Mets' resiliency continues to show

LOS ANGELES -- The two starters pressed into service in the absence of Pedro Martínez and El Duque, Orlando Hernandez, combined to pitch just 7 2/3 innings. The bullpen coughed up leads twice in three games, the closer was shaky in protecting a two-run advantage in one game, and the MVP candidate had just two singles.

And yet, here are the New York Mets, one step closer to a National League pennant after sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers in three straight games. On the stat sheet, the most impressive aspect of their performance was the win column, which shows the limitations of stat sheets. They don't show the resiliency of a team that on the two occasions it lost leads in the series, came back in the next at-bat to reclaim its advantage.

That's why, as catcher Paul Lo Duca said between champagne baths after Saturday night's 9-5 win in the Game 3 clincher, they were planning to watch football yesterday back home in New York while awaiting the identity of their opponent in the National League Championship Series.

``A lot of people said we lost too much [manpower]," said first baseman Carlos Delgado, whose four hits in Game 1 helped to galvanize the Mets while the other half of the ``dos Carlos," Carlos Beltran, had a relatively quiet series, with just two singles, though he also walked five times and was in the middle of three rallies Saturday night.

``But we didn't pout or complain," Delgado said. ``We just won. We made the best of what we had, and we won."

Game 1 of the NLCS is scheduled for Wednesday night in Shea Stadium. If you want to take the subway to playoff baseball in New York this October, you'll have to ride the No. 7 train to Flushing. Other subway lines still will take you to the Bronx, but Yankee Stadium has been shuttered for the season.

Martínez had shoulder surgery Thursday and isn't expected back till next July at the earliest. Hernandez, with his torn calf muscle, is not expected on the NLCS roster and is a long shot to be available for the World Series, should the Mets advance that far.

But by making quick work of the Dodgers, Mets manager Willie Randolph now will have the luxury of lining up his pitching to his advantage, a departure from this series, in which rookie John Maine pitched the opener and Steve Trachsel, who otherwise wouldn't have been higher than fourth on Randolph's depth chart, started against four-time Cy Young Award winner Greg Maddux Saturday night.

Trachsel didn't distinguish himself, leaving with one out in the fourth inning after four hits, two runs in, and two runners on. But neither did Maddux, who was gone shortly thereafter, having given up seven hits and an un-Madduxlike two walks and a hit batsman in four innings.

In the fifth, Randolph made one of his few mistakes in this series, allowing lefty Darren Oliver -- who had turned Andre Ethier's liner to the mound into a rally-killing double play in the fourth -- to pitch to Jeff Kent, who hit a two-run homer in a three-run rally that allowed LA to take the lead. But the Mets rallied again, scoring three times in the sixth on Shawn Green's double and three straight bloop hits off Jonathan Broxton, the Dodger rookie who said he broke bats on all three hits.

``We went up against a team that had the best record in [the National League] and deservedly so," said LA's Nomar Garciaparra, who gamely tried to pinch hit on one leg with the bases loaded in the fifth and was thrown out on a comebacker to the mound. ``You can't say they just got lucky or slipped by to get that record. They deserved it, and they went out and beat us."

The Dodgers had come into the series on a seven-game winning streak, but invented ways to beat themselves, too. Before the series even started, they lost their best lefthanded reliever, Joe Beimel, in a Manhattan bar, where he cut his pitching hand so deeply he needed plastic surgery to close the wound.

``It definitely hurt not having a guy who had been tremendous all season," said Dodger rookie catcher Russell Martin. ``That's not to say he would have been great in this series, but we could have used him."

Then, in Game 1, the Dodgers stole a page from the annals of their daffy Brooklyn predecessors, when Kent and J.D. Drew were thrown out at the plate on the same hit.

``I don't think you ever blame one play for an entire series," Dodgers GM Ned Colletti said. ``You've got to take advantage of every opportunity, and the margin for error is very, very thin. That said, we had opportunities to win that game."

Yes, they came back later in the same game to tie the score, but the play seemed to set a tone for breakdowns that would recur throughout the series: mixups on bunt plays in Game 2, the failure to turn a double play on 48-year-old Julio Franco in the same game, and a balk by Brett Tomko and throwing error by third baseman Wilson Betemit in the eighth inning of the finale, when the Mets tacked on two insurance runs.

And not even the big bat of Kent (8 for 13, .615) could overcome the loss of Garciaparra in midgame in Game 2, or the lack of offense from Rafael Furcal and Kenny Lofton at the top of the order, the two combining for just three hits in 24 at-bats.

So the Dodgers go home, and Tom Glavine, who was splendid in throwing six shutout innings in Game 2, stands ready to pitch Wednesday's opener. It remains to be seen if they'll be down another player -- outfielder Cliff Floyd departed in the third inning Saturday with a strained left Achilles' tendon -- but as Floyd noted to reporters, the Mets have shown how they cope with attrition.

``That's what we've dealt with, you know what I mean?" Floyd said. ``This is our 25-man roster and we're going to ride it out. That's all we've got. Can't do nothing else about it."