Friday morning applesauce: Mets sweep Reds, Santana rehabs, Harvey stifles Harper

The Mets completed a rare four game road sweep yesterday at the Great American Ballpark, outslugging the Reds by a score of 10-9.  While much of the build up to the game focused on who wasn't going to be starting in right field, the guy who was had himself another pretty nice night.  The Mets now head to Washington for a weekend series with the Nationals.

Speaking of the Nationals, the B-Mets were on the road playing the Nats AA affiliate Harrisburg Senators last night.  The game featured Nationals top prospect Bryce Harper and Mets top prospect Matt Harvey which surely would be a fun matchup to watch.  Harvey struck out Harper twice and induced a weak groundout to first as part of a dominating performance in which he struck out ten total.  Watching Harvey and new farmhand Zack Wheeler will be an awful lot of fun going forward.  BTW, according to Wheeler's twitter account it looks like he's planning for a Monday debut in St. Lucie.

Also on the farm, Johan Santana made a start for St. Lucie yesterday.  He only threw 33 pitches total, and today will probably tell us more about his shoulder than how he fared against some kids.  As long as he's healthy it will be awful nice to see him again this season.  His proximity to a return makes me curious to see if the Mets would consider flipping Chris Capuano if the right deal was to come along in the next several days.

In yesterday's applesauce Patrick Flood had done some pondering about what we could expect in a return if Beltran was traded.  Since the trade, Flood takes a closer look at what we received to determine if it was enough for the Mets.  Joel Sherman seems to think the return was enough, and he thinks Alderson was wise to target a team who doesn't care much for advanced statistics.

Some Beltran tribute pieces started to come out yesterday, and several of them were worth reading.  Deadspin had a good read, and Bob Klapisch even went so far as to praise his unsung leadership.  I wish the MSM had done a better job of appreciating the guy when he was actually wearing Blue and Orange (although it really made me smile to see he still had that color scheme on his cleats last night).

We gave you a few Zack Wheeler scouting reports yesterday, today I'll have two more for you.  John Sickels gave a brief update after the trade on where Wheeler stands in his eyes.  Toby Hyde gave a slightly more detailed analysis of Wheeler on his blog.

Around the NL East:

The Phillies were clearly so overawed by the mere presence of the shellfish one that they lost to the Giants yet again.  I've got my fingers crossed that Ruben Amaro's overreaction to that series will include trading the farm for Hunter Pence.

The Braves also lost yesterday, not having enough at the plate to defeat the Pirates.  The loss combined with the Mets win cuts the Mets to 6.5 games out of the wild card.  The Braves also appear willing to make a dent in their farm system to add a bat, although I doubt Frank Wren is as likely as Amaro to trade top tier guys.

The Nats and the Marlins squared off again, with the Marlins again defeating the Nats by a 5-2 margin.  Emilio Bonafacio extended his hitting streak to 26 in this one.

Around MLB:

Beltran may have said no to the Indians, but the Tribe still managed to add a bat.  I really wish Harry Caray had been around to call a few Fukudome games.

Jerry Meals mistake may have flown under the radar a little with the no-hitter and trades that occured yesterday, but the league has still admitted it was a bad call.  If either the Braves win the wild card or the Pirates lose the division by a single game I can only imagine what the instant replay debate will look like.

Former Yankee Hideki Irabu was found dead yesterday.  As poor as he was for the Yankees, he'll always be remembered by them thanks to some comments from the boss.

Finally, Joe Posnanski takes an excellent look at Barry Bonds before he became the incredible hulk.  I found the comparisons to Griffey especially interesting, but that's why Joe is the best in the business.