Great win for the Mets last night, not that I saw any of it. Tuesday is 'Free Movie Night' at Clearview Cinemas if you happen to be raped in the wallet subscribe to all three of Cablevision's services (TV, internet, phone), so we try to find our way to the movie theater as often as we can to take advantage of the offer. Despite the lure of free entertainment, we didn't really see too many movies this year, mostly because Kim is a science teacher and regularly brings home the requisite mountain of homework/tests/labs to grade. But with summer blockbusters squarely within shouting distance (the new Indiana Jones flick comes out next week) and her enthusiasm for the job waning a bit, we're going to try to make it to the theater far more often in the coming weeks.

Having not seen the Mets game save the post-game highlights, and feeling a bit disingenuous about recapping a game I didn't watch, I'm going to write about the movie instead. We have three Clearview Cinemas within a twenty minute drive of our house, so there's usually a pretty good selection to choose from. None of the individual theaters has more than four or five movies showing at a time, but you can still count on most of the popular movies playing at at least one of them. There are a couple of movies out right now that we wanted to see and have heard good things about: the first is Forgetting Sarah Marshall featuring Jason Segel and produced by Hollywood comedy machine Judd Apatow (who, incidentally, produced two of my favorite but tragically short-lived series of the past decade in Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, both of which cast a certain Mr. Segel in starring and recurring roles, respectively).

The second movie under consideration was Iron man, which has drawn rave reviews despite two initial impediments to success:

1. The seemingly questionable casting of Robert Downey Jr. in the titular role
2. The fact that almost every other comic book movie in recent memory has sucked (Hulk, Dare Devil, Fantastic Four)

Kim kinda wanted to see the comedy, but the action flick was playing in a theater closer to home, so we went with Iron Man. I might have also considered Baby mama because I enjoy Tina Fey's writing and self-deprecating style (30 Rock is a gem) and because Amy Poehler may very well be the funniest woman on the planet (her husband Will Arnett is no slouch himself).

In Iron Man, Downey as billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (and eventually Iron Man) manages to turn a potential casting distaster into a stroke of genius. The supporting cast was equally strong, with Jeff Bridges (aka The Dude, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing) as Stark's business partner (and eventually foil) Obediah Stane and Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark's assistant Pepper Potts.

Jon Favreau directed the film and actually had a small role as Stark's man-servant, though whenever I see Favreau I can't help but think of him as man-beast Gutter in PCU.

The movie itself was very strong, with good dialogue, great action sequences and believable CGI. Much of the film's two hours is spent on Stark's fabrication and testing of two different Iron Man suits: one as a necessity to escape captor from a cave in Afghanistan (!), and the other upon returning to the states and devoting his energy to helping mankind instead of destroying it. This is all fine, as the mechanization of Stark is integral to the character's story and the scenes flow well and move along with very little drag.

Unfortunately, spending so much time on the process leaves little room for plot. It's a comic book, so I guess there's an endemic lack of ingenuity here, but we wind up with the standard friend-turned-foe story with the requisite revelations of deceit and malfeasance. Good guy becomes bad guy, bad guy betrays good guy, bad guy and good guy square off in predictable denouement, good guy wins! All this isn't to say that the story fails or isn't enjoyable; it works, it's just nothing new.

Ultimately, Iron Man is a very entertaining and well-cast movie that works most of the time and only really struggles in the same way that most comic book plots struggle: because they are all essentially the same feet wearing slightly different shoes. Accepting this caveat, I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone looking for a solid flick without too many intellectual entanglements.

Now, for the Mets.

(what's this?)

