Daniel Murphy, Great Starting Pitching Fuel Mets Victory (Again)

He does that to New York in this October of 2015.

The Mets breezed past the Chicago Cubs 4-1 Sunday night for a 2-0 lead in a surprisingly one-sided NL Championship Series. “We (The Tigers) already advanced and I remember seeing highlights of it. I also saw it again either yesterday or today”. After having to battle through Cy Young candidates Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke just to reach the National League Championship Series, the Mets had to deal with a third Cy Young candidate in this series: Chicago Cubs’ right hander Jake Arrieta.

“He definitely studies and cares about it – he works at it, he’s intense about it”, Johnson said.

“Two tough games here, but the series is not over”, Arrieta said.

“Once again, put our team behind the 8-ball against a really good pitcher”, Lester said. When asked about his ace in his postgame press conference, Maddon downplayed questions as to whether Arrieta’s heavy workload on the season-he’s now at 249 2/3 innings for the year, or nearly 100 more than he threw in 2014-was finally catching up to him.

“I physically felt fine”.

“I don’t know”, he responded.

But everything that Arrieta throws either is or feels hard.

As the face-of-the-franchise first baseman, Rizzo sets the tone inside the clubhouse while celebrity manager Joe Maddon shapes the public message while meeting with the media before and after every game.

“I can’t deny that it might be”. “If I knew what I was doing, I would have hit more homers during the regular season”. “If that (radar) gun was correct on the field, he might have been down a mile an hour or two”. “It’s just, it wasn’t as crisp as it had been, that’s all”, the manager added. The results of the Dodger-Mets game were bittersweet for me.

Murphy’s latest heroics gave the Mets a 3-0 first-inning lead. Down 0-2, Murphy is just so locked in right now he was able to check his swing on a heater just off the plate. “Just made the leap and it was right there”, Granderson said. David Wright, who was 1-for-19 in the postseason coming in, rocked a ball over Dexter Fowler’s head for a double which brought home Granderson. The Mets struggled in the early years, somewhat hapless and probably more bum-like than the Brooklyn Dodgers, who in reality had fared quite well during regular season play. He has connected in four consecutive games.

“I wanted this game bad“, Harvey said. Including Murphy’s home run Sunday night, only 49 balls hit at 91 miles per hour or less went for home runs, and three of those were of the inside-the-park variety, so really, only 46 balls hit at that velocity cleared the fences. The other game also came against the Royals, on July 30, 2010, STATS said. Namely, the friggin’ dude is pretty much eliminating them by himself. The Cubs were unable to take advantage of the pair.

Arrieta issued a leadoff walk in the third to Granderson, who stole second and third before scoring on Yoenis Cespedes’ infield single.

The Mets, meanwhile, were the atypical lineup that peaked in the mid-to-late innings; their 74 first-inning runs ranked 25th in baseball.

“It was a big lift because it was [against] Jake Arrieta”, Collins said. “We’ve worked so hard to get here, so why not enjoy it while were here?” It was perhaps the biggest hit of the NLCS thus far as he got a hold of one from a guy who was considered the best pitcher in baseball for the second half of the season. Granderson did rob Chris Coghlan of a homer in the top of the second with an extended glove over the right-field wall, but the Cubs – beyond a Kris Bryant RBI double in the sixth that chased Syndergaard – could not do anything offensively.

Harvey allowed two runs and four hits in 7 2/3 innings, struck out nine and walked two. After Arrieta’s complete-game shutout of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the Wild Card Game, the Cubs next matched up against their rivals from Missouri, the St. Louis Cardinals, and were the first team to clinch a berth in the NLCS with their four-game series win.