Nick Evans strained his right quad playing winter ball in Puerto Rico and has been sent home for rehab. Reports indicate that Evans was a sad little puppy without his best bud Dan Murphy by his side, so the injury comes as something of a mixed blessing for him.

Mets Tailgate likes Bob Howry, now more than ever in light of the Cubs declining to offer him arbitration last night.

The Mets are pretty interested in Brian Fuentes, and reportedly plan to meet with him in Las Vegas next week. Signing Fuentes would cost the Mets their first round pick next June, which should certainly give them some pause.

At MetsGeek, Mike Newman looks at some hypothetical trades and James Kannengieser makes a case for some former Mets who will appear on this year's Hall of Fame ballot.

Bob Klapisch doesn't think the Mets got their money's worth out of Pedro Martinez, arguing that the $53 million they gave him over four years included considerable time on the disabled list, a disappointing 2008, and nothing closer to a World Championship than falling in seven games to the Cardinals in the 2006 NLCS.

At RotoGraphs, Peter Bendix looks at Johan Santana from a fantasy point-of-view, and concludes that he is good, but not that good.

At FanGraphs Eric Seidman evaluates Carlos Beltran and figures that the Mets could reasonably pay him $10 million more per season and still get their money's worth.

Also at FanGraphs, Dave Cameron analyzes Aaron Heilman's candidacy for the starting rotation.

Speaking of FanGraphs, they're now carrying wOBA for every player/year in history. Awesome.

At Beyond the Boxscore, R.J. Anderson crunches some SQL in comparing Barry Bonds's and Ted Williams's astonishing offensive accomplishments.

Ted Rogers, telecom magnate and Blue Jays principal owner, died last night of congestive heart failure.

No sooner has the 2008 season ended than we're blessed with the first batch of 2009 projections. These come courtesy of ACTA Sports and The Bill James Handbook. The BJH will be availabe on November 1st, months ahead of most of the other baseball annuals, which is great because we get numbers to play with, though we have to accept that the rosters here could change quite a bit by the time next season rolls around.

Here we go.

Let's remember that these are just projections. Some numbers and algorithms went into a computer and these popped out. That's a really simplistic way of looking at what is surely a very complex system, and I don't describe it that way to make light of all of the work that goes into developing and implementing a projection system. Forecasting ballplayers may seem like a frivolous use of time, but there is little doubt that most if not all big league teams use player projections of some form or another. They'd be crazy not to use the many years of baseball data that exists to analyze the likelihood of certain performance results for free agents, players on their own team or potential trade targets on other teams. Projections don't tell us what is guaranteed to happen, but they do tell us what could very likely happen, and that should at least be a part of any reasonable player analysis, whether you're in a big league front office or a humble website sending information through this sophisticated series of tubes we call the internets.

Some thoughts on the Mets, bullet-wise.

• Marlon Anderson should be jettisoned post-haste. He is not better than Val Pascucci. I'm not sure he's better than Morten Anderson. Why was it necessary to sign him for two years? Anyone?
• Carlos Voltron is a god.
• Luis Castillo is a Met.
• Can Brian Schneider never start again? Can Ramon Castro please stay healthy? The 80 points separating their OPS projections is not insignificant.
• Endy Chavez isn't much of a hitter, though he could be one of the most undervalued commodities in baseball.
• Ryan Church's projection isn't terrible, but it's not great, either. For comparison, Lastings Milledge's projection is .281/.347/.439. I don't feel so well.
• Carlos Delgado, not so bad. The computer thinks Carlos will continue his resurgence and put up an OPS similar to his 2008 mark, which is middle of the pack among big league first basemen.
• Damion Easley: Time to retire.
• Mark my words: Nick Evans will not OPS .829. Nice thought, though.
• Fernando Martinez: Not ready for the big time yet.
• Daniel Murphy is the Irish Hammer. Close your eyes. Now picture the Irish Hammer. Now picture him hitting .296/.371/.478 as a 24-year-old. Now picture him doing it at second base. Feel better? How did you read all of that with your eyes closed, eh? Cheater.
• I'm a little disappointed in Jose Reyes's projection. That .798 OPS would be a 35-point dropoff from his 2008 line. I'll take the over on this one.
• Is it wrong to wish that Brian Schneider had been driving that car in DR and not Ambiorix Burgos? Yea. Probably.
• The Mets could do far worse than Fernando Tatis as a righty bat off the bench, Or: Sixteen words I couldn't have fathomed writing a year ago.
• David Wright: Yea, let's trade this bum.

I'll post the pitcher projections tomorrow, and then some free agent/trade target projections on Wednesday.

