That sea of red in the Busch Stadium seats seeped down into the Cardinals’ clubhouse, where there were plenty of red faces Sunday night caused by the embarrassment of a 12-5 mauling by the Mets.
After three games of relative silence, the Mets’ bats awoke with a sonic boom Sunday, leaving this National League Championship Series tied at two with Game 5 scheduled for Monday night at Busch.
With Carlos Delgado hammering a homer and driving in five runs and Carlos Beltran belting his sixth and seventh LCS homers in 11 career games, the pace of this series changed in a New York minute.
The Mets went from a team held scoreless in 14 straight innings to a team that scored nine runs in two innings and contributed four homers to a league-championship record seven for one game.
“We believe in ourselves, we have a good offense,” Beltran said. “When everybody is on their game, we can turn it around.”
“We feed off our energy and when the guys are swinging the bats and we can move [runners] like we want to, it’s contagious for us,” Mets manager Willie Randolph said. “When you have good hitters like we do, you’re not going to hold us down long.”
The Cardinals finally looked like a team that won 83 games, compared with the Mets’ 97. But neither team seems like a formidable opponent for American League champion Detroit, which is resting at home waiting for Saturday’s start of the World Series.
The NL Championship Series had stooped to this: Mets Game 4 starter Oliver Perez (3-13, 6.55 ERA during the regular season) vs. Cardinals starter Anthony Reyes (5-8, 5.06 ERA).
Perez came out on top, although Reyes–whose most notable career outing was a one-hitter in a 1-0 loss to the White Sox this summer–left in a 2-2 tie after four innings.
His replacement, Brad Thompson, gave away the lead in the top of the fifth inning, Delgado’s homer putting the Mets up 5-2. One of the runs was unearned, thanks to Ronnie Belliard’s error on the first batter.
Then the Mets pounded on more of the Cardinals’ relievers, who had a 0.44 ERA in their first 20 2/3 postseason innings. Josh Hancock retired none of the five batters he faced in the Mets’ six-run sixth inning.
Meanwhile, Perez enjoyed the luxury of a large lead and made it through 5 2/3 innings before turning it over to the bullpen with an 11-5 lead.
“He did a great job,” Delgado said. “We really needed that.”
Perez’s victory continued the domination of left-handers against the Cardinals, who were 23-34 during the season against southpaws and who lost to Tom Glavine in the opening game of the NLCS.
However, being shut out by possible future Hall of Famer Glavine is one thing and having trouble with Perez is quite another. This is a lefty who had won only one start after May 18 and had not won a game on the road this season.
The bad news for the Cardinals: Glavine is the scheduled starter in Game 5 Monday night, weather permitting. Does he know why the Cardinals–with such right-handed hitters as Albert Pujols and Scott Rolen–have troubles with lefties?
“I don’t, to be honest with you,” Glavine said. “You can only hope it continues.”
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dvandyck@tribune.com
