Someone should have told the Mets they didn’t have this Sunday off. They sure did play as if today was not a regularly scheduled game. Again, we faced a rookie, and again he (Zimmermann) made us look very bad. Incidentally, our third Sunday in a row has been spoiled.

I’ll confess that I stopped watching the game after Carlos—who-needs-to-slide—Beltran GIDP in the 8th. The rest of you can fill me in on the exciting 9th inning details. Lackluster is an understatement for the way this team played against the absolute scrubs of the league. Not to have swept the Nats seems as bad as getting swept in Saint Louie. The Mets look as bad to me now as they did in the spring of the ’08 season. What’s more, if something doesn’t turn around quickly with the starting rotation, it looks pretty clear that we’re going to have a very disappointing summer ahead of us. Simply put, the Mets are not playing baseball competitively enough to come close to going toe-to-toe w/ the Phils, Braves, or Marlins. I realize this isn’t coming as a newsflash to most, but it has to be said and repeated.

Oliver Perez is a chump. There, I said it. I would love to be laughed off of this blog because he turns it around and starts doing what he’s been paid to do for the next three years (Yes, that joke is getting crueler by the outing!) Nothing about Perez shows me he’s got the stuff to keep the Mets in the game through five innings let alone 7 or 8. The guy stinks, plain and simple. He took the Mets out of this game, and then the Mets hitters decided to spend the remaining six chances at the plate thinking about their Sunday evenings rather than the baseball game in front of them. Did the rest of you comfort yourselves by saying what I said? “At least I didn’t pay 50 clams to watch this at CitiField.”

Nobody but nobody seems to be able to get into a rhythm in this lineup. Delgado is in a new funk, and Wright is about as bad as I’ve ever seen him. In fact, it’s getting so bad w/ Wright that I’ve gone from thinking he’s due to, “Oh, no, automatic out (usually a flailing strikeout!) at the plate.” It’s been a bad April, you know. I bet you all also know the expression: “You can’t win the pennant in April, but you sure can lose it.” I’d say last year was Exhibit A for that expression.

Next up the Marlins who have had a pretty significant dip since we last faced them. This is a series we absolutely need to win. Sorry to fizzle out with a banality here, but I sure didn’t fizzle worse than the boys in orange and blue—emphasis on BLUE.