Brewers? Blown out. Phillies? Smacked down in Miami. Mets? Opened a can of whoop-tooshie in Atlanta. Things looked pretty bleak a few days ago, and things could certainly look bleak again a few days hence, but in once night the Mets vaulted into first place in the NL East, a half-game ahead of the Phillies (a game up in the loss column), and 2.5 games in front of the Brewers in the would-be Wild Card race.

Good results aside, this wasn't exactly a meticulously played game on the Mets' part. Three errors, four pitchers in the seventh inning, but hey, a win, and the Irish Hammer picked up the GWRBI without even starting. Nick Evans hit a monstrous homerun and added a walk. Remember these guys? They were a pretty solid platoon a few weeks ago before Fernando Tatis began starting every day. Tatis is gone for the regular season, at least, and it's great to see the kids go out there and make things happen.

Jose Reyes: September swoon? Maybe not. Kid went 3-for-4 with a leadoff homerun, a walk and a steal. All of the Mets' regulars picked up at least one hit; David Wright and Carlos Delgado picked up two each.

Oliver Perez was ehh: Six hits, three walks and four runs in six innings. The length was solid, and I guess he gets some bonus points for keeping the Mets in the game, but the Braves have a skeleton crew out there so let's not get too excited about that.

The Mets turn to Pedro Martinez to hopefully pull his ass out of the Queens gutter tomorrow night against Jorge Campillo.

Big winners: Daniel Murphy, +30.3% WPA, Jose Reyes, +22.4% WPA
Big losers: Nelson Figueroa,-32.7% WPA, Ryan Church, -12.3% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Murphy two-run double in 8th, +30.3% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Prado singlein 7th, -18.2% WPA
Total pitcher WPA: -16.0%
Total batter WPA: +63.9%
GWRBI: Daniel Murphy

Game Thread Roll Call

Nice job by LOUtheMETSfan; his effort in the game thread embiggens us all.

A nice start for Pedro Martinez after two consecutive stinkers. With John Maine on the disabled list and Jon Niese an unknown quantity, the Mets could really use Pedro to string together a bunch of solid outings as the last month of the season unfolds.

Kudos to Nick Evans, who isn't much of a hitter but sure looked like one today. Evans hit his first career homerun to tie the game in the third, and practically willed David Wright to follow him with a homerun of his own.

The Mets used five relievers and none of them allowed a run, which must be some kind of record. For them. This season.

2pm start on Labor Day afternoon as the Mets roll into Milwaukee. Santana versus Sheets, should be a good one.

Big winners: Pedro Martinez, +19.2% WPA, Nick Evans, +12.5% WPA
Big losers: Carlos Delgado, -7.8% WPA, Robinson Cancel, -7.0% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Reyes RBI single in 7th, +13.2% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Gonzalez RBI double in 1st, -8.9% WPA
Total pitcher WPA: +27.9%
Total batter WPA: +22.1%
GWRBI: David Wright

Game Thread Roll Call

Nice job by itsmetsforme; his effort in the game thread embiggens us all.

At Newsday, David Lennon has an article on Dan Murphy and Nick Evans and their transition to big league ball.

Church is back in session, beginning tonight.

Despite his many successes there, Tom Seaver won't be sad when Shea Stadium is demolished. Shea may be a dump, but it's our dump*, and I'll miss it for all the great games I saw there in person and at home.

* Sorta reminds me of Leslie Nielson's line in the phenomenal Naked Gun: "It's a topsy-turvy world, Jane, and maybe the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans, but this is our hill and these are our beans."

At MetsGeek, Alex Nelson looks at the pitchers the Mets will face against the Astros this weekend.

Really good article at Fear and Faith in Flushing about the two pitchers who closed out NLCS series for the Mets at Shea Stadium.

At The Hardball Times, Geoff Young looks at some free agent compensation draft picks that turned out to be much better than the free agent that left. No mention of Mike Hampton/David Wright, though.

In lieu of my customary recap I decided to switch things up last night, so I did a bunch of drinking instead. If you missed the game you can read the postmortem at Newsday, The Journal News, The Bergen Record, etc.

Dan Murphy and Nick Evans will platoon in left field for the time being, with Fernando Tatis shifting over to right, at least until Ryan Church returns. The plan once Church returns is unclear, but I'm excited to see what the kids can do. Enough Endy Chavez and Marlon Anderson (who is on the disabled list now); find out if either of Murphy or Evans is ready to help this team this year or next. A hundred at-bats doesn't tell you much, but I'd still rather see either of them than Chavez or Anderson at this point.

Val Pascucci hit three more homeruns yesterday, and now has 24 for the year to go along with his .980 OPS.

