What a wild game!  Wow!  I was watching most of it on gameday and once I saw the Mets were down 5-0 I figured this game was over.  But this team actually showed some heart and came from behind and won…barely.

The offense decided to make an appearance and came up big today…especially Ryan Church.  For the second straight game, Church delivered a huge game-winning hit with two outs.  He was so bad for so long, but he’s come up big lately.  His BA is up to .292 and the Mets need his hot bat with the rest of the team so weak.

Tim Redding was awful today.  The guy is so up and down.  You have to figure when Ollie Perez and John Maine come back, Redding is the first guy out of the rotation.  Redding really is so much better than a replacement player.  I’m being sarcastic of course.

Frankie Rodriguez has been shaky lately.  Not good.  He did finish strong in the 10th, but he likely will not be available for the Phillies tomorrow night.

Big two games though as this season looked like it was falling apart.  A nice weekend and all of a sudden they could be back in first place.  As bad as they’ve looked, it’s pretty amazing that’s even possible.

After a nice series against the Cardinals, reality has set back in for Mets fans.  This team just isn’t very good right now.  The Yankees have put on a clinic the past two days and the Mets haven’t been able to even put up a fight.

Tonight was pretty brutal to watch.  I know A.J. Burnett was good, but he wasn’t one-hit good.  It’s really not even worth watching them right now.  They probably have the worst lineup in baseball.

Tomorrow is a pretty huge game…and here’s my bold prediction.  If the Mets offense continues to falter tomorrow, Omar Minaya will get another bat before next week’s Phillies series.  I think it’s become apparent the Mets cannot hold down the fort until their guys come back.  They just don’t have any firepower at all.  Omar has made some moves after the Mets have finished up with the Yankees, most recently firing Rick Down as the hitting coach a couple of seasons ago.  I guess we can just sit and wait.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: I will be in Dallas tomorrow through Wednesday night and won’t have internet access so there will be no posts, shows or e-mail replies until at least Thursday night.  And then I might be away 4th of July weekend so it could be a little bit of a delay until then.  I will try to get a recap post in on Thursday night or Friday morning though before I leave.

What a nice change of pace for tonight.  Not only did the Mets win, but it was a laugher.  There’s only been a handful of those all season.  The story of tonight has to be Fernando Nieve.

I know it’s only three starts, but this guy has been absolutely awesome.  His stuff is great and he looks unhittable at times.  And he’s doing it against some of the best offenses in baseball.  I like to think this isn’t a fluke.  After all the bad stuff that’s happened to this team, imagine if they discovered something out of nowhere in Nieve.  What a huge lift that would be.  And he’s only 26 too.  So maybe something finally clicked with him.  It’s happened in the past with other players although you have to suspect a lot of that might have been steroids.  It’s not probable, but it’s certainly possible that Nieve could turn out to be one of those hidden gems that comes along every once in a while.

On the offensive side, you see 11 runs and wonder why can’t they do this every night!?  I know the Cardinals gifted the Mets some of those runs, but they did hit the ball hard all night.  You don’t get 16 fluke hits in a game.

Have to give props to David Wright for a four-hit game but bonus points to Ryan Church and Brian Schneider.  I’ve killed both guys this season but they looked awesome tonight.  Church was hitting with power to left field and Schneider continues to drive the ball on mistakes from the pitcher.

I’ve been negative in the past few weeks and rightfully so.  This team blows games, they don’t hustle and frankly they just aren’t very good.  But tomorrow’s game is so enormous.  First of all Johan Santana is on the mound and he’s been shaky lately.  They could use a great start for him.  Second, they’re up against Chris Carpenter so if you beat him you get some extra confidence.  But most importantly, you finally win a series during this tough stretch and your record in this time goes to 7-9.  All things considered, that wouldn’t be terrible.  But first, you have to win the series.

Joel Pineiro was brilliant against the Mets again.  It was eerily similar to his dominant outing back in late September during the 2007 season.  Last night’s performance was an omen of things to come though.

All I have to say is Fernando Tatis is hitting cleanup.  The same Tatis who got four pitches in three at-bats last night.  This is a guy with a .364 slugging percentage.  And he’s hitting cleanup.  I don’t think he’d be batting fourth for any other team in baseball right now.  I like Tatis because he hustles and occasionally shows some power, but he’s a guy who should be hitting seventh on a contending team.

And like I wrote before, Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya have to be counting their blessings that so many guys have gotten hurt.  They’re avoiding a lot of the blame that should be placed their way.  The team is lazy and has no fundamentals…that’s on both of them.

