The Mets have a lot of problems right now, the least of which is probably the performance of their fifth starter. However, has anyone else noticed that Nelson Figueroa has been -- not to get too technical here -- pretty effing crummy of late? He was the Princess of Flushing after his first two starts against the Brewers and Nationals, but he has been mostly dreadful over his last four starts.

Date	IP	H	BB	R	GmSc
4/22	5.0	7	5	3	38
4/27	5.1	7	3	3	42
5/6	5.0	8	5	5	30
5/12	5.0	5	5	6	36

A little arithmetic gives us 20.1 innings pitched over those last four starts, including 17 runs allowed, 18 walks, 27 hits and three Mets losses. That's more than two baserunners every inning and an RA of more than 7.5. I realize that Figgy got off to a good start, and I don't enjoy ragging on him because he's a good guy and a fun story. Nevertheless, you've got a tough row to hoe if you're going to argue that he is really giving the Mets a good chance to win every time out. Or any time out, for that matter.

Pedro Martinez is throwing in Port St. Lucie, but there is no immediate timetable for his return and I think many would be surprised if he returned before June. Tony Armas is pitching pretty well in New Orleans. Despite a 1-3 record, he has a 3.02 ERA and a solid 36-to-11 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 47.2 innings.

The Mets are said to be considering calling up Adam Bostick to pitch on Wednesday, though he hasn't been anything special in seven starts this season. His 3.83 ERA is acctually second on the team to Armas, though the 26 strikeouts and 16 walks in 40 innings is hardly the stuff of legend. Claudio Vargas has made two starts since being called up to Triple-A and, though his 4.91 ERA is uninspiring, his 11-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 11 innings is a good start.

Freddy Garcia is out there, but he won't be ready until July at the earliest.

(what's this?)

Mr. Met: Damion Easley, +13.6%
Mr. Regret: Nelson Figueroa, -41.9%
(Non-)Clutchiest Plate Appearance: Easley homerun off Perez, +10.6%
(Non-)Clutchiest Pitch: Flores 2-run double off Figueroa, -24.5%
WPA by Offense: +3.5%
WPA by Pitchers: -53.5%
WPA by Opponent: +0.0%

• If there was ever any doubt before, it should be clear as Crystal Gravy that Jorge Sosa needs to hit the road. The Mets will have to eat $1.5 million or so, but to keep him on the roster at the expense of Joe Smith is quite simply bad baseball. Matt Wise is ready to come off the disabled list and the Mets need to make a decision; let's hope they make the right one.
• Smith's presence in the bullpen is even more critical in light of Duaner Sanchez's recent poor outings and Aaron Heilman's ongoing struggles.
• Billy Wagner struck out the side in a meaningless ninth inning. When you look at closers around the league crumbling before our very eyes you really start to recognize what a terrific signing Wagner turned out to be. Four years and $40+ million for a 34-year-old closer seemed like a lot of money at the time, but he really is one of the few dominant, dependable closers in baseball.

The shine appears to have come off of Nelson Figueroa, who has walked twelve batters to just eight strikeouts over his past three starts, failing to break a 42 game score in any of those outings. Things were looking up after his first two starts of the season, as Figgy posted a 13-to-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio and notched individual game scores of 64 and 68. It was a feel-good story for everyone involved: from the fans, to Figgy's family celebrating in Billy Wagner's luxury box at Shea, to Figgy himself.

Did you think it would last forever? These last few starts have been a window into why Figueroa was out of Major League Baseball for five years. His season ERA is up to 4.81 and the odds are pretty good that it'll keep going up, especially if he continues to allow more than two baserunners every inning. I like him, and I continue to root for him, and I still think he's probably a better option in the starting rotation than Jorge Sosa. One of them is likely to get the boot once Matt Wise is ready to come off the disabled list, something that could happen as soon as Friday. The alternative would be to send Joe Smith back to New Orleans, but, unlike Sosa, Smith actually adds something to the bullpen picture. Sosa seemingly only adds runs to the other team's docket.

