Luis Ayala allowed most of the NY media to calm down a bit over the Billy Wagner will not pitch down the stretch garbage, something that was supposedly going to kill the Mets. (Why do I continue to listen to the buffoonery on WFAN? - Memo to me: STOP LISTENING!) It appears that the scribes of this site were the first to say that losing Wagner was not a big deal, and Ayala continues to solidify our point. Ayala has now converted 6 of 7 ninth inning saves (86%), better than Wagner’s save percentage this season.

Carlos Delgado continued his hot hitting, belting two more home runs. He has now hit 21 home runs and driven in 58 runs since July. While many mainstram pundits were wondering whether Delgado can keep up his hot July, I wrote a piece on July 31 stating that he could continue to produce because August has historically been Delgado’s best month. He has obviously continued that into September.

Jerry Manuel said in his post game press conference that what Delgado is doing is tremendous because he is producing while in a pennant chase. Let’s not get all 67 Yastrzemski on us, Jerry, but Delgado is having a great second half - and more importantly, the Mets are winning games because of him.

When Carlos Beltran and Delgado both hit their back to back homers off LHP Charlie Manning, a former Yankee farmhand, it just showed that in order to make it in “the show” a Yankee minor leaguer must do it with another organization. Reiterates what I was told last week by a few Yankee players in Trenton; that they wish they were a part of the Pirates trade for Nady/Marte because it will be the only way they will get a chance to advance to the big leagues. They see stagnant growth with the Yankees because of so many good arms in the organization. Also, because of what happened with Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes, they feel the free agent signings will return in the Bronx in 2009.

I love the fact that the player to be named later in the Ayala trade with Washington, Anderson Hernandez, was 2-5 with 3 RBI’s tonight. The change of scenery gets Ayala a new lease in his baseball life and gets Hernandez a chance to play in the majors.

Any Mets fans want to re-sign Oliver Perez for $60 million over the next 5 years? I didn’t think so. Three plus innings tonight, 8 hits, 2 walks and 7 earned runs. Let Jonathan Niese and Bobby Parnell both get opportunities to make the rotation and let Perez go. He is too up and down, and his blooper pitch during his prior start was the penultimate last straw. He is a flake and a loser with a career record UNDER .500.

Watching Alfredo Aceves pitch for the Yankees tonight. He reminds me of a young Livan Hernadez. Not overpowering with his pitches, but HE KNOWS HOW TO PITCH. Locating around the zone and not afraid of pitching inside - even to Vlad Guerrero. He changes speeds well and I am not talking about just fastball to change up, but he threw his fastball at different speeds, too. In the 4th, Aceves took a little off a high fastball to Mark Teixeira who was a little out in front and flew out to RF.

Aceves looked very smooth on the mound with a very easy motion and has good mound demeanor, very important in the minds of the umpires. He didn’t let an error by Derek Jeter in the 4th to affect him, getting Torii Hunter to hit the ball back to the box, where Aceves calmly turned a 1-4-3 double play. This might have been the play which caused Hunter to strain his quad, forcing him out of the game. Interesting, but the man Aceves replaced in the rotation, Darrell Rasner, let the Robinson Cano error on August 30th affect him, and he Yanks went onto lose to Toronto.

I am not getting all hopped up over Aceves’ good start. After tonight, he has pitched 12 innings while only giving up 2 earned runs, and tonight’s run should not have scored except for Jeter’s error. But, a good start is NEEDED by any young Yankee player because if the young player (Chase Wright, Brett Gardner) does not immediately perform well, the Yankees (and most of their fans) have no patience with them and they are soon banished to the minors or to the bench. And I don’t even have to mention what crisis monitors Joel Sherman of the NY Post and Bill Madden of the Daily News will say about their slow start!

So it is good to see Aceves get off to a good start and he should get the next two starts in that rotation spot. Good to see Phil Coke perform well also. Great sight last week in the Trenton Thunder clubhouse after their game with Portland, as most players were crowding around the TV watching Coke pitch against Tampa Bay.

Good move by Joe Girardi having Chad Moeller catch Aceves. Moeller was more familiar with the rookie because he caught him several times at AAA Scranton.

Just noticed that while the Dodgers just took the lead over the Padres, the Diamondbacks just gave up the lead against the Giants. The D’Backs just can not hit. Maybe they should have signed Barry Bonds in May/June like they were rumored. Joe Torre looks like he could be back in the playoffs, while Girardi watches the game on television. The great thing about what Torre is doing is while he won with primarily a veteran team in NY, he is now winning baseball games in LA with a young team.

Don’t look now but Toronto has won 10 in a row and only 7 games back in the wild card race - and 1.5 games ahead of the Yankees.