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Message #: 24710
With the Pirates joining the Mets and Cubs atop the standings early this year, this series was a big one. It was also fun to manage. G1 featured a fine pitching duel between Mike Scott (9 7 3 3 3 10) and Greg Swindell (7 7 3 3 2 4). The game was tied, 2-2, through 7 innings. With one out in the 8th, the Mets had runners at 1st and 3rd when Ernie Riles had to make a diving stop behind 2nd to retire Darryl Strawberry at 1st. Gregg Jefferies (who was 3-for-4 on the day) scored on the play to give the Mets their go-ahead-run. With the way Scott had pitched, you would expect the 3-2 lead to hold up. However, in the 9th, Chicago's Herm Winningham led off with a single and promptly stole second base. Pitcher Greg Maddux pinch-hit and sacrificed Winningham to 3B.
Jerome Walton then followed by squeezing the run home, and the Cubs and Mets were headed to the 10th inning. In the 10th, things ended abruptly when Mookie Wilson lofted a 4-9 triple over Jerome Walton's head. He decided not to hold up at 3rd base, however, and he raced home with an inside-the park HR and a 4-3 Mets' win. Side note: Mike Scott hit his 2nd HR early in the new season to pull NY within 2-1 in the 4th inning. Final Score: NY Mets 4, Chicago 3, 10 innings WP- Dayley 1-1, LP- J.Nunez 0-1, SV- none HR- Howell (2), M.Scott (2), M.Wilson (1) G2 was 2nd verse- same as the first. Again the game was tied 2-2 after 7 innings. This time the Cubs took a 3-2 lead as Lloyd McClendon led off the 8th off new reliever Dan Quisenberry with a triple. Shawon Dunston followed with a sac fly to score him.
However, the Mets came right back in the bottom of the 8th off of starting pitcher Mike Bielecki (7 2/3 5 5 5 8 7). With 1 out, Kevin McReynolds plated 3 runners with a bases-loaded double. The 5-3 lead stood up when John Franco allowed only a 2-out single by Joe Carter in the 9th. For the Mets, Jefferies was 3-for-4 for the 2nd consecutive game as he had 3 of the Mets' 5 hits. Final Score: NY Mets 5, Chicago 3 WP- Quisenberry 5-1, LP- Bielecki 0-3, SV- Franco (5) HR- Jefferies (2) G3 resembled the first two quite closely, but this time the Cubs held a 3-2 lead after 7 innings behind Scott Bankhead and his strange line (5 1/3 1 2 2 7 4). The Mets weren't done, however. In the 8th, McReynolds delivered another big hit as he homered to lead off the inning. Once again, the teams would head to extra frames. With one out
in the 10th, Mark Grace singled and stole 2B. Dwight Smith doubled him home and was subsequently knocked home by Carter's RBI single. Lee Smith surrendered only one hit in the 10th to nail down the first Cubs' win of the series. As a statistical anomaly, all of the Cubs 7 hits were recorded by the first 3 hitters in the Cubs' lineup (Grace 2, Smith 3, Carter 2). Final Score: Chicago 5, NY Mets 3, 10 innings WP- Assenmacher 2-1, LP- Quisenberry 5-2, SV- L.Smith (6) HR- Strawberry (5) G4 ended up being the only game in the series that wasn't tense throughout. Mets' starter Scott Terry could not get the 3rd out in the first inning as the Cubs tallied 5 runs. The rest of the game only featured 1 run for each team, but the damage was done. The big blow was Winningham's 2-run homer that chased Terry and made the score,
5-0. Final Score: Chicago 6, NY Mets 1 WP- Jeffcoat 1-1, LP- Terry 2-2, SV- none HR- Winningham (1) Gregg Jefferies ended the series 8-for-14 for the Mets. Chicago successfully stole 15 bases in 18 tries in the series to aid its cause. |
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