ATLANTA – It is a familiar cry, one that the Mets have relied on like a mantra for more than a year now.
Just wait until our players get healthy. Hold on until they get back. The cavalry is coming.
It arrived Tuesday night, but from the most unlikely of sources. Rather than the likes of Carlos Beltran or Luis Castillo, the injured pieces coming back, it was the lost boy of the Mets lineup, Jeff Francoeur. Only in the lineup because of an injury that sidelined Jason Bay and barely hanging onto that spot now, Francoeur delivered a ninth-inning home run off Billy Wagner to lift the Mets to a 3-2 win.
Perhaps more unlikely was that Francoeur tied the game by drawing a four-pitch walk in the seventh inning, coming around to score on a Chris Carter pinch-hit single. But for Francoeur it was a satisfying moment to come up with the solo blast over the right field wall in his hometown.
Francoeur has been only one of the Mets problems this season, not producing and eventually losing his job to Angel Pagan before getting a second life with Bay sidelined. But Francoeur is not the player that the Mets have been counting.