Mike Lupica thinks that Carlos Beltran is the biggest offensive disappointment in New York baseball. I didn't actually read the article because I already took my morning dump, but if any of you brave souls bother to can you please enlighten me as to how Beltran's 117 OPS+ is more disappointing than Derek Jeter's 98? Those are 2008 figures, mind you. Beltran has been solid but unspectacular at the plate this season, and has still managed to post an OPS 17% better than the league at the third-most important defensive position (after catcher and shortstop).

The trade deadline is fast approaching and the list of available players is growing shorter. At the same time, the Mets continue to pitch and hit effectively and areas of greatest need are not as considerable as they were as little as a month ago. Then again, winning cures all ills and great play can often mask shortcomings.

Area of need: corner outfield

For instance, Fernando Tatis is hitting .318/.370/.520. Fernando. Tatis. Career .263/.345/.443 hitter. Much worse than that since 2000. He's hitting lefties and righties equally well, and he hasn't completely embarrassed himself in the field. We're only talking 160-some-odd plate appearances, though, and small sample size red flags abound. He's been a great story and a huge lift for the Mets with Moises Alou out for the season and Ryan Church still out as he recovers from the effects of his second concussion this season. Church may be back soon, but neither that nor his long-term status are guaranteed.

Even if Tatis were somehow able to sustain anything resembling his current level of production, Endy Chavez continues to be an offensive sinkhole in right field. Sure, the defense is great and the .272 batting average is decent, but the .316 on-base percentage is 13th among 17 National League right-fielders with at least 250 plate appearances. His .329 slugging percentage is 16th of 17, besting only Washington's Austin Kearns. Endy's .644 OPS is likewise 16th of 17. I don't know which is more astonishing: that Endy is so bad at hitting or that he's managed to accrue 250 plate appearances while being so bad at hitting. That's a poll for another day, I guess. Regardless, Endy's defense is probably good enough to justify carrying his anemic bat as a fourth or fifth outfielder, but as a starting corner outfielder he is pitifully feckless.

Area of need: relief pitching

Billy Wagner's propensity for eating it hard in big games notwithstanding, he's the Mets' best relief pitcher and still one of the best closers in the National League. Aaron Heilman has been a lot better of late and is probably the Mets' number two, which is far preferable to just plain number two, which was Heilman's nom de fan for the first two months of the season.

Duaner Sanchez is a mystery right now. He was effective if unspectacular for the season's first three months, but has been mostly horrible for a couple of weeks now and is suffering a loss in velocity and deterioration of confidence. After missing a year and a half there's no telling what shape his shoulder is in or whether his arm can hold up for an entire season. Maybe it's just a matter of fatigue and he needs a little time off. At all events, he's a definite question mark moving forward.

Pedro Feliciano is still murder on lefties, but unlike the past two seasons, this year he has been downright awful against righties, who have rocked him to the tune of .342/.419/.553. There's nothing wrong with having a lefty specialist in the bullpen, but the Mets already have one guy -- Scott Schoeneweis -- who can't get righties out, and despite his dramatic platoon splits this season I'm pretty sure Jerry Manuel still thinks that Feliciano is a quality guy to throw out there against all comers. Then again, two full years of competence is more meaningful than one half-year of ineptitude, but you still have to assign greater weight to the recent performance, and that's not good news for Feliciano or the Mets.

Joe Smith is the opposite of Feliciano: he dominates righties and has a tough time with the southpaws. Righties have hit just .190/.271/.302 while lefties have gone .293/.408/.415. If only he and Feliciano could play the field I might be inclined to pull Tatis in the late innings and alternate lefty-righty with Smith and Feliciano for an inning or two. It all comes down to how Manuel decides to use them, so let's hope that his inquisitive mind and nerd glasses mean he knows a thing or two about platoon splits.

Area of need: first base?

A month ago this would have been an obvious need, but with Carlos Delgado swinging a mighty big stick I'm not so sure any more. Given how precipitously he declined last year and how quickly he has resurged, you really have to wonder if those nagging injuries were bothering him more than he let on. The elbow in particular caused him a lot of trouble the last year and a half, and if he is finally out from under those problems then maybe it shouldn't be so surprising that he's back to mashing the ball. He's not going to OPS 1.200 the rest of the way as he has during July, but he has finally pushed his OPS over the league average for a first baseman and there's reason for optimism that he might keep it there.

Mark Teixeira and Adam Dunn will cost an arm and a leg to acquire for the remainder of this season and both will be free agents at season's end. They'll both be on the Mets's radar come November, but I think they'll stand pat this summer and hope that Delgado's resurrection is for real.