The Mets still seem to be in Figueroa's corner, though with every start he continues to detract from his own case. He got a bit unlucky with the Blake DeWitt inside-the-parker last night, but even if Ryan Church immediately recognized that the ball had stayed in the yard DeWitt probably winds up on third. David Wright's throwing error on the subsequent play would have chased DeWitt home anyway, so Church's confusion doesn't absolve Figueroa of that extra run allowed.

Pitching aside, the Mets' offense was pucking fathetic last night. They had baserunners galore, but went something like 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position, with Wright responsible for two of those missed opportunities -- both strikeouts -- including one in the bottom of the eighth. Overall the Mets struck out twelve times, including four times looking (!), which is pretty amazing, I think.

The whole offense looks terrible right now. Church and Brian Schneider are both hitting over .300 and, though batting average isn't the go-to stat it once was, it's at least some indication of how well someone is swinging the bat. The Mets' regulars who weren't with the Nationals last season are hitting .260, .265, .250, .216, .232 and .219. Some of them are drawing walks and getting on base in other ways, but those batting averages are ghastly. Tim McCarver must be rolling over in his grave.

Mr. Met: Brian Schneider, +9.7%
Mr. Regret: Nelson Figueroa, -29.6%
(Non-)Clutchiest Plate Appearance: Castillo strikeout (looking!) to end the game, -14.3%
(Non-)Clutchiest Pitch: DeWitt ISTP homerun off Figueroa, -29.1%
WPA by Offense: -33.1%
WPA by Pitchers: -16.9%
WPA by Opponent: +0.0%

If this was supposed to be a statement series for the Mets, then I guess the Mets are saying, "We're good enough to hang with the best pitchers on the best team in the league. And our bullpen is kinda iffy." We'll talk about the former first because I like to get the good news out of the way before before turning my attention to the morosity.

By almost any measure, the Diamondbacks are the best team in the National League right now. They have the best run differential by far, a terrific starting rotation (that's about to add Max Scherzer to its ranks tomorrow), an incredible core of young position players, and a surprisingly effective bullpen. Their skipper won manager of the year last season, they have a progressive young general manager, and they have all of the pieces in place to remain a National League stalwart for the foreseeable future. The Mets had plenty of question marks heading into this series, but they came in and played two-and-a-half very good games and managed to come away with a series victory.

They roughed up a hobbled Micah Owings on Friday and had Johan Santana going for them against Dan Haren on Sunday, winning the bookends against two pretty tough pitchers. They even managed to keep themselves in the game against Brandon Webb on Saturday before Duaner Sanchez's meltdown put things out of reach. Ironically, the worst thing to happen to the Mets this weekend may have been the injury to Orlando Hudson, whose absence opened the door for Augie Ojeda's six-RBI game in Arizon's only win. Mind you, this is the same Augie Ojeda who had 45 RBIs in his 582 career plate appearances prior to Saturday.

As for the bullpen, despite a team reliever ERA of 3.56 (5th in the NL), the relief corps is not without its share of problems. Billy Wagner has been ridiculously good, and has turned out to be a remarkable free agent signing despite his mysterious and quite possibly dubious injury problems at the end of last season. Other than Wagner, there's very little dependability in the 'pen. Their overall performance has been pretty good, and Pedro Feliciano has been good in astonishingly limited action, but there's nobody else out there that I have tremendous confidence in right now.

Aaron Heilman has a very strong track record, but he looked feeble and peckish through the first five weeks of the season. Scott Schoeneweis has been surprisingly effective, but hasn't even thrown ten innings this season. Joe Smith has been pretty good, too, but has lately been prone to spurts of dominance punctuated by fits of crappiness. Sanchez had been good until his barf-worthy outing this weekend, and Jorge Sosa, team leader in wins with four, is, well, Jorge Sosa.

