Maine sharp as Mets win seventh in row

When the Mets crawled home from their most recent road trip, they were 4-8 and there were questions up and down the roster, mostly about a team that had come out of the gate in 2010 with very little confidence.

They are heading off on their next road trip with a decidedly different confidence level.

John Maine smoothed out his rough edges with a lively fastball Wednesday, striking out nine Dodgers in six-plus innings, and the Mets' offense continued to chime in with timely hits in a 7-3 win to complete a sweep of Joe Torre's team.

The win was the Mets' seventh straight and also completed a 9-1 homestand, tied for the best in Mets history. Maine (1-1) and three relievers combined to keep the Dodgers down; Angel Pagan delivered a two-out, two-run triple in the second, the latest in a long line of clutch hits during this stretch.

Jason Bay and Ike Davis each had big RBI hits in the seventh to extend a 5-3 lead, and Jeff Francoeur drove in two runs.

It has been a true team effort as the first-place Mets (13-9) head to Philadelphia for their first series with the second-place Phillies.

"It's not like we're sitting back, waiting for David [Wright] or me or Jeff to carry the team. Everyone's chipping in, every day," Bay said.

That's been especially true of the Mets' starting pitchers except for Maine, who struggled through his first three starts and then left his fourth, on Friday, with cramping and soreness in his non-pitching arm.

He was one big question mark heading into the game. Even though his fastball topped out at 90 mph, it had some movement and life to it - perhaps it was the swirling wind, perhaps it was simply that Maine kept his pitches down. Either way, the Dodgers were flailing from the start, with Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier striking out in the first.

"The last couple games, my pitches have been down in the strike zone. Those first couple, everything was way up - belt-high, or worse," said Maine, who hadn't struck out this many since he fanned 14 Marlins on Sept. 29, 2007. "For the most part I was down today, which is where I need to be."

Staked to a 4-0 lead in the second thanks to Pagan and Alex Cora, who followed Pagan's triple with a run-scoring double off Dodgers rookie John Ely (0-1), Maine allowed one run in the third, on Jose Reyes' throwing error, and two in the fifth on a full-count fastball that Russell Martin lined over the leftfield wall.

But he fanned Ethier, the Dodgers' best hitter, three times, and cleanup hitter James Loney twice. Maine struck out the side in the sixth as well.

"The sixth was his best inning," Jerry Manuel said. "He did an outstanding job. It's something we needed to see from him. He just seemed very confident today."

There is plenty of that to go around heading into an off-day and then three with the two-time defending National League champions.

"We were talking on the flight home [from St. Louis] that, 'Hey, we go 7-3 here, we'll be .500 going into Philly,' " Cora said. "We're obviously happy with what we did, but we're not going crazy about it.

"We're playing good baseball, that's it."