Mr. Met: Ryan Church, +35.2%
Mr. Regret: Jose Reyes, -16.9%
(Non-)Clutchiest Plate Appearance: Church fliner that Kearns mis-played into a two-run double, +27.0%
(Non-)Clutchiest Pitch: Zimmerman two-run homer off Maine, -19.7%
WPA by Offense: +23.4%
WPA by Pitchers: +26.6%
WPA by Opponent: +0.0%

• Fernando Tatis! A hit! A run! No comprende!
• John Maine threw a lot of pitches in six innings, but he struck out five batters while only walking one, allowed just two hits and lowered his season ERA to 2.81. His FIP is 4.01, but he has consistently outperformed his FIP by a half-run or more and is one of those pitchers that I refer to as DIPS Darlings. Certain pitchers are able to maintain BABIPs considerably below the league average of .300, and Maine has been one of them throughout his young career. His fastball is a little sneaky and maybe that helps keep his hits allowed to a minimum.
• Brian Schneider with a double? This after hitting a homerun a few days ago? The last thing I expected out of this week was two non-singles from Schneider, who has done a fine job getting on base this season despite zilch in the power department. Nice to see his slugging percentage finally surge above his batting average.

Oh what a wretched game that was. Carlos Zambrano was pretty good, but the Mets put seven runners aboard against him in seven innings only to watch four of them be erased on double-plays. Still, the offense was mostly terrible, especially against Carlos Marmol and Kerry Wood in the 8th and 9th innings, who faced the minimum six batters and only had to throw 15 pitches in the process. Their impatience against Wood was at least somewhat understandable given the way Aaron Heilman and Jorge Sosa pitched the game out of reach in the bottom of the eighth.

Thanks to those four double-plays -- including one strike-em-out, throw-em-out -- the Mets sent just 31 hitters to the plate in nine innings, four more than the minimum. Luis Castillo, Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado can't buy hits right now, so three of the Mets' top five hitters are basically automatic outs. Jose Reyes is finally hitting well and David Wright is, well, you know, but the rest of the lineup is dogshit with the exception of Ryan Church, who may be an anti-semite (or just an ignoramus) but at least he can hit.

The pity of this game is that John Maine made his first good start of the season and it went right into the crapper thanks to the Mets' offense. He made a bad pitch to Aramis Ramirez in the fourth that accounted for the only two runs he allowed, but otherwise had a very strong game despite Mets' nemesis and part-time Lucifer henchman Angel Hernandez calling balls and strikes last night.

The Mets' desperately need Moises Alou back (or even Angel Pagan!), because a 7-8-9 of Raul Casanova, Endy Chavez and Pitcher is giving me nightmares and quite possibly E.D.

Met savior Nelson Figueroa goes tonight against Ted Lilly as the Mets look to salvage this two-game series.

Middling Maine

To paraphrase the utterly mortal words of one Randy Jackson, "Mainey... it was just aight for me tonight, dawg." For the second straight start Maine was effective, but a glance at his final pitching line leaves me anything but impressed. Sure, two runs allowed in 6.2 innings is great. He was generally conservative with his pitches, induced lots of flyballs, and was able to limit the damage when he did get into trouble. That was good enough to beat the Nationals tonight.

I don't think it's fair to compare Maine's first three regular season starts to that six-pack of whoop-tooshie heretofore known as his spring training performance. Spring training starts might as well occur in a vacuum given how little they correlate to regular season starts. Four walks in fewer than seven innings -- plus only four strikeouts to go against them -- probably won't get it done against the tougher teams in the National League, whomever they turn out to be (wild guess: not the Nationals).

Maine is 1-1 but has pitched shabbily enough to be 0-3, having allowed 30 baserunners in 16.2 innings anchored by a discouraging 10-to-12 strikeout-to-walk ratio. It's still early and there are plenty of small sample size (S³) oddities out there. C.C. Sabathia has a 14-to-14 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Fausto Carmona is at 17-to-8. Chris Young is at 12-to-13. Maine will get that sorted out over a large enough set of starts, but the results are unremarkable to this point.

Delgad-whoa!

Remember when Carlos Delgado looked good at the beginning of the season? I guess right now would still qualify as the beginning of the season, but he's down to .245/.351/.367 after taking an oh-fer last night. Just like old times?