I guess morose was a little heavy-handed. There are definitely some nice pieces there to complement Wagner, but the lynchpin has to be Heilman. I still don't know what to expect out of Sanchez in the long-term; aside from his recent outing he has shown solid control and very nice break on his off-speed pitches. His fastball has been in the high-eighties for the most part, but with a little conditioning he should be able to keep it in the low-nineties with good consistency. I still feel like he's as likely to pitch a 1-2-3 inning as have his arm fall off entirely. Heilman's fall from grace has been disturbing, and his lack of control and proclivity for coughing up homeruns of late have made him impossible to turn to in high-leverage situations. If he is maskig some injury then he needs to fess up so he can take some time off and come back to help the team. If he's just got a case of the yips, well, get over it son; this team needs you.

And... yay! Win Probability Added graphs are back!

Mr. Met: Johan Santana, +27.8%
Mr. Regret: Luis Castillo, -11.0%
(Non-)Clutchiest Plate Appearance: Carlos Delgado fielder's choice/error, +19.4%
(Non-)Clutchiest Pitch: Mark Reynolds RBI single off of Joe Smith, -22.2%
WPA by Offense: +19.9%
WPA by Pitchers: +12.3%
WPA by Opponent: +17.8%

News fluttered in prior to Tuesday's game against the Pirates that Moises Alou did *not* have a fracture in his ankle bone thingy and that he might be ready to come off Medicare the disabled list. Endy Chavez's three hits against the Bucs notwithstanding, the return of a healthy-ish Peehands McGee would provide a huge lift for an offense that ranks near the bottom of the league in a number of categories. The over/under on 2008 games played by Alou is around 60, but now's as good a time as any to get those out of the way so the Mets can go sign Barry Bonds for the pennant run. Or they could just stick with Angel Pagan. See if I care.

As for last night's game, we can all thank the Jebus that the Mets came away with the win. There's little worse than watching a four-hour snoozefest against the Pirates only to cough up a tenuous lead in the ninth inning and ultimately lose the game in spectacular fashion. I can hardly summon the energy to comment on how boring this game actually was, which was an incredible feat in and of itself considering that Johan Santana started the game.

Having just written that, I'll still offer that there were a few items that piqued my interest.

1. Ryan Church

Everyone's favorite silly ignorant erstwhile theologian-ballplayer went 1-for-5, but contribute a massively exciting 2-run homer that knotted the game in the fourth inning. Most importantly, it gave me an opportunity to shout "Time to go to Church!" for all to hear and enjoy (all = Kim and the dogs). For her part, Kim was a good sport and even repeated my clever slogan, to the continued puzzlement of the dogs. Whatever. Those humps never appreciated my wry punny wit anyway.

2. Jose Reyes

Hoo-ray for Jo-sé! Reyes had a tremendous game, going 3-for-3 with a triple, a run, a rib, and two-plus walks. He also added a caught stealing to his season register (three now) and another error to same (five now). The error indirectly led to the Pirates' tying run off Billy Wagner in the ninth and directly led to me having to suffer through two more innings of Mets-Pirates "baseball".

Speaking of Reyes's walks, I smugly referred to his three walks as "two-plus" because I really struggle with giving a hitter credit for intentional passes. The hitter should certainly get credit for it in some manner, but giving him points in the discipline column just for standing there seems disingenuous, especially considering how important walks are in gauging a player's development and overall approach at the plate.

To me, the subject of intentional versus unintentional walks is not an insignificant one, and most baseball stat sites do expose the divergence if you dig deep enough. For instance, Reyes "drew" 77 walks in 2007, up from 53 the year before; an increase of 24. However, if we only consider unintentional walks, the increase is just 17 (47 to 61). Look at Ryan Howard: considered a patient hitter (albeit one who strikes out prodigiously), Howard walked 107 times last season. Great, except that 35 of those were intentional. So, Howard really walked 72 times on his own, just 11 more than Reyes. If anything, intentional walks are more a reflection of power than patience, though there's no easy way to track them that way.</digression>

3. Luis Castillo

Luca went 0-for-2 but picked up three walks, raising his on-base percentage to .382. Sure, his slugging lags well behind at just .303, but at least he's doing something, and a walk is just as good as a bunt single.

