Here is something fascinating I wanted to share. The following are the current standings for the National League Wild Card race. The Mets are currently in eighth place and 6 1/2 games back. The top five teams all made deals to improve themselves leading up to todays trade deadline.

1. San Francisco 56-46 WC

2. Colorado 55-47 1 GB

3. St. Louis 56-49 1.5 GB

4. Florida 53-49 3.0 GB

5. Atlanta 52-50 4.0 GB

8. NY Mets 49-52 6.5 GB

San Francisco – Giants acquired first baseman Ryan Garko from the Indians, and second baseman Freddy Sanchez from the Pirates. They completely upgraded and revamped the right side of their infield.

Colorado – The Rockies added left-hander Joe Beimel from the Nationals today, after getting righthanded reliever Rafael Betancourt from the Indians a week ago,. Today’s move further bolsters their pen with one of the games best relievers over the last three years.

St. Louis – The Cardinals went all out and added Matt Holliday and Julio Lugo days ago, and those moves followed the acquisition of Mark DeRosa from the Indians earlier this month.

Florida – The Marlins acquired first baseman Nick Johnson for Double A lefty Aaron Thompson, and get this (Are reading this Omar?) the Nats are paying Johnson’s remaining salary. They were also very hot on the heels of acquiring closer Heath Bell.

Atlanta – The Braves acquired first baseman Adam LaRoche from the Red Sox for Casey Kotchman. LaRoche became expendable after the Red Sox got Victor Martinez. There was some speculation that the Mets were getting LaRoche on another Mets blog, but it was never corroborated by any of the mainstream journalists, so who knows.

Mets – Well the Mets did swap Church for Francoeur a few weeks ago. Wasn’t that enough?

Yesterday, Omar said he’d been working the phones non stop and admitted that he had turned down deals for big players. That is totally understandable because the last thing this team needs right now is big players.

Adding big players this far along into the season can ruin the teams chemistry sort of like when Manny Ramirez went to the Dodgers and Carlos Beltran went to the Astros. Good grief!

I’ve noticed that many of my friends on Twitter are pacifying themselves and consoling themselves with phrases like these:

“At least Omar didn’t give up the farm. I’m glad we didn’t make a trade.”

“Great job Omar, you did the right thing and salvaged our future.”

“I’m just glad that Niese and Parnell are still Mets. We don’t need Halladay on this team.”

I need to find me some smarter friends…

Finally, a statement from Omar Minaya only moments ago.

“With what teams were asking for, we just couldn’t find a match. We had some last minute things we were working on, but ultimately we couldn’t get anything done.”

Let me see if I got this figured out…

1. All of our prospects are untouchable because Tony Bernazard did such an excellent job finding and cultivating these cant-miss, blue chippers that have scouts all over the world drooling.

2. Who needs help? We got all of our core players coming back. For example Carlos Beltran is willing to play through the injury, Jose Reyes may even start running next week, John Maine will be back but not until 2010, and Carlos Delgado recently hit some balls off of a tee.

3. We can’t afford to move any of our healthy guys like Angel Pagan, Brian Schneider and Daniel Murphy. Those guys are the cornerstones of our franchise.

Now I get it… 1+1+1=0