But let’s talk about Omar a little.  In the offseason, I guaranteed my buddy in the front office that the Mets would not have enough offense this season.  They needed another bat.  Now he’s using injuries as an excuse.  But I even said in the offseason there’s no way Reyes, Delgado, Beltran and Wright are all healthy the entire year.  They got so lucky last year and the offense still wasn’t good enough.  There was no depth, just as I said, and now the Mets have a journeyman hitting cleanup.

Sometimes I wonder if any intelligent fan could be a GM or a manager of their favorite team and do just as good of a job.  This year, I honestly feel like I would have been better and definitely not much worse.  I wouldn’t allow guys to jog around the bases and I certainly wouldn’t bunt everytime someone gets on base.  And in the offseason when there were so many guys willing to take next to nothing to play, I would have signed a few for insurance purposes.

What would have been a better investment?  Orlando Hudson (3.36 million), who’s hitting .309 with 5 homers and 38 RBI and plays an awesome second base.  He doesn’t drop easy pop-ups to lose games.  Or would you rather have Tim Redding (2.25 million), with a 1-2 record and 6.08 ERA.  You could have gotten someone of Redding’s caliber for the league minimum.  The same cannot be said for Hudson.  Now the Mets are going to wind up giving up prospects and overpaying for a bat they could have had on the cheap in the offseason.

Omar did a good job of fixing last year’s problem.  The bullpen was terrible and he improved it.  I would have signed K-Rod and traded for Putz.  I know he’s a disaster this year, but I don’t fault Omar for that.  He took a chance and I’m fine with that.  But he didn’t plan for what might be a problem this year.  What if one or two of the core guys misses significant time?  What if Daniel Murphy isn’t the next Pete Rose like we think he will be?  What if Fernando Tatis doesn’t produce like he did in 2008?  And what if Ryan Church doesn’t go back to being the player he was pre-concussion last year?  How do you not plan ahead and think about these things!?  No one thought those what ifs would all go against the team but you have to consider the possibility that they might.

Now the Mets are suffering because the lack of forward-thinking by their front office and we have to watch essentially a AAA team go up against the best in the league.  The team is 5-9 so far in this 32-game stretch and I don’t see it getting much better.  Not when Fernando Tatis is hitting cleanup.

The New York Bisons squeaked by the Cardinals tonight by a score of 6-4.  Wait…that wasn’t the Bisons out there?  It sure looked like it.  With Carlos Beltran on the DL, David Wright is the only legitimate Major League starter left and the Mets finally held on to a game for a big win.

Let’s face it at this point…the Mets just don’t have much talent left.  Their only chance to make something of this season is to get out to early leads and then hold on for dear life.  You can’t expect them to come from behind with the lineup they’re putting out there now.

Omir Santos continues to deliver big hits for this team.  Like I wrote yesterday, the Mets are getting incredible production out of the catcher spot.  In fact, that spot has driven in more runs than any other position for the Mets.  That’s simply amazing.  Who would have guessed that before the season?

Tim Redding did as well as he could have tonight.  He isn’t very good, so to expect anything better than 7+ and four runs is unfair.  You have to take that from him every single time.

And in a huge twist of fortune, Jon Switzer didn’t give up any runs.  It was amazing.  He got one out and gave up one hit.  He’s now gone two straight games without surrendering any runs.

In all seriousness though, you have to give props to Brian Stokes for getting Albert Pujols to hit into an inning-ending double play in the eighth.  I really thought the Cards were at least tying the game in that at-bat.  But Stokes proved my pessimism wrong by getting a weak comebacker.

Finally, I love an aggressive third base coach.  In fact, I’ve been saying for years that third base coaches need to be aggressive because throwing a guy out at home plate is so hard to do.  But Razor Shines is starting to take it to the extreme.  Two guys could have easily been toast at home if not for some poor plays by Yadier Molina.  He’s just sending guys with a reckless abandon for outs.  Although this is what I wrote about in the past.  That even if a perfect throw is made, the catcher still needs to catch the ball and apply the tag.  So I can’t kill him too much.

What’s funny is Jerry Manuel is the exacty opposite as far as taking chances.  I’ve never seen a manager order up more bunts.  It’s getting absurd and it needs to stop.  Let the guys hit Jerry.  With everyone but David Wright injured, you need to play for big innings every once in a while.  You can’t be happy getting a run here and a run there.

So the Mets win another first game of a series.  It’s happened a lot this year and then the Mets usually lose the next two.  Sometimes they win the middle game, but rarely do they win the third or fourth.  Hopefully we can get another W tomorrow and at worst get a split with the Cards.  We shall see what another day brings.