WTF of the night

Chad Cordero was slinging junk in the eighth inning last night, and I'm not talking about his genitals. He hit 80 on the radar gun once, hovering in the high-seventies for the majority of his appearance. He made Angel Pagan look silly and was a Luis Castillo infield single away from a 1-2-3 inning. A return trip to the disabled list seems likely.

What else?

Carlos Beltran hit his second homerun of the season and the first that was officially recognized by the umpiring crew assigned to make those sorts of distinctions. He also picked up another walk, his thirteenth of the season. His .448 on-base percentage is drool-worthy.

Jose Reyes has come alive the last two games, collecting six hits in his last nine at-bats. He has just two walks in 52 plate appearances this season, which is bad. I guess I'll worry more about his discipline when he isn't slugging .458, but it'll be a cause for concern if his OBP is still hovering in the .320 range come June.

It's pretty amazing that we can go from "We're screwed!" to "Suck it, Philly!" in less than two days. Following the Tuesday night debacle there were some alarmist Mets fans who were ready to hit the panic button. Now the Mets are 4-4 and find themselves a game up on the Phillies and a game-and-a-half behind the soon-to-be-fourth-place-or-maybe-even-fifth-place Marlins. Even though the Phillies practically handed the Mets the win on Wednesday and the bats were mostly anemic on Thursday, I still feel 1000% better than I did two days ago. With apologies to Dinah Washington...

What a difference two days make
Forty-eight little hours
Though there's still not much power
Mmmm... things do seem right again

Through Tuesday was lame, boys
Now nothing's the same, boys
The Mets have some game, boys
Now not so much pain

John Maine allowed only one run in six innings, but he didn't really pitch very well. He was behind in the count all night, walked five batters and recorded just one strikeout. I suppose he could be commended for toughing this one out despite not having his best stuff, but even though the result was good I can't say I was terribly encouraged by the ride.

On the bright side, the bullpen was astounding, with the exception of Aaron Heilman who stunk. Again. The rest of the 'pen combined to throw five scoreless innings, allowing just two hits (though three walks) and striking out six. Even Shea Stadium pariah Scott Schoeneweis received a lukewarm round of applause after inducing a groundball double-play of Chase Utley to end a Philly thread in the 11th inning. Show was booed robustly on Tuesday night so it was nice to see him redeem himself last night. He's a fellow member of the tribe and we have to support our own.

David Wright managed to coax two walks out of Phillies pitching, but he otherwise looked inept at the plate against off-speed pitches of any variety. I guess we should be happy that he is OPS-ing .845 despite hitting just .233. Behind Wright, Carlos Beltran reached base two more times but struck out in big situations in the 8th and 10th innings. Ahead of Wright, Angel Pagan picked up three more hits -- including the game-winner -- and is hitting .370/.457/.519. Carlos Delgado had an off night, collecting just a lone walk in five plate appearances.

Has anyone else noticed the utter dearth of homerun power on this team so far? If you don't already know the answer, how many homeruns would you say the Mets have hit this season? If you've watched all of the games to this point, just think back and try to remember when a Met has homered. Ryan Church hit one against the Marlins; that's one. David Wright also hit one against the Marlins; that's two. Delgado hit one in the home opener; that's three. Umm... Oh, Carlos Beltran hit one in Florida, but the umps took it away; that's still three. Err... Yea, that's it folks. Through eight games the Mets have mashed a whopping three homeruns. Twenty-one players have at least three homeruns this season; so do the Mets. The D'Backs' Mark Reynolds has five homeruns all by himself! Frank Thomas is hitting .182 and *he* has three homeruns. I know that steroids are gauche and all, but hit the weight room, fellas, eh?

The April scoreboard for the Swag Contest has been updated, and anonymous has an eleven point edge through the first eight games. The scoreboard is updated shortly after every game.

