it feels worse than this, doesn't it?

As the Mets reach the 40-game mark, the team finds itself at an interesting crossroads. After winning 12-of-15 to vault themselves into first place, they have dropped four straight to sit just 2 over .500, at 21-19 at the quarter-pole.

A new slew of problems have arisen, though, and these are not quite as easy to joke about as Murphy's failure to catch a fly ball. Delgado is lost for awhile - perhaps the season - and Reyes hasn't really played in a week. Without either, the offense could survive. Without both, it simply can't. Add to this the fact that with below-par fielders at first base and left field, and who-knows at shortstop, even more stress is placed on an offense that cannot take it.

Getting back from a 10-game road trip should help. Getting Reyes to play will help. But neither of these will happen before the Mets go to Fenway to face the red hot Sox. Let's not get buried here, and emerge on the other side with a much more favorable schedule as the calender turns towards June.

Worth noting: Wright, on a 12-game hitting streak, has picked his average up from a better-then-it-seemed .271 on April 26th to an incendiary .362 as play begins tonight.

help from the farm?

At the 20-game mark, it is time to figure out exactly how to fix this Mets team...

The main culprit has been the non-Santana starting pitchers, and I'm going to isolate Oliver Perez - probably because when I went to Citi field last week, he was "pitching" - by that I mean walking every other batter and giving up extra-base hits to the #7 and #8 batters...

So how to fix this? It's major league baseball, so simply look to the farm!

I looked up the Mets AAA team, the Buffalo Bisons, figuring Jonathan Niese or Dillon Gee (honestly I hadn't even heard of this guy before spring training) might be ready to come up and spark the team.

As I looked up the pitching stats, I noticed something curious - there were not many Bisons' pitchers with any victories. To verify, I decided to look at the AAA standings page, and lo and behold I saw it: Buffalo Bisons, 2-17, last place.

2-17???

Ah, the future is bright, Mets fans!

(and in case you were wondering: Niese, 0-2, 6.55; Gee, 0-3, 5.40 - and these are the TOP TWO pitchers in Buffalo...)