Photos from Monday’s Mets vs. Phillies game

Former New York Met Ty Wiggington had a great day on Monday, driving in a career-high six runs. Andres Torres and his wife welcomed a new baby to their family. Jack Egbert appeared in his first major league game since 2009.

But Memorial Day was not a fun time at the ballpark if you are a Mets fan. It was especially not a fun time if you were Justin Turner or Manny Acosta.

Turner sprained his right ankle during a third inning rundown, and is expected to miss at least two or three weeks according to Terry Collins.

Since Sandy Alderson seems to be taking lessons from the Omar Minaya school of injury management, the Mets had no healthy backup shortstop on the roster today. Turner was playing because Ronny Cedeno is day-to-day with a calf injury, suffered in the ninth inning of Saturday night’s game. Rather than put Cedeno on the DL, Alderson is allowing the Mets to play with a 24-man roster. So David Wright got to play his second career game at shortstop. Not that it really affected the outcome of the game – Wright handled the chance that came his way without any problem.

Jonathon Niese had another odd game. While he struck out 7 over 5+ innings and limited the Phillies to  just two hits, Niese walked 5 batters and one of those hits was a John Mayberry Jr. home run.

Still, the Mets came back to tie the score twice. Vinny Rottino and Scott Hairston both hit two-run homers. (Who would have guessed that Hairston would be tied with Wright, Ike Davis and Lucas Duda for the team lead in home runs on Memorial Day?)

But Robert Parnell couldn’t get Wigginton out in the seventh inning, and the Phillies went ahead for good. There was no third comeback for the Mets.

Torres led off the eighth inning with a double, and Kirk Nieuwenhuis moved him over to third with a groundout. But the Phillies brought their infield in, and Daniel Murphy hit a ground ball to second that didn’t let the run score. Wright grounded out to end the inning and extend his streak of hitless at-bats. (Remember when we were able to talk about his .400 batting average?)

So with the Mets down by a run going to the ninth, Collins turned to Acosta rather than bringing in Frank Francisco. And Acosta put the game out of reach, giving up hits to the first two batters he faced and then a three-run homer to Wigginton. With most Mets fans headed for the exits, Collins finally remembered he had another option in his bullpen: Egbert came in to make his Mets debut by finishing the ninth inning.

If there’s a bright side, at least Acosta won’t have a chance to raise his ERA above its current 11.86 mark – Alderson is finally ready to designate him for assignment to remove him from the roster after this game.

The Mets did a nice job with the Memorial Day festivities – the US Navy Band Northeast performed the national anthem, and there was a flyover by a squadron Navy fighter jets.  NASA Astronaut Joseph Acaba threw out a virtual ceremonial first pitch from aboard the International Space Station, while US Navy Rear Admiral Tim Alexander threw out a more traditional one. The USO Liberty Bells provided some pre-game entertainment and came back to sing “God Bless America” in the seventh inning. All of the in-between innings contests featured uniformed military personnel.

And the Phillies fans in attendance – at least the ones sitting in my section and on the subway car I rode back to Manhattan in – were classy enough not to rub it in when their team had the upper hand.

Hopefully the Mets will have better results over the next two days.

Keep up with Paul’s Random Baseball Stuff through Facebook and  Twitter.