4. Jorge Sosa

Woot, no runs allowed!

5. Carlos Delgado

There's the big guy we all know and love. Any boost he might have picked up from his big game on Sunday was surely washed away by Monday's rain, because by Tuesday he was back to his old sucky self. I'm not closing the book on him just yet, but I'm also only leaving it open a crack so someone might actually think I'm still reading it.

Quick turnaround to an afternoon game on Wednesday before the Mets head west to play the Diamondbacks. They're likely to get Micah Owings, Brandon Webb and Dan Haren. Woot?

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.

I just got back from the oral surgeon following the completely-painless extraction of a couple of wisdom teeth. I'm a bit of a worrier when it comes to this sort of thing, and I have to admit that the anticipation of the procedure was at least fifty times worse than the actual performance of same. The whole thing took maybe ten minutes, and all I felt was some light scraping and some pressure as my teeth were being wriggled free. The extractions were followed by a trip to CVS to pick up some vicodin and then a stop at the grocery store for drinkable yogurt, pudding, applesauce and soup. I just popped my first vicodin and I have to say that I'm well on my way to Hollywood elite status.

Thankfully, the prescription painkillers have left me blissfully numb, with nary a care for the Mets' stupendous bungling of last night's game against the Nationals. Now, obviously the Mets shan't be expected to win all eighteen-some-odd games from Washington this year, but the pitching really stunk up the joint something fierce, as Oliver Perez was unable to hang on to a three-run fifth-inning lead. Perez and Aaron Heilman combined to allow seven runs in the fifth and sixth innings, effectively putting the game out of reach. "Effectively" became "undoubtedly" when Jorge Sosa coughed up three more runs in the seventh, and the Mets coasted from there en route to a 10-5 drubbing.

The offense doesn't get a free pass in this one, as they collectively stranded five runners in scoring position and failed to come up with the big hit on numerous occasions. Carlos Delgado took another oh-fer as he watched his average plummet to .198. Jose Reyes went 1-for-5 and is batting .259 while David Wright went 0-for-4 with a walk as his average fell below .300 for the season (of course, unlike Delgado or Reyes, Wright has 19 walks and 15 extra-base hits, so his overall batting line is plenty healthy).

I'd have more to say, but my motor skills are rapidly deteriorating. The good news is that I believe the server problems we've been having the past two days are behind us, so we'll have a regular swag contest and game thread tonight. So if you'll excuse me, I have some heavy machinery to go operate.

The site was down for a loooong time last night, and we actually missed our first game thread in the three-plus years of Amazin' Avenue. While that fact saddens me for a number of reasons, it also made me think twice about having a game thread for tonight's game since the Mets are officially 1-for-1 when AA goes threadless. The reason for the downtime was a hardware failure following a recent server upgrade for all of the SBN hosted sites. Our incredible tech team determined the cause fairly quickly, but it took quite a bit of time to make sure there were no other points of failure.

Unlike our servers, the Mets had comparatively few points of failure last night, as they put together a very strong effort from start to finish. Yes, it was against the Nationals, again, but the immediate need was to generate some good feelings in the clubhouse and amongst an increasingly frustrated fanbase, and a nice 7-2 victory will quell the torrent of complaints for one day at least.

Carlos Delgado was appropriately dropped in the order from fifth to sixth, with Ryan Church and his hot bat sliding into the five-hole. Church went 2-for-5 with a couple of ribs, but the change did little for Delgado, who went 1-for-5 with an RBI-groundout, dropping his average to .208. His .589 OPS is just 43 points higher than his career slugging percentage of .546.. He is an offensive and defensive sinkhole at a position that expects considerable offense and passable defense. I don't verily believe that he is a sub-.600 OPS hitter at this point in his career, but his days of .900 OPSes, and possibly even .850 OPSes are squarely in the rearview.

