Pedro and the Padres

The Friars come to town this week, followed by the Dodgers. I'm planning on being at Wednesday's game and my usual Saturday game for game numbers 24 and 25 on the season. That's more than Carl Pavano. This team is finally playing with some fire and energy, winning six of their last seven. I expect them to continue this stretch through these next two teams, who may be playoff contenders, but are not in the Mets class. More importantly, I think they'll win more games than the Phillies and Braves over this six game stretch, bringing their division lead to at least six before they go play both of those two teams.

Jeff Conine is on his way, and I really could care less. I hope this isn't a statement on how Delgado is feeling overall, because despite his 2007, I'd rather Delgado at first any day. Castro and Lo Duca healing up is another thing I'm waiting for, despite Mike Difelice doing as well as he is doing. Lo Duca was upset that he went on the DL in the first place, so I expect him to come back healthy and angry, which I suspect is when he's at his best. Pedro Martinez is climbing the ladder, and I expect he'll be here before we know it. He's itching for the competitive baseball of the major leagues, and even though by the time he gets here we may be already putting the finishing touches on the division, I expect that competitive fire to come through in the playoffs.

Endy Chavez could be back as early as tonight. As far as bench impact players go, he's a good one. He's a fan favorite too, and maybe his reappearance is all the Mets need to start winning at home again. I'd love to finally break the 4-win plateau with some crushing victories at home over the Padres. I'd even be there for the 5th one should the game go well tonight, and with John Maine on the mound looking to redeem himself after a couple of iffy starts, I expect tonights game to be a good clean win.

Healing and Growing

Where Do We Go From Here?

We were 4.5 games in front when May ended. Now we are 1.5 games in front. We've won three games in that stretch. It's depressing, and hard to be optimistic lately, but if there was ever a reason, that's it. We went a stretch where we won three of 15 games. Not even the 1964 Mets played that badly over the season, so when we only lose three games in the standings it gives me faith that even if we continued to play like the 1964 Mets, we'd probably maintain the lead.

Now before all you worry warts use that as ammunition, we're not going to play like that team for long. It's just not going to happen, we're not going to continually leave dozens of runners on base. If A-Rod could get over that adversity, surely the Mets and Carlos Beltran can too. Our pitching isn't going to be this bad forever. El Duque probably was due for a bad start or two, and Glavine is a veteran, he'll figure this out and bounce back. Meanwhile, Oliver Perez is making a case to start as many possible big games as humanly possible. John Maine hasn't been excellent like he was in April, but he hasn't been horrible either. He's learning to minimize the damage when he doesn't have it, and maximize the innings when he does. Jorge Sosa has had two bad starts, and even if we never got another one from him, he's been a big contributor.

The Mets have growing, and healing to do. Pedro's well on his way to returning. Delgado, whether from some sort of residual pain or weakness from his surgery, or whatever it is, isn't this bad. He'll be good again, even if it's only for September and October. Beltran will heal his left quadricep back to 90% and be good again. Gomez looks like he'll only grow and get better. I think having him up here with Veteran hitters and runners is going to help loads more then playing consistantly in New Orleans. Valentin still is probably aching a bit. Alou will eventually heal, as will Lastings Milledge, for whatever he's worth. Scott Schoeneweis will either learn how to pitch effectively with his injury, Willie will learn how and when he can use him to maximize effectiveness, or hopefully he'll be forced to get surgery and heal. Mota hasn't looked good, and he's one of the more legitimate concerns in my eyes. I'm in favor of some auditions of our minor league relievers, and I imagine Minaya has been on the phone constantly trying to plug some gaps and fine tune this team.

I see the signs of the offense breaking out of this slump, the problem is that the pitching has fallen apart recently. When Glavine and Hernandez pitch them out of games early, it must be hard mentally to overcome a slump and get some hits. I don't expect it to be much longer.

Earlier in the season we had our share of problems too. Orlando Hernandez went on the DL, Valentin wasn't hitting that well, then went on the DL. Delgado and Wright went through some slumps, Pelfrey wasn't able to ever pitch well enough to win. Heilman hasn't pitched very well at all. With all this, the Mets still came out and won. Injuries happen, slumps happen, and the Mets will overcome that. They'll have a stretch where they'll be better than we've seen all year, and while many of you will still be waiting by the ledge for the right time to jump, others of us will enjoy it.

And please, do not boo Carlos Beltran tonight. He's slumping, but so is the whole team. It's not his fault solely, and rather then getting on him, which we know gets to him, how about we give him the benefit of the doubt. The Mets need some confidence right now, and booing him is only going to hurt that.

