Well whaddaya know? The Mets proved me wrong in so many ways I'm inclined to think that they read my pregame comments and moved to act in complete and utter discordance of same. Here are some of the things I flurked up.

The Mets would lose the game

This one had all the makings of an old-school Mets-Braves bloodbath, with the ever-confident Braves playing the part of the Braves and the downtrodden Mets playing the part of the Mets. In this performance, Intrepid hurler John Smoltz would be played by the crusty and seemingly-agless John Smoltz, while Nelson Figueroa would be astutely cast as Anonymous Met run cougher-upper.

We've seen it a hundred times before, yet on this day the principals eschewed the same tired script and applied their improvisational background to craft a scene that was at once refreshing and natural. John Smoltz had nothing resembling his best stuff (except against David Wright), and the Mets plated four runs in four innings before Smoltz was driven from the game with a sour puss and hurt feelings. Coughing up an epic blast to Raul Casanova can have that effect, but more on suavely-named Mets catchers later.

Smoltz's fastball was noticeably slower than we've grown accustomed to; perhaps as much as five miles per hour, enough to transform the Braves' ace from "godless killing machine" to "pretty good pitcher that we can kinda wail on". Smoltz's control was spotty to boot, and the Mets took advantage to the tune of seven hits -- three for extra bases -- and two walks before Smoltz's premature ouster after just four innings of work.

For his part, Figueroa hung in there long enough to win his second game of the season, but his performance was not the sort of thing we write short stories about. Seven hits plus three walks (equals ten baserunners!) in 5.1 innings was enough to get the job done today, but a pitching line like that would normally be a 4-1 loss when you're facing Smoltz. All of this is not to rag on Figueroa; he has been a pleasant surprise for the Mets, exceedingly adequate as the fifth horse in the stable. If we consider the laundry list of has-beens and never-will-bes that the Mets have miscast as starting pitchers over the past few seasons, Figueroa has been a good smell in Stinkville. For those with shorter memories than my own -- either by choice or otherwise -- here are some of those retreads and ne'ertreads:

Kazuhisa Ishii (2005)
Alay Soler (2006)
Dave Williams (2006)
Jose Lima (2006)
[G|J]eremi Gonzalez (2006)
Brian Lawrence (2007)
Chan Ho Park (2007

Figueroa has already outperformed each and every one of those losers, and though the shine might come off this turd at some point, anything Figgy does from here on out is gravy. He has been far better than even my best-case expectations.

The bottom of the lineup would be teh sux0rs

I was 73% wrong about this. Endy Chavez did his part to suck up plate-apps and spit back outs, though he did manage to draw a walk, an event that should equally horrify both man and child. Figueroa picked up his first base-knock in fifteen years with his infield single in the second, so that's a base hit more than I thought he would get.

Number one catcher Raul Casanova (crikey!) had his best game as a Met, going 3-for-4 including a two-run homer off of Smoltz, raising his OPS 213 points in the process. His offense was looking sparse to that point, and it may very well stumble back into uselessness starting tomorrow, but for one afternoon he made us forget that our regular numero uno is actually Brian Schneider, staph infection and all. Casanova has also thrown out two-of-three would-be base-stealers, a percentage rivaling that of my hyphen-usage in this very sentence (seriously; go back and re-read it). So he's got that going for him.

But enough about the Figueroas and Casanovas of the world. The real star of the game was Carlos Delgado, who broke out of his weeks-long slump with two homeruns: one to the opposite field and one mammoth shot up the scoreboard in right-center. He also picked up two walks -- one intentional -- and on foam-finger day at Shea he was 1-for-1 in allegorical middle-fingers-to-the-fans, sending their pleas for a curtain call to the dugout answering machine.

Gary Cohen and Ron Darling ruminated on Delgado's decision for a solid ten minutes, and ultimately Cohen came to the following salient conclusion: Fans want players to be as animated and emotional as they are. When the Mets lose, fans expect the players to be pissed off, frustrated and otherwise upset. Similarly, when a player like Delgado busts out of a long slump, fans celebrate the relief and excitement of the event and they want the player -- in this case Delgado -- to celebrate along with them. Delgado took a pass, saying after the game that he had only taken two previous curtain calls: when he hit four homeruns with the Blue Jays a few years back and after his 400th homerun in 2006 with the Mets. This wasn't the right time for him, apparently. Of all of the silly and obnoxious things that Mets fans do, I think curtain calls are fun and I generally encourage their solicitation.

Other stuff

Luis Castillo is suddenly swinging a hot bat, picking up three more hits on Sunday including his second extra-base hit of the season, a double in the sixth. He has raised his on-base percentage to a solid .369, though his slugging percentage is a depressingly low .311. He is 6-for-6 in stolen bases, and he has been adroit in the field, so despite a horrendous stretch there he appears to be settling into the role we always thought he would. He will manifestly never hit for any power, ever, but if he can get on base at a .380 pace, swipe some bags and remain defensively adept at second base, then none of us can honestly claim that he's not who we thought he was, to paraphrase the late, great Dennis Green (ed note: Dennis Green is still alive).

