Mets Morning News: Mets Offense Thinks it's 1912

Meet the Mets

The Mets fell to the Nationals 5-1 as their woes both at home and with the lumber continue. Unsurprisingly, the entirety of the Mets offense came off a 2-0 fastball from a southpaw to Scott Hairston. To add insult to injury, Gio Gonzalez was the winning pitcher, capturing a league-leading 19th win and lowering his ERA to 2.93.

R.A. Dickey will try to answer Gio as he goes for his 19th win tonight against Jordan Zimmermann. Word of advice, R.A., go for the complete game shutout. And in case you wanted to grab a front row seat for another happy Dickey day, good seats are still available.

The Mets struggles at home are well-documented at this point, but Patrick Flood takes us deep inside the numbers to see just how bad the struggles have been. Still think it is just some park effects mixed in with random variation across a small sample size. Either that or someone buried a Chipper Jones jersey under Citi Field during the past offseason.

I should have linked to Greg Prince's farewell to Larry "Chipper" Jones yesterday, but better late than never.

Zack Wheeler talks Zack Wheeler over at Toby Hyde's Mets Minor League Blog. Paul DePodesta adds his two cents as well.

And Howard Megdal wonders how much David Wright's second half struggles might complicate a potential offseason contract extension.

Yesterday at AA

Chris McShane gave his weekly thumbs up or thumbs down to all the Mets position players and recapped last night's entry into the horror movie franchise that is the Mets second half.

And Brock Mahan headed back to 1969 as the Mets capture first place in the NL East for the first time ever.

Around the NL East

Here come the Phillies! No seriously, the Phillies are coming. A 3-1 win over Miami, combined with a Cardinals loss, leaves Philadelphia just 5 games back of the second wild card. Ugh ugh ugh. This is probably going to happen, you guys.

The Braves fell in Milwaukee 4-1, and now the Brewers also find themselves just five back of the Cardinals. I'm rooting for a four-way tie myself. #teamentropy

Over at FanGraphs, Dave Cameron talks about the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns of the Stephen Strasburg shutdown.

Grant Brisbee gushes about Giancarlo Stanton over at Baseball Nation. I'll allow it.

Around MLB

The Reds and Pirates got deep into #weirdbaseball last night before Cincinnati finally pulled things out in fourteen innings. There was also possibly some ugliness in the eighth after Brandon Phillips was hit by a pitch.

Colorado held on for dear life to beat the Giants who are now just five up on the Dodgers in the NL West.

The White Sox smacked around Rick Porcello to extend their lead in the AL Central to three games.

The Cardinals might be getting Chris Carpenter back for the stretch run, but won't be getting Lance Berkman back. If this is the end for Berkman, he had a hell of a career.

Mike Newman breaks down the swing of Royals 2011 first round pick Bubba Starling.

Finally, Beyond the Box Score takes a look at BABIP and FIP for the various base states. This is pretty cool stuff.