Ironically, the only regulars who didn't collect at least one hit last night were franchise cornerstones Wright and Reyes (though Wright did draw a walk). Even The Dominican Out Machine™ Luis Castillo collected a couple of singles (and might've had a third if his sharp liner in the seventh didn't stay up long enough for Milledge to run it down). For all of Castillo's faults -- and there have been many to this point -- he has drawn enough walks to give him a respectable .343 on-base percentage despite his .246 batting average. He is slugging an anemic .262, but has swiped five bases in as many attempts, so that's something I guess.

Johan Santana was terrific, allowing just two runs on a two-out double by Tim Redding in the fourth and otherwise shutting down a nothing-special Washington offense. He wasn't unusually dominant -- just four strikeouts in seven innings -- but he only walked one batter and went 2-for-2 at the plate with two doubles and a walk. Duaner Sanchez continues to look sharp, pitching another perfect inning, and Billy Wagner closed things out in the ninth, walking a batter but also picking up a couple of whiffs.

I'm completely disgusted by this series, and have little to say on the subject that won't cause me to murder kittens. Here are some numbers to make you even more depressed.

What	Mets	Cubs
Runs	2	15
Hits	10	22
Extra-base hits	2	5
Errors	2	0
Wild Pitches	2	0
Homeruns	0	3
Pitches by starters	201	208
Pitches by relievers	134	65
Runs allowed by starters	5	2
Runs allowed by relievers	10	0
2-out RBI	0	12
Games won	0	2

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.

Beating the Phillies is certainly fun, even when it takes seven pitchers to do so.

The arms

Oliver Perez threw 5.2 scoreless innings and struck out seven: Good. He also walked five, including Pedro Feliz on four pitches: Bad. I'm not going to harp on it just yet because the results have been good, but Ollie has walked 12 batters in 21.2 innings this season and sports a gaudy 1.48 WHIP. I'm no baseball expert, but allowing a a baserunner-and-a-half every inning isn't a great recipe for success.

Pedro Feliciano was bad, allowing a single to Greg Dobbs and a walk to Eric Bruntlett (!) to load the bases with one out in the bottom of the eighth. Feliciano left without having retired a batter, and was relieved by Aaron Heilman. Heilman induced a flyball out to left that Angel Pagan bungled into an RBI single. The Bulldog shook off the lousy defense behind him and came back to strike out Geoff Jenkins and Jayson Werth, co-authors of the forthcoming book, How Not to Get the Run in from Third: Ridiculous Spellings of Common First Names and Other Astute Observations.

The sticks

The Mets' 4-5-6 hitters went 0-for-12 with no runs batted in, but their 1-2-3 hitters went 6-for-12 with all four runs batted in. Despite apparently rediscovering his allergy to walks, Jose Reyes continues to swing the bat well since his talk with Carlos Beltran a few days ago. Interestingly, Beltran has been in a funk ever since, so maybe Reyes needs to impart some of his own advice. On the field, Reyes picked up a double and a two-run homer in four trips to the plate, scoring two runs and igniting the offense as only he can.

Luis Castillo reached base twice in four plate-apps. Oliver Perez reached base twice in two plate-apps. Just some food for thought. Meanwhile, Brian Schneider continues to reach base at a solid rate, despite each of his 16 hits this season going for singles and nothing more. A .383 OBP from your catcher is a nice luxury, but the zero extra-base hits still leave his OPS below the .700 mark. Even Paul Lo Duca hit the occasional two-bagger.

Anything else?

Anyone suggesting that Pat Burrell be the answer at first next year should Mark Teixeira sign elsewhere should consider this: He hit .220/.370/.424 away from CBP last season and .295/.430/586 within the friendly confines. He *did* hit very nice .254/.383/.517 on the road in 2006, so maybe last year was an aberration. Burrell has patience and power, and a lead glove to boot. The Phillies have no choice but to play him in left, but the Mets are likely to have a vacancy next year at first. Delgado almost certainly won't be back, and the Mets may balk at a $20+ million price tag for Teixeira. A shorter, cheaper deal to someone like Burrell could make a lot of sense for the Mets, especially with Teix going for 7/$150 or more.