Both starters were long gone by the 9th, however, when the Mets staged a rally against Milwaukee reliever Bob Wickman that featured some pivotal and somewhat unorthodox managerial decisions. After Butch Huskey hit a 1-out double, Carlos Baerga struck out to bring up Alberto Castillo. With the righty Wickman on the mound, the obvious move was to pinch hit with Matt Franco, which is what Bobby V did, but all that did was waste arguably the Mets' best bat off the bench, as, with 1st base open, it was an academic decision for Milwaukee to intentionally walk Franco to bring up Ordonez. If I were managing, I would have pinch hit with Luis Lopez instead, who was a switch-hitter and would allow the Mets to save Franco for later.

As it were, Valentine now had Lopez able to pinch hit for Ordonez, but he decided to stick with Rey out of some gut feeling. Down in the count 0-2, Ordonez miraculously comes through with a frozen rope to left-center field, scoring Huskey from second to break the deadlock. Bum extraordinaire Rich Becker strikes out to end the inning, but John Franco is able to keep the Brewers off the scoreboard in the bottom of the 9th to preserve the victory. That also made a winner of Dennis Cook, who picked up his first W as a Met.

Yoshii only allowed an unearned run (thanks to a Castillo throwing error) and began his Met career not allowing an earned run over his first 13 innings, as he shutout the Pirates over 7 innings in his first start. Barely 2 weeks into the season and it's already glaringly obvious the Mets catching situation without Todd Hundley is in dire straits. That Mike Piazza countdown clock can't expire soon enough.