Missing: Nick Evans [Photoshop]

Has anyone seen this man?!

Manuel’s Musing (with bonus K-Rod Quotable!)

“We're not playing good baseball, despite who we play.”

-Jerry Manuel

and“I apologize to the fans who were watching this game because it was really embarrassing…When I suck, I suck, and today you guys saw it. That's what happened.”

-Francisco Rodriguez on his performance last night

Reyes tears hamstring while testing torn hamstring tendon

Truly unbelievable.

Today, Jose Reyes tested his torn hamstring tendon.  According to the Mets, while Reyes was testing his torn tendon today in Washington, he tore his hamstring muscle in the same leg.

In a season that we thought couldn’t get worse, just did.  And there are only three games left to play.

Reyes’ next move is probably onto the operating table, though a team spokesman would not comment.

Lineup for Game 159

Where in the world is Nick Evans?

Here’s the lineup…

1. Angel Pagan – LF
2. Anderson Hernandez – 2B
3. David Wright – 3B
4. Carlos Beltran – CF
5. Jeff Francoeur – RF
6. Fernando Tatis – 1B
7. Omir Santos – C
8. Wilson Valdez – SS
9. Tim Redding - RHP

Twitter Poll: What was the most entertaining Mets loss?

Sadly, there were many to choose from.

metschick said: the triple play turned against them. Excuse me - *unassisted* triple play.

cutiepie0319k said: triple play definitely. just painful to watch #mets

s2kmikey said: Frankie pitching w/ 2outs in the 9th, Castillo drops a routine popup from ARod in shallow RF... That killed me.

wmburden said: in terms of lookin back & now laughing- the game in LA where ryan church missed 3rd base and the Mets had 5 errors.

metschick28 said: the triple play

metsfan said: home opener. winning run scored on balk.

Magus978 said: Unassisted Triple Play, no contest. Once again, Eric Bruntlett ftw. The Mets need a player like him on the bench.

disgruntmetsfan said: The unassisted triple play has to win for most original, as far as most entertaining? Has to be Church missing 3rd base

kierankelly said: Has to be Castillo's dropped ball in Yankee Stadium.

bosco86 said: Ryan Church missing 3rd base, but way too many to pick from

What about you?  What was the most entertaining way you think the Mets managed to lose in 2009?

Manuel’s Musing

“Poor, poor, poor defensive mistakes. Almost to the point of embarrassing.”

-Jerry Manuel on defense

Finding ways to lose

As a Mets fan, we’ve witnessed some pretty strange ways to watch the Mets lose.

Today was a new take on an old friend.  Back when the Mets were visiting Los Angeles, we saw the Dodgers trump the Mets on a game-ending error.

Tonight, in the 8th inning this time around, back-to-back errors helped the Nationals beat the Mets in D.C.

In what looked like a tailor-made double play, Anderson Hernandez fielded a ground ball off the bat of Christian Guzman, but his flip to Luis Castillo was well wide of the bag.  That put runners at first and second with one out.

Making up for the earlier gaffe, Hernandez smothered the next ball to come his way and made a backhand flip to Castillo to force out Guzman at second.  Castillo turned to attempt the double-play, but his throw sailed out of the reach of a leaping Daniel Murphy, allowing Justin Maxwell to score.

And that run was the decider as the Mets threatened in the 9th inning, but were foiled by a catch by Elijah Dukes as he slammed into the right field wall to end the game.

Just scribble it down as another loss and try to forget about it.  If you can.

Hey, only four more games to go.

Lineup for Game 158

Almost there, ladies and gentlemen.  Another day with Nick Evans on the bench.

Here’s the lineup…

1. Angel Pagan – LF
2. Luis Castillo – 2B
3. David Wright – 3B
4. Carlos Beltran – CF
5. Daniel Murphy – 1B
6. Jeff Francoeur – RF
7. Brian Schneider – C
8. Wilson Valdez – SS
9. Mike Pelfrey - RHP

Uniform changes in store for 2010?

We’ve got some conflicting reports on this, but it seems the Mets may be changing their uniforms for next season.

The first note I saw was a pair of tweets from Bart Hubbuch.  In one, Hubbuch noted that the Mets were considering dropping the pinstripe uniforms from the rotation next season. 

A few minutes later, he also mentioned that the Mets may be changing their plain, white uniforms to more cream colored ones, a la the throwbacks they wore earlier this season, likely without the huge NY on the front.

In his game notes, Adam Rubin then mentioned a different alternative.  He wrote:

The Mets plan to go retro with their pinstriped home uniforms next season. Those uniforms will change to off-white, as they were in the 1960s, from their current bright white. That will also serve to differentiate the pinstriped uniforms from the solid home uniforms, which will remain the brighter white.

Meaning the plain, white uniforms would stay, but be accompanied by cream-colored pinstripe jerseys.  Think 1969 uniforms.

All uniforms will still have the drop shadow under “Mets.”

As usual, it looks like we’ll just have to wait and see what happens with the Mets and their garb.  If it was up to me (and most Mets fans), they would drop the black jersey from the rotation entirely.

But that’s just me.

More firings

As Joe Janish noted, this was buried at the bottom of Adam Rubin’s game story from Sunday, but it’s a fairly big deal.

Both Mako Oliveras and Julio Franco have been fired as minor-league coaches.

Oliveras managed Double-A Binghamton and Franco was at the helm of the Gulf Coast League team.

Interesting.  Who’s going to be left after all these firings?  And who is going to fill those holes?