Reyes has luck on his side with single, homer
Jose Reyes high fives Angel Pagan at the plate after hitting a home run in the third inning against the Phillies. (Aug. 15, 2010) Credit: John Dunn
Lady Luck was a baseball fan last night. And she was wearing a Jose Reyes jersey.
Reyes was 2-for-4 in last night's 3-1 loss to the Phillies, dunking in a no-man's-land single in the first and a third-inning home run off the rightfield foul pole.
Reyes led off the bottom of the first by popping up Kyle Kendrick's second offering, an 88-mph sinker, into short leftfield, where it began to drop just fair of the foul line. Both Jimmy Rollins, backpedaling, and Raul Ibañez converged to make the catch, but the ball fell in, untouched.
"It's a good feeling, when you have your leadoff guy, right in the first inning on base, it's a good feeling for the team," Reyes said.
After the Phillies took a 1-0 lead in the top of the third, Reyes led off the bottom half of the inning with a home run down the rightfield line.
What started as an 85-mph cutter out of the hands of Kendrick ended up hitting the foul pole. "In my mind, I think it's a home run, I don't think about fouls," Reyes said, laughing. "But you know it was kind of close and it could have hit the foul pole, but I was able to keep it fair, so that's good."
After hitting over .300 in June and July, Reyes is batting just .245 in August. But over his last seven games, he's hitting .296 (8-for-27), and each of his multihit games in August - he has three - have come in that span.
In the last two games, Reyes has had the only extra-base hits on the Mets' ledger. His triple off Roy Halladay with nobody out in the fourth inning of Saturday's game - he was stranded - was one of just four Mets hits that night.
"You know, try to hit the ball hard somewhere," Reyes said. "Try to put a good swing on the ball. I've been feeling good the last couple of days. Hopefully, I can continue to be like that. To keep helping this team to take us where we want to go.
"Right now, we've been struggling as a ballclub hittingwise, so we haven't been able to put it together so far. So I think we need to be consistent in trying to score more runs if we want to be successful."
The one blemish on Reyes' night came after that gift single in the first. With Angel Pagan batting, Reyes took off for second but was caught stealing.
Replays were unclear as to whether Reyes got his right hand on the bag before Rollins' tag swiped Reyes; they just weren't unclear to Reyes.
"I saw the replay," he said. "I thought I was safe."