Power Depletion

The Mets offense was shut down for the third time this week, this time it wasn't against a Cy Young award winner, but Doug Davis. We can lose Jose Valentin for a while, no big deal. Moises Alou goes down? Well we expected that, and we've got a bunch of outfield prospects we want to play with, and it's always nice to get Endy Chavez some regular time. Shawn Green's going on the DL? Well maybe one of these prospects actually gets hot for a while, or David Newhan prospers with some regular starts like Jose Valentin did last year. Carlos Beltran bruised his knee? Well now it's starting to look a little darker. Our offense was very depleted this weekend, but we never made it easy. Oliver Perez and John Maine both pitched well to start, but ultimately fell off the pace before the opposing pitcher did. The Mets failed to work counts to try to get into the bullpen to find somebody hittable, and they weren't able to capitalize on most of the few situations that presented themselves. Still, 35-20 is a great record.

The weekend can basically be summed up by the 8th inning on Sunday. The Mets had four regulars playing; Reyes walked, Wright singles, and Lo Duca walked. This shows how the Mets regular offense can manage to get on base, while the rest of the fill-ins couldn't get them home.

Now lets get to the optimism. The Mets pitched very well. John Maine and Oliver Perez kept them in games, which is what we've wanted out of them. Maine's been showing that ability all season, while Perez has a couple of meltdowns that were problematic. Him being able to stay in the game, even after some struggles is important And then there is Jorge Sosa. What a great year he's having after not making the team. He had one poor start, which is probably the only thing that'll keep him from winning pitcher of the month for May. The real question, while way too premature, is what happens when Pedro returns? I know the Mets signed Aaron Sele to a minor league contract, but I have no idea if that means he's able to be optioned down to New Orleans if they wanted to switch Sosa into that role when Pedro returned. Fortunately, it's a good problem to have, and it's Omar Minaya and Willie Randolph's problem to deal with. Another consideration is to shop Sosa around, but I don't know that the Mets have any glaring holes that are desperate for filling. Getting some minor league depth in pitching or second base is always nice, but it's not a priority or urgency in any way.

Beltran will be back Tuesday, hopefully Alou will be too. Valentin will also be back before long. It seems clear that Carlos Gomez is going down, and at least Newhan or Ben Johnson. It would also appear that Ruben Gotay will go down when Valentin returns, as you can only have so many back-up infielder bench guys, and we all know that Franco's not going anywhere. Once the lineup starts coming back together, I expect the Mets to put together a real win streak, where they go out and dominate the competition.

I probably won't be at Shea for the Philly series, despite being at over a third of the Met home games this season, which means my 13th Met game probably won't be until June 23rd as part of my Saturday pack. Going three weeks without being at a game almost feels weird with the rate I've been in attendance over the past two years.

Good Signs/Bad Signs

When worry over the Mets ability to beat the Braves resurfaced recently with them dropping the series in Atlanta, I didn't panic. I'm still convinced Atlanta's not a great team, nowhere near as good as the Mets, and it's just coincidence that they've played badly when we've faced them. Call it a let down from the Yankee series or whatever you want, but they can't win them all. Two days later and the Mets are already further in front then they were before they faced them, so they can just keep winning series and widening the distance.

When the Braves get into a funk, it's different then when the Mets do. The Braves have now lost three of their last four series, and sure they've run into some teams playing well, and some teams that are just good, but when a good team would still be able to beat the Nationals when they're playing well. The Phillies on the other hand, haven't been playing that well and recently lost their second closer of the season in Brett Myers.

So again, I'm not worried. To reinforce my not-worryingness, some good signs came out of this series with the Marlins. Carlos Delgado remembered how to hit the ball, hard. Jose Reyes had some hard hits, and was robbed by Miguel Cabrera. David Wright didn't get hits, but he did get three walks with no strikeouts, and finally John Maine started pitching pretty well again. He did walk some people, but I think he's making a case that May, not April, was the aberration.

Of course, there were bad signs too. Shawn Green and Carlos Gomez hurting themselves would be up there. Gomez was fun to watch, but even if his injury's minor, you're not going to keep a guy with that much speed up in the majors with a hamstring pull. There has been a lot of calls for Shawn Green's head, mainly because of his defense, and Endy Chavez should continue to get a lot of playing time, especially before Moises Alou returns in the near future. David Newhan will be getting some more chances to prove he's valuable here, with a couple of starts. Otherwise it's likely we may see Ben Johnson from New Orleans up here in the near future. Hopefully Newhan can come through, Shawn Green and Moises Alou were big parts of the Mets offense, and even though they can get by without them, it's never good to lose that production. Hopefully Endy Chavez and David Newhan can have some good games and some consistency as the Mets continue trying to widen their lead in the NL East.