Don't forget to keep an eye on the FanPosts and FanShots. You can find them on their own pages or, more conveniently, on the right sidebar. FanPosts replaced the diaries on the old system, and are your opportunity to post your own thoughts on whatever you want. Some examples:

- Recap the latest game
- Recap the Mets' minor league action
- Report some bit of Mets news before I do
- Review a baseball book/movie/game/ballpark

Really, anything you want. If you don't have much to say but want to point out an interesting link, YouTube video, quote, etc., you can use the FanShots. There's even a neat bookmarklet that you can add via the FanShots page that lets you create a FanShot on-the-fly from any website you are visiting without leaving that page. Just drag the "Share on SBNation" button to your book mark bar/folder and you're all set. Once you have added it, it's a snap to use. For instance, say you stumble across a great article at The Hardball Times. Just click on your bookmarklet and a mini window will pop up with options for posting a link in the FanShots here.

Particularly interesting FanPosts and FanShots will be promoted to the main page so everyone can see your brilliant work. I encourage everyone to take advantage of these features; they are unique to SBNation and are great community-building tools. This site is about everyone here, not just me, and I want you all to feel like you have a say in the direction and the growth of this place. Any feedback, comments, questions, suggestions are always welcome.

While the fifth spot in the starting rotation is a trainwreck right now, it's comforting to know that the first three spots are looking bueno. Rounding out that top three -- after Johan Santana and Pedro Martinez -- is John Maine, who has had one helluva spring. Have a look at the progression of his starts (click the date link to see that game's boxscore and recap):

Date	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	ERA
2/28	1.2	4	3	3	1	2	0	16.20
3/4	3.0	4	1	1	0	3	1	7.71
3/9	4.0	0	0	0	1	3	0	4.15
3/14	5.0	3	0	0	1	6	0	2.63
3/19	5.2	5	1	1	1	7	1	2.33
3/24	6.0	1	0	0	1	7	0	1.78

The first outing wasn't very good, but since then Maine has been untouchable, allowing just two runs in 23.2 innings while striking out 26 and allowing just four walks. It's only spring training and most of his starts have come against something less potent than the opposing team's projecting Opening Day lineup, but you can't argue with the results. The strikeout rate has been off the charts, but the razor-thin walk rate is what excites me the most. I have very high expectations for Maine this season, and his success this season is of even greater import if we consider that Oliver Perez will probably be gone next season, and Pedro might go with him (though likely not to the same place; just away).*

*Neither of these are foregone conclusions; Pedro has indicated that he would like to stay with the Mets if they are interested, and that he probably won't negotiate a new deal until after the season, but considering his health and his advancing age, he will probably be looking for one last multi-year deal, and I don't know if the Mets are willing to go to three (or four?) years to keep Pedro in Queens until he retires. Of the two, Perez is probably the most likely goner, as his age (26) and agent (Scott Boras) mean he could fetch big money for big years on the free agent market, and the Mets may be better off spending those clams elsewhere.

Bullet my Tuesday...

• Nice fantasy rundown of five interesting Mets players over at Fantasy Baseball Generals.
• At No Bias Baseball, Jim Callis of Baseball America stops by for an interview. You can listen to the audio via the prior link, and around the 16 minute mark Callis talks about the Johan Santana trade and indicates that it was his favorite move of the winter.
• The Hardball Times continues their "Five Questions" series with a five-spot on the Mets by John Walsh. While you're at it, check out their Phillies (John Brattain) and Braves (Mac Thomason) while you're at it.
• We've got more THT love for ya, as they posted their updated projections for the upcoming season last week, and they've got the Mets going 99-63 with 836 runs scored and just 677 runs allowed. The projected standings are the average results from 100 iterations simulating the 2008 season, so this wasn't just a statistical oddity. I figure the Mets are a 90-95 win team, but if things break right for them they could push the cusp of the century mark before the year is through.
• Someone posted a wonderful diary at Lone Star Ball about the recent Dodgers/Padres exhibition game in China. Remarkable stuff.
• Not baseball related, but Shad Smith, a Mixed Martial Artist, recently revealed that he is homosexual, making him the first ever openly gay male fighter in MMA. Kudos to Smith for having the moxie to make this revelation while he is still an active participant in his sport, and here's hoping that his actions give other gay athletes the courage to do the same in their respective sports.