Mets 13 Marlins 0: The game is the good news as the Mets pounded out 17 hits against Florida in an easy win. Ryan Church got it started with a home run in the second and David Wright also added his first shot of the year. Oliver Perez looked very good, striking out eight over six innings. The bad news came from Pedro Martinez who is out 4-to-6 weeks with what is being described as......

Marlins 5 Mets 4 (10 innings): Forget the final score, the biggest news was Pedro Martinez grabbing his left leg after a pitch in the fourth. Pedro later told reporters he felt a “pop” and will head for a MRI shortly. Needless to say, “pop” is not a good thing for a pitcher to feel and it seems very likely that Martinez will be heading to the DL. For how long remains to be seen,......

Photo of Carlos Beltran rounding third after a two-run home run against the White Sox in the Civil Rights Game by AP/Bill Waugh Few players can catapult a team from worriers to prohibitive favorites, but Johan Santana can put his name on that list. Before the Mets got him, they and their fans were looking over their shoulders to the Phillies and Braves. Now the team is almost overloaded with optimism. That hope --......

Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez, as well as the Mets organization, made statements about the video of Martinez appearing at a cockfighting event in the Dominican Republic.From Pedro Martinez: "I understand that people are upset, but this is part of our Dominican culture and is legal in the Dominican Republic. I was invited by my idol Juan Marichal to attend the event as a spectator, not as a participant." From the Mets: "We do not......

Graphic from NYPost.com A video showing Mets star pitcher Pedro Martinez at a cockfight in the Dominican Republican briefly surfaced online, outraging some people. Cockfighting is a popular - and legal - sport in the Dominican Republic, but it's illegal in almost all of the United States. The Post explained that Martinez and Hall of Fame pitcher Juan Marichal were "honorary 'soltadores' - the word used to describe the person who throws the animal......

For a team used to making miracles, conjuring up a disaster had an especially bitter taste. With a sloppily played 8-1 loss to Florida and the Phillies' 6-1 win against the Nationals, the Mets' season ended about a month too early. The loss capped an agonizing stretch of two and a half weeks in which the Mets played some of the worst teams in the National League and still played their worst baseball of......

Blue Jays 5, Yankees 4 (14 innings): If they knew their four-run rally in the ninth inning would only result in a 14-inning loss, maybe they wouldn't have been so excited when they produced that unexpected effort. Roy Halladay hardly had to exert himself over the first eight innings, but some shoddy defense and timely hitting in the ninth undid all that.They always say it's better to have loved and lost than to never have......

Phillies 5, Mets 3: After every one of these crushing losses, the Mets must thank someone that the Phillies don't play as well against the rest of the league as they do against New York. Pedro Martinez's six-inning, nine-strikeout performance was a distant memory when Carlos Beltran's field trip misplay turned what should have been an inning-ending lineout into a two-run triple. With the win -- the seventh straight against the Mets -- the Phillies......

Yankees 12, Mariners 3: Chien-Ming Wang doesn't deserve the American League Cy Young award, but he should get some lower votes. In a game the Yankees needed to win to keep their wild-card lead, Wang pitched 7 1/3 innings and kept the Mariners under wraps. That came as a welcome development after the Yankees learned that Roger Clemens will need a cortisone shot in his pitching elbow. Why was he out there Monday anyway? Horacio......

Mets 7, Braves 1: What the? After getting swept by the Phillies, the Mets managed to get a win against a team they've had little success against all this season. Boy did they need it too after losing five straight games. John Maine pitched marvelously over 7 innings, only allowing 3 hits. The one run the Braves scored came on a wild pitch in a tense 6th inning when the Braves had the bases loaded.......

Yankees 8, Twins 0: On a night where the Yankees shut out the Twins, perhaps the best news on the evening was that Alex Rodriguez played. A day after straining his hamstring against the Twins, A-Rod returned to the lineup and went 0-4, but also started a double play in the 4th inning to help keep the Twins off the scoreboard. Chien-Ming Wang didn't have his best stuff, but he was still good enough to......

Windows of opportunity in baseball often come in small sizes. After coming within a run of the National League pennant last season, the Mets hope their chance hasn't run out yet. Make no mistake, the Mets remain a force to be reckoned with and could end up finishing with a better result than they did last season. But they shouldn't expect the regular-season cakewalk they had last season, and they can't hope to be......

Remember the days of Don Zimmer sitting in the Yankee dugout next to Joe Torre? Does anyone else miss those, because we sure do. Just seeing Zim with Torre is refreshing. We can't help but think what they were talking about. "Remember that time when you and Pedro Martinez got into a fight? Or that time where you got beaned in the head by an errant throw and wore an army helmet afterwards?" And......

Mets fans, your wait is finally over. No, not because it's Spring Training, and not because of a World Championship, but because one member of the New York Mets will finally be enshrined in...Madame Tussauds. The 204-figure museum, which bills itself as "New York's most famous tourist attraction" (get it? famous), will unveil its first wax Mets figure on April 2. The house of wax already has five Yankees figures - Derek Jeter, Babe......

- If you like winter sports, do we have some good news for you! Not only is it bone chillingly cold out, but this weekend is the 2nd annual Winter Jam in Central Park. They are making snow for Saturday's event (from noon until 4). Activities include cross country skiing, snowshoeing, ice sculpting, an amateur rail jam, and free hot chocolate. Snowmaking began on Monday and continues through today. When done, there will be......

