankees (who incidentally have been playing pretty poorly themselves).

Yesterday's game was great. We haven't seen the Mets pull off an 11-0 stomping in what feels like an extraordinarily long time. Honestly, I can't remember the last time the Mets cruised to a victory the way they did last night.

Coupled with the Phillies' latest loss, the Mets are still in the thick of things at only 1.5 games out of first. During this stretch of injuries and tough opponents, the goal was to stay in the thick of things, and, more by luck than by skill, they've done that to this point.

A win today though would be a big sigh of relief for everyone. It'd show that we can still win series', that we can still play with some of the big dogs, that we can defend our home field. We've got our ace on the mound in the role of extender. Let's make it happen.

- A.F.O.M.G.