Mets Cash In on Pitching Mismatch, Cruise Past Astros 6-2

The Mets made it look easy Wednesday night, throttling the Astros 6-2 at Citi Field and proving DarkHorse's pitching-gap thesis absolutely correct. Our Mets -145 pick? Money in the bank.

Nolan McLean delivered exactly what the scouting report promised, carving through Houston's anemic road lineup and justifying every bit of that 3.06 ERA advantage we highlighted. Meanwhile, Bennett Sousa's return from the IL went about as well as you'd expect for a guy sporting a 6.27 ERA—the Astros' righty got shelled early, and Houston never recovered. That elbow inflammation absence? Yeah, rust showed.

The Mets offense did the rest, piling on six runs against a pitching staff that had no answers after yesterday's 3-1 squeaker. Different game, different starter, completely different result. Houston's .70 road OPS looked every bit as pathetic as the numbers suggested, and facing an elite arm at home turned this one into a laugher by the fifth inning.

Sometimes handicapping is complicated. Sometimes it's just math. Tonight was math—a massive starting pitcher gap that translated into exactly the comfortable home victory we projected. The Stable cashes, and the Astros limp out of Queens having learned a painful lesson about pitching mismatches.