Thursday Morning Applesauce: Mets Lose Again, Beltran Can't Skip Team Visit To Walter Reed

It was another disappointing game for Mets fans last night. Edwin Jackson was on top of his game, and the Mets offense couldn't get a whole lot going against him. Adam LaRoche also managed to climb out of his 0-for-13 slump, belting a 3-run shot in the Nats win. The great start the Mets have had to the season kind of makes you forget that they have little starting pitching depth until their big young arms are ready. It's hard to feel like Jeremy Hefner is going to be a guy that gives you a reasonable chance to win every 5th outing. The box score for this one can be found here.

It's amazing what a little unexpected success will do to the media's expectations. The Post this morning ran an article about this being the first signs of a "collapse". Frankly, it would have to be a pretty poor finish to the season to consider any results a collapse. Hanging around and being fun to watch shouldn't suddenly make this team into favorites, the same problems still exist that we knew about before the season started.

The Mets made their annual visit to Walter Reed yesterday. With Carlos Beltran TRAIDed and Ollie and Luis gone, the media didn't seem to have any sort of bad apple story to run with this season. It's kind of refreshing to see very little in the way of negative media concerning the team this season. Speaking of positive stories, Jeff Bradley had nothing but positive things to write about the amazing R.A. Dickey.

Much of the focus on youngsters the last several days has been on the MLB Draft. With that out of the way, many will be getting back to the actual play in the minors. MLB.com ran an article about the power arms coming through the Mets system at the moment. It's certainly nice to see them starting to get some attention from the national media, as the future certainly appears to be bright.

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There were two other games in our division last night. The southern teams in the NL East squared off, with the Braves taking a 2-1 victory over the Marlins. The Phillies couldn't join them in the win column, dropping another game to the Dodgers and losing even more ground in the division. It's nice to see that Omar Minaya 2.0 isn't having any more success with the TRAID everything for expensive old men approach than the original did. It's especially satisfying when looking at the truly awful state of their farm system at the moment.

Bullpen Banter had a few thoughts on the first round of the draft and the supplemental round. I have a hard time disagreeing with any of their thoughts on the Mets early portion of the draft. While they didn't take any boom or bust guys, a team with the type of budget we should have can get a lot of value from having safer, solid young players coming through the system.

Scott Boras wasn't happy with the draft. It's hard to really criticize any of his comments, as teams certainly didn't take the top talent on their board as often as we've seen in the past. FanGraphs looked a little deeper into the run on signable players from rounds 7-10. It's worth noting that the Mets took college seniors with both their 9th and 10th round selections.

Zack Greinke won again at Miller Park last night. While wins are a pretty useless stat, it's still kind of cool to see things like this happen.

Finally for today, Kila Ka'aihue was DFA'd yesterday immediately after the birth of his twins. He's struggled in Oakland this year, but absolutely raked in AAA. With the struggles of Ike Davis, I might consider taking a flier on Ka'aihue. I bet Keith would love filling out that scorecard.