So, as I alluded to in the pregame notes, after all of the trials and tribulations of the first four weeks of the season, the Mets are two games over .500 and within shouting distance of first in the NL East. They haven't played well, and their record reflects that, but they play their next three games against a pretty crummy Pirates team, and face the prospect of heading to Arizona next week at least a game or two better than they are now. The Diamondbacks are the best team in the league right now, and unlike last season their run differential actually supports their lofty record. The Mets are right where their run differential says they should be, but they'll likely have to get a lot better than that if they want to outpace their division the rest of the way.

Spring training games -- or, more specifically, player performances in spring training games -- are meaningless, and I don't know that I can stress this point enough. It's easy to get wrapped up in spring stats, to look at Raul Casanova and remark, "Wow, this guy is slugging .629! How the heck could Tampa Bay let this guy go?" The obvious answer, at least to anyone with at least an elementary understanding of sample sizes and random variation, is that Casanova, given a couple hundred plate-apps, would more closely replicate his pathetic career marks of .234/.301/.380 accrued over 1026 at-bats than the .314/.368/.629 that he has hit in an impossibly inconsequential 35 spring at-bats.

Casanova is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of players who have ever had a spring training performance remarkably out of line with their career norms. "But he's in the best shape of his life", a random uninformed friend or possibly Dusty Baker might reply. Perhaps, but to make an ostensibly intelligent roster decision based on such a small number of plate appearances against arbitrary and often woeful competition is lunacy, especially when you consider how much money is riding on the success or failure of baseball teams in general and the Mets in particular.

I don't mean to single out Casanova, whom the Mets might have to promote to begin the season with Ramon Castro probably heading for the disabled list. Casanova might actually be a bad example because, given a blessing of good team health, he wouldn't be competing for a big league spot at all. A better example is the guy who is trying to distinguish himself from the pack in order to slide into a big league role that would really be available to him even if the rest of the team were healthy.

Two guys who *are* competing for an actual spot are Angel Pagan and Brady Clark, both of whom might make the club with Moises Alou out of action for the next month and the Mets' likely inclination to carry an extra position player in the season's early going. Neither is a terrific player, but the Mets don't really have any superior options immediately available to them. Or, at least options that wouldn't require giving up some non-existent minor league talent in return.

The Mets are also trying to finalize their Opening Day bullpen, a task which is still on the "To Do" pile and the results of which may hinge -- somewhat remarkably -- on the principals' performances in the last two exhibition games of the spring. That's right: forget everything anyone has done in their major or minor league careers up until this point. Those large sample sizes collected over a period of months or years? Not arbitrary enough. Instead, let's pick two random games -- say, the next two -- and base some fairly important baseball operations decisions on the decidedly random performances in said two games. It sounds completely ludicrous, but it's exactly what the Mets are doing. To wit:

The Mets don't know [what's going to happen], either. Two exhibition games now remain, and manager Willie Randolph has made it clear that he's willing -- almost eager -- to use both of them. His decisions need perspective; these games will provide it.

The article linked above was written by Anthony DiComo for Mets.com. I can't really tell if DiComo is editorializing something that Randolph has actually said -- that is, that he will base his decision(s) for the final bullpen spot(s) on the microcosmic results of the next two games -- or if this comment is DiComo's alone. I think we know that Randolph hasn't made up his mind yet, and he will really wait to see what happens tomorrow and Saturday before deciding to go one way or another. I don't think that I am exaggerating the truth when I say that Willie Randolph is going to construct the back end of the Mets' bullpen according to the events of two utterly meaningless spring training games. If he weren't, he would have already made his cuts and his promotions at this point. If we assume that he doesn't yet know which relievers will round out the bullpen, then it's pretty clear that everything that happened before today has not provided sufficient empirical evidence to sway him one way or another.

I'm not sure if there's a portmanteau rich enough to describe my feelings about this, but here goes: it's prepoculous. Preposterous and ridiculous. That's right: suck it, Carroll!

"His decisions need perspective; these games will provide it." How? How could they possibly provide any perspective other than that of sheer randomness? If Matt Wise goes out there and pitches like dogshit tomorrow while Mr. 6.46-career-ERA-mostly-as-a-reliever Brian Stokes pitches three scoreless innings, Stokes makes the Opening Day cut and Wise takes a long walk off a short pier? The level of asininity required to make a call like that is beyond comprehension, and yet it is almost certainly going to happen sometime in the next two days. Perhaps multiple times.

All we can do is throw up our hands in unbridled bewilderment and hope that the better players happen to actually perform better in these next two arbitrarily-selected talent showcases.