A futile offense, held hitless through six innings, and an awful performance by Mike Pelfrey fueled an Opening Day to forget for the New York Mets, as they fell to the Florida Marlins, 6-2.
The Mets de facto No. 1 failed to get out of the fifth inning -- he pitched 4 1/3, allowing five earned runs -- as the Florida Marlins rolled to an easy victory. Facing the Marlins' ace fireballer, Josh Johnson, the Mets did not get a hit until the seventh inning, and recorded just four in the entire game.
In game one of the season, the lack of hitting can be somewhat understood: hitters might not exactly have their timing down and Johnson is an ace with stuff that's tough to hit to begin with. Before tonight, Johnson was 7-1 with a sub-3 ERA against the Mets in his career.
What can't be tolerated is a dud of an outing from Pelfrey: not reaching the fifth inning, allowing four hits, while walking five and striking out two. Pelfrey could not command his pitches all night, throwing 57 of his 97 pitches for strikes and it's actually somewhat amazing that he was able to last that long. John Buck's grand slam after two walks and a hit in the fourth inning ended Pelfrey's day far too prematurely. Besides the awful command, Pelfrey's lack of a put-away pitch killed him tonight as the Marlins fouled off far too many pitches making the 27-year-old work incredibly hard for each of his 13 outs.
Willie Harris recorded two hits in the game -- also ending Johnson's no-hit bid -- and Carlos Beltran drove him in during the seventh inning with a liner down right field. The Mets had a chance to tie the game in the seventh inning -- and brought Scott Hairston in to pinch hit for Josh Thole, but he struckout, ending the glimmer of hope on this night.
On the bright side, the bullpen was solid: Blaine Boyer, Pedro Beato and Taylor Buchholz threw a combined 3 2/3 innings, allowing just one run: a Buchholz-to-Logan Morrison homerun in the eighth inning.