THIS IS IT

What up now, is that there is always a tomorrow…LIKE TODAY

NEW YORK —On a day when Oliver Perez again appeared to be fixed—and, for five innings, fantastic—another facet of the Mets appeared repaired, too. Hand in hand with Perez’s brilliant, though somewhat abridged, performance against the Braves on Saturday was another thrashing of left-handed pitching by the team that, late last season, became so troubled by the sight of any left-handed pitcher.
The two performances produced a 7-2 victory that put the Braves in their place—second—and reinforced the notion that the Mets are again a balanced offensive team. Three days after they had battered their nemesis Dontrelle Willis, they beat up another member of the Kappa Delta Southpaw fraternity, Chuck James.

Jose Reyes and understudies Ramon Castro and Damion Easley hit home runs against James (2-2), and Carlos Beltran produced three of his four hits against the Braves’ starter. With Atlanta’s offense all but paralyzed for five innings, the Mets built a 4-0 lead and went on to beat the Braves for the second time in five games.

Moreover, the Mets won for the fifth time in five games in which they have been opposed by a left-handed starter, no small accomplishment for a team that lost 15 of the last 22 games in 2006 in which the oppopsing starter threw left-handed.

Reyes, who had three hits and scored two more runs—he now has 20—created a run in the first inning. Moises Alou, acquired to bolster the Mets’ attack against left-handed pitchers, drove in the second run in the third with a sacrifice fly. And Castro hit his third home run—he has more than Carlos Delgado, David Wright and Alou combined—with a runner on base in the fifth.

Easley and Reyes hit their home runs in the sixth.

Perez (2-1) allowed three hits in the first five innings, when he produced seven of his nine strikeouts. In marked contrast to his previous performance, nine days earlier, in which he walked seven batters in 2 2/3 innings, he walked none. And at one point, in a sequence that involved nine batters, he threw 20 straight strikes.