Pat Misch has flown under the radar since his acquistion from San Francisco. (PHOTO COURTESY OF YAHOO VIA THE AP)

BY AARON YORKE
STACHE WRITER

I’ll be the first to admit that I was not aware that the New York Mets claimed Patrick Misch off waivers from San Fransisco on June 5th, 2009. I didn’t even know who Pat Misch was until he showed up in the bullpen one day during a rare thumping of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Thanks to the non-competetive nature of the game, Misch was allowed to enter and pitch a perfect 8th inning to preserve the 11-0 shutout.

From that point forward Misch became the Mets’ mop man. Following in the humble footsteps of Darren Oliver and Aaron Sele, Misch entered generally out of hand games in an attempt to make them less embarrassing for the Mets. During the Subway Series at Citi Field, Misch pitched scoreless innings against the Bronx Bombers to help the Mets avoid further humiliation in defeats of 9-1 and 5-0.

Misch finally allowed a run a couple days later in a blowout loss to Milwaukee, but his hard labor was finally rewarded with some meaningful work during that weird day game in Pittsburgh.

With the Mets trailing 5-0 after a Tim Redding shellacking, Misch got two outs in a row with a runner on 2nd base to hold the score. Sure, it did not seem like meaningful work then, but the Mets ended up storming back and shocking the Pirates in a 9-8 win. Who knows what would have happened had a lesser mop man entered the game or worse, if Redding had continued? Probably another embarrassing loss and another SportsCenter Top 10 list.

Fast forward to today, as Misch has now allowed just one earned run in 13 innings as a Met. It may not be much, but he is exactly what this team needs right now: a random guy to come out of the bullpen and keep the game moving so Gary, Keith, and Ron don’t go crazy trying to think of random things to talk about.

Sarcasm aside, though, Misch is a pleasant surprise who is using this opportunity to try to further his career. Who knows, maybe Jerry will give him some real chances so we can help his career while he helps us. Isn’t that how Heath Bell got started? We could have probably won the division last year with that guy.

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