Area of need: bench

Marlon Anderson is terrible, and needs to be jettisoned as quickly as possible. I like to think that if the Mets could find anyone else worth plugging into that prestigious 25th spot on the roster that they would have already done so, but right now the dried up husks of Lenny Harris and Matt Franco both look like better options. The rest of the bench is serviceable, with Damion Easley and Argenis Reyes both providing decent production. Nick Evans and Robinson Cancel are nothing special, but the Mets seem inclined to give Evans a few looks at the big league level, and as far as Cancel is concerned, well, they would otherwise just be throwing away the rest of the post-game buffet.

Area of need: catcher?

This one's a trick, because the Mets don't actually need to acquire a new catcher; they just need to play their best catcher more often. That means more time on the pine for Brian Schneider and more cracks at the starting lineup for Ramon Castro. Here is my entire argument:

Ramon Castro: .290/.365/.538
Brian Schneider: .247/.337/.300

So, as long as Jerry Manuel continues to read this blog I think the Mets will be fine at catcher. Or, at least, have the RSS feed in his Google Reader. Either or.

In summation and in conclusion: improve the corner outfield and bench if doing so would come at minimal cost to the farm system. A solid reliever would be nice, but given the going rate of solid relievers I would be more inclined to go with what we've got or, possibly, promote from within. Perhaps Eddie Camacho, Eude Brito or Eddie Kunz -- all currently with Binghamton -- could be given a shot. They can't be much worse than Carlos Muniz has been. Stay the course at first base and catcher, giving more playing time to Castro at the latter.

One lousy single from Brad Hawpe is all that separated the Mets from the franchise's first no-hitter. I don't really care so much that the Mets have never had one. I'll take the Mets' two World Series over however many no-nos the Astros have had since 1962. Don't get me wrong: it'd be nice to get one, and it'll be really exciting and I'll scream like a schoolgirl, but I don't really lament the fact that there's never been one. The Mets have had a zillion one-hitters, and with just a tiny bit of luck they'd probably have three or four no-hitters by now. But they don't, and they didn't get one on Saturday either.

Tangibly speaking, what they got was just as good: a win, pushing their current streak to eight straight victories and moving them to within a half-game of the Phillies for first place in the NL East. I don't want to say that this seemed unfathomable a week ago, because a week ago the we were in the middle of watching the series with the Phillies and imagining how great it would be to win the last three games and wind up 2.5 games out. But that's just what happened, and then five more wins after that. The Phillies are sputtering a bit and the Cardinals aren't playing so hot, so the Mets are actually just 1.5 games back of the Wild Card. All of this is heady talk when we're only 94 games into the season, but if it was fathomable a week ago it was certainly unfathomable a couple of weeks ago.

Whatever happens tomorrow, the Mets can finish the scheduled first half of the season no worse than a game and a half out of first, and could conceivably head into the All-Star break in first place (!). It's easy to get wrapped up in all of the winning, but you're never really as good as you look when you're on a hot streak and never quite as bad as when you're on a cold streak. The Mets are awesome right now: the starting pitching has been great, the bullpen has been great, the situational hitting has been great, the role players have been great. Is Fernando Tatis going to hit like this all year? Has Mike Pelfrey figured it all out? Is Aaron Heilman back to normal?

Hey, when everybody's playing great there isn't a lot to complain about. The gripers stay away and we're all happy. I'm not going to say the Mets are doing it all with smoke and mirrors, because they are legitimately playing terrific baseball. They've won some squeakers and maybe had some good luck along the way, but great hitting, pitching and unembarrassing fielding is a rock solid formula for moving up in the standings. Moises Alou is probably done for the year, but we really weren't counting on him to contribute much anyway. Ryan Church may be back sooner rather than later, as his recent dizzy spells have been attributed to migraines and not post-concussion issues. Hell, Orlando Hernandez and Angel Pagan are both making rehab starts with St. Lucie. Neither would have a tremendous impact on this team, but both could be useful parts down the stretch.

It could all fall apart tomorrow, but right now it's a lot of fun to watch the Mets play ball, and I guess that's all I really wanted to be able to say. Go out there and win tomorrow and we end the half on a high note.

Big winners: Pedro Martinez, +21.8% WPA, Carlos Muniz, +13.8% WPA
Big losers: Nick Evans, -6.7% WPA, Argenis Reyes, -4.9% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Iannetta double-play in 4th, +10.6% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Evans strikeout with bases loaded in 4th, -6.7% WPA
Total pitcher WPA: +48.7%
Total batter WPA: +1.3%

Game Thread Roll Call

Nice job by Reg Dunlop; his effort in the game thread embiggens us all.