Derek Jeter didn’t win the MVP award yesterday. That isn’t a huge surprise because there was another worthy candidate, David Ortiz. The problem is, he didn’t win it either, Justin Morneau did and once again the baseball writers have messed up. They do this a lot. Pedro Martinez didn’t get the MVP award once because some writers didn’t include him on their ballots since they felt pitchers shouldn’t be able to win the MVP. Same......

-Atlanta 102 New York 92: The Knicks missed a great chance to open the season at 2-0. Facing an Atlanta team that only managed to win 26 games last year. New York turned the ball over 17 times and never got the big basket they needed to make it a game. Eddy Curry had 20 points, but only 2 rebounds as he went back to displaying the lack of toughness we saw all too often......

After a cruise-control regular season, the Mets have hit a speed bump before the playoffs start. The health of their pitching staff has downgraded from bad to worse. After they learned Pedro Martinez would miss the postseason -- and half of next season -- with a torn muscle in his calf and a torn rotator cuff, the Mets got more bad news Tuesday when Orlando Hernandez pulled his calf during a workout. The Mets now......

Pedro Martinez was thought to be out for only the playoffs when it was annoucned that he had a torn tendon in his left calf. Now it's being that the soon to be 35 year-old Mets righty will be out for 8 months because of rotator cuff surgery. Assuming Pedro has a speedy recovery, which is a big assumption, he would be back in June. The injury was detected the same day physicians discovered the......

-Mets 7 Braves 4: This one soothed the soul. The Mets haven’t looked like much the past week, but Thursday night, El Duque reminded everyone why they are the best team in the NL. Hernandez pitched five innings allowing only an unearned run and showed why he will take the mound in Game One of the NLDS next week. Carlos Beltran added his 41st home run and Jose Reyes added his 64th steal in the......

-Braves 13 Mets 1: The question isn’t whether or not Pedro Martinez should start the first game of the playoffs; it’s whether or not he should start any of them. Pedro had his worst start since coming off the DL, giving up seven runs on eight hits and not throwing above 86-mph. After the game, Pedro admitted that he was “not at the level of Glavine or El Duque” but is he even at the......

- Pirates 3, Mets 0: No need to overreact to the Mets' being swept in Pittsburgh by the lowly Pirates, but the series can provide a few laughs. On a serious note, fans should hope Pedro Martinez doesn't have too many more outings to cry over and that Willie Randolph doesn't make Steve Trachsel is Game 4 starter just because the pitcher's piled up wins. John Maine, who lost Sunday, doesn't get the run support......

-S.I. Yanks 2 Tri-City 0: In what will hopefully be a sign of things to come, we have a baseball championship to celebrate. The Baby Bombers are champions of the New York-Penn League for the second year in a row! It is the first time the league has had a repeat champion in 25 years. George Kontos pitched six shutout innings while striking out eleven for the win. Kyle Larsen’s RBI in the bottom of......

When he announced he would retire after the U.S. Open, Andre Agassi made himself the story until he is eliminated. That almost came sooner than fans -- or CBS and USA -- wanted. Agassi survived three tiebreaks and beat Andrei Pavel in four sets to advance to a second-round match against Marcos Baghdatis on Thursday. The 36-year-old could have given up when, after splitting the first two sets on tiebreakers, he fell behind 4-0 in......

-Phillies 13 Mets 0: You have a 15-game lead in the middle of August, why would your best pitcher take the mound when he is less than 100%? Pedro Martinez felt discomfort in his calf while warming up, but didn’t tell anybody and he paid for it. Martinez surrendered six runs in only one inning of work as Philadelphia pounded New York. Martinez is listed as day-to-day, but with his next big start not scheduled......

-Yankees 7, White Sox 6: Randy Johnson threw six no-hit innings, and the Yankees didn't blow a six-run lead to take the second game from Chicago. Bobby Abreu hit a homer, and, besides Kyle Farnsworth's allowing four runs, Johnny Damon's leaving the game with a groin injury was the Yankees' only bad news. Boston lost again to Kansas City, so the Yanks are up by three over the Red Sox. If they can carry that......

- Marlins 4, Mets 1: Pedro Martinez was strong in his 2nd start since coming off the disabled list, but the Mets offense was unable to offer him much run support off of Dontrelle Willis and the Marlins. Pedro pitched six innings and only allowed four hits and one run. The Marlins ended a 1-1 tie in the 8th inning with Miguel Cabrera's bases clearing triple. While the Mets may have lost against the......

Gothamist likes to eat and can understand getting the late night munchies. But when we're on the road for business late on a Sunday night in a nice hotel that has room service and we get a food stipend, we usually order in. Apparently, if you're Duaner Sanchez in Miami, that's not what you do. Some details have been released about the early Monday morning accident the Mets reliever was involved in. Sanchez, his younger......

-Mets 6, Braves 4: Pedro Martinez allowed four runs in the first inning but cruised afterwards, and the Mets' win over the Braves helped increase their already-large cushion in the NL East. For the fans who have waited so long for the Mets to overtake the Braves (the Amazin's have never beaten the Braves since they joined the NL East), this September will not be dramatic. Still, only the most fastidious fans will have a......

As the Mets commence with the second-half of their season, they have a twelve-game lead in the division and barring a miracle, should coast into the playoffs. That doesn’t mean that they can just sit back and wait until October. In order to contend in the fall, New York will need to make sure that Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine are rested and ready to go. If that means keeping Pedro on the DL indefinitely......