New York Mets shutout the Miami Marlins 7-0

The New York Mets defeated the Miami Marlins by the score of 7-0 this afternoon. Jon Niese made the start and was impressive in his two innings of work. Justin Turner was the offensive hero. The Mets struck early with a run in the first and then two in the second. They didn’t look back after that, taking on three in the fifth and another in the seventh. 
Niese pitched two scoreless and hitless innings. He did walk a batter but also struck out a couple. Bobby Parnell pitched a perfect inning with a strikeout. Manny Acosta pitched two perfect innings with a couple of strikeouts. Ramon Ramirez pitched 1 2/3 innings giving up two hits and walking one with three strikeouts. 

Ruben Tejada had a couple of walks leading off. Turner had three hits and three RBI. Lucas Duda had a walk, Josh Thole had two hits, a walk and an RBI and Mike Nickeas had two hits and an RBI. Puello, May and Dekker each had a hit.  Quintanilla had a hit and a walk.  The Mets were 5-13 with runners in scoring position and they left 10 men on base.  Quintanilla had a stolen base

One of the interesting battles this spring will be who will be the leadoff hitter. Tejada is in the mix along with Andres Torres, Daniel Murphy and I think that is just about it. I think tejada would be the best candidate if he had more experience. Tejada is a superb defender but has to work on his offensive game. He has some speed so if he could have a high on base percentage and be consistent with that, he could be the leadoff guy. It may be too much pressure too soon though. Tejada will have a hard enough time with trying to replace Jose Reyes who took off for South Beach.

The other good thing to see for the Mets was Niese. The Mets need Niese to take the next step and be a really good major league pitcher. If they can have him and have Santana be healthy and effective they will have a pretty good one/two punch on their staff. The Mets are battling very low expectations but sometimes that is the best time for the team to respond. They have to just keep working and not let what others think affect them. It will be interesting to see how this season goes for the Mets. I find it hard to believe though that they could win much more then 75 games or so myself.