Church Proving Worth

By Alex G. on April 17th, 2008 10:49 AM
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 10:49 am and is filed under Baseball, Mets Rumors & News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

At the beginning of the season, not too many Mets fans were envisioning a lineup with Ryan Church batting in between Jose Reyes and David Wright. But, thats exactly what has transpired the last 2 games and the results are evident.

After taking the 1st game of a 3 game series against the Nationals, Church started off last night’s game with a bang.  Seeing his teammate John Maine give up a run in the top alg_ryanchurch.jpghalf of the 1st inning Church came up to the plate with one out. With one swing he brought the Mets faithful to their feet, tying up the game with a homerun to right field. For obvious reasons, this home run was a big deal but there were also underlying reasons. Church smacked last night’s long ball off of a left handed pitcher. The 2nd time he has done it this year.

The knock on Church coming into this season was that he could mash right handed pitchers but struggled mightily against lefties. There was a lot of offseason chatter about the Mets looking around for a platoon partner for Church. The team decided to give him a shot at becoming a full time player and it has paid dividends. Church now has 2 homeruns and 9 RBI’s to go along with his .340 AVG. In fact at .355, his average against lefties is 17 points higher than against righties.

But his batting is not the only aspect of his game that may have been surprising fans. His play in the outfield has been a welcomed sight after watching Shawn Green labor in right field last year. Church has shown he has the ability to take quick routes to fly balls and has shown off a rocket arm. He has already recorded 2 outfield assists on the season.

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