The oft-scapegoated World Baseball Classic has a slaughter rule that would have been valuable to invoke last night, as first Pat Misch and then Lance Broadway proved they have excellent career prospects should teams need someone to throw BP. But alas, this wasn't a WBC game (there's something I never thought I'd type) and so on and on we went, while Gary, Keith and Ron grew increasingly strange (in an entertaining way) and I succumbed to early-evening weariness. “Did they lose?” I managed to ask Emily when the TV going dark briefly awakened me. Her amusement was evident. (Other potential indicators a slaughter rule should be invoked: Keith is talking about the proper role of government; Wilson Valdez is visible; it's 2009 and you're a Mets fan.)

If you want to grasp at straws, the Mets no-hit the Braves for the final six innings as home-plate ump Brian Knight's strike zone expanded until it kissed La Guardia and the Unisphere. Daniel Murphy, looking downright confident at bat even as his fielding ability seems to erode, has more extra-base hits in September than Albert Pujols. Nick Evans got to play for a moment. (What did he do to you, Jerry?) Granted, continuing to watch a game like last night's beyond 8 p.m. counts as administering a death grip to whatever unfortunate straws are at hand.

Yet you know what? As this awful season dwindles to under a dozen games, I find myself sad. And not ironically sad, either — little-kid sad. The most amazingly horrible thing about the 2009 Mets? It's that in defiance of all logic and mental health, I'll miss them when they're gone.

Greg and I would like to ask for your help in finding out what we're doing well at our little blog, what we could do better, and to get some opinions about things we might do in the future.

Please help us out by taking a couple of minutes to complete this survey. It's completely anonymous — the survey doesn't collect email addresses or anything like that.

We'd really appreciate your help, just as we appreciate your reading and commenting. Thanks!

Greg and I would like to ask for your help in finding out what we're doing well at our little blog, what we could do better, and to get some opinions about things we might do in the future.

Please help us out by taking a couple of minutes to complete this survey. It's completely anonymous — the survey doesn't collect email addresses or anything like that.

We'd really appreciate your help, just as we appreciate your reading and commenting. Thanks!

Now go on, boy, and pay attention. Because if you do, someday, you may achieve something that we Simpsons have dreamed about for generations: You may outsmart someone.
—Homer Simpson’s advice to Bart upon his entering the Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children

I’m booking an Acela special for all Mets fans who want to zoom down to Washington and laugh at the Nationals…who’s with me?

C’mon, we have to gloat over somebody’s even-deader carcass. We just clinched not finishing behind them. HEAR THAT WORLD? WE DON’T SUCK AS MUCH AS AT LEAST ONE OTHER TEAM!

Yes, we did it. We made fourth place ours by taking two of three from those fifth-place Nats. Fifth-place? Isn’t that a synonym for last?

Read it and weep, Washingtonians. You can win every game you have left, even the three with us in your park next week, and you can’t catch us. You can’t win more than 64 games and we can’t lose more than 97.

We’re golden.

I haven’t been this happy since I realized that instead of being one day closer to death, I was actually just getting inexorably older.

Citi Field was rocking, obviously. Cries of WE’RE NUMBER FOUR! rang through the Promenade, while the waving of the traditional four-fingered salute accompanied Frankie Rodriguez’s strikeout of Cristian Guzman, the called whiff that sealed the Mets’ first fourth-place finish since 2004. No horses lined the field, but I may have seen a unicorn or two.

John Maine flirted with a no-hitter, which is what he always does when a position in the standings is on the verge of being cemented. Daniel Murphy took my recent motivational pep talk to heart and 1) stopped sucking and 2) started not sucking (there, was that so hard?). Meanwhile, the Citi Field A/V squad played delightful classic rock and pop intros before each Met at-bat instead of the usual mélange of merengue, salsa, metal and country that, quite frankly, I don’t like one little bit. I’m not sure if they decided it was important to delight me, the fan, or punish the batters by taking away their individually chosen songs. It’s not like that blasted cacophony was psyching them up toward any tangible beneficial result.

Assuming it’s not a one-time thing or wasn’t a hallucination, check out the lampposts between the subway and the ballpark next time you’re in Flushing. There are suddenly large portraits of great Mets of the past in the fashion of the fistful that hang along the edges of Citi on the first and third base sides: Kooz, Yogi, Kingman, Fonzie, Swan, the Glider, Al Jackson (in his numberless Polo Grounds finest), Robin Ventura looking characteristically grand. Another nice job by management responding to demand for more Mets history a mere five-and-a-half months after it was first mentioned widely and incessantly.

The Mets may not be the first to do what it takes, but you can count on them to be among the top four.

I’m being snarky because I’m kind of sleepy (who can snooze knowing you can witness fourth place secured for the ages?), but I will take semi-serious issue with something I read in the New York Times, which, like Daniel Murphy, apparently picks up their game when I get on their ass. The paper that briefly stopped covering the Mets ran a story Saturday about those socially deprived — or is it depraved? — individuals who would bother to come to a Mets game when the Mets are lousy, the Nats are worse and everybody knows it.

Cute. But WTF? People buy or are given tickets to something and they shouldn’t go? They should sit alone in their room because David Waldstein thinks it’s beneath a person to attend a baseball game if the baseball teams aren’t awesome? Does one discard theater tickets because of a bad review? Is it possible that people who come into baseball tickets have them because on some level they really like baseball? Even Mets-Nats baseball?

I went to a baseball game Sunday afternoon between two clubs that competed only for next-to-last place, and then only in my mind. I sat with my friends, I had some sushi, I noted the music and the banners, I got some sun — holy crap, David Waldstein, I had a fine time. I had a fine time I won’t be able to have in a few weeks. By November, there won’t be a baseball fan in this country who will get to do any of this (except in that fantastic Arizona Fall League where problems get solved and careers get made).

Who’ll be crazy then, David? Who?

FOURTH PLACE!

Shortly before 1 today Joshua and I headed out to get some lunch and run some errands. (Digression: Kids would learn the value of saving better if passbook savings accounts offered interest that wasn't microscopic.) Yes, I knew there was a Mets game imminent. No, I hadn't forgotten my responsibilities as a chronicler. I figured we'd be home around 2, which would probably mean the bottom of the third or at worst the top of the fourth. The game would be just coming into focus.

I was right about when we'd get home, but wrong about the game. To my amazement it was the top of the sixth — and Tim Redding was pitching a gem.

That second part is no longer quite so amazing, though. Not so long ago, poor Redding endured the indignity of numerous reports that his release was either planned or a foregone conclusion, leaving him in limbo for several days. Shabby treatment, but Redding's been not-too-shabby since returning to the rotation on August 22: He's lowered his ERA from 6.10 to 5.25, without a bad start in the mix.

Granted, a 5.25 ERA is nothing to call Cooperstown about, Redding's win today was his third of the season, and as predictors go a September tilt between the 2009 Mets and Nats is about as reliable as pawing through goat entrails. But still, Redding was good today. He's very quietly been good for a month.

One of the first plays I saw today was Redding somehow walking John Lannan, who wasn't too bad himself. (That David Wright “double” over Ian Desmond's head was remarkably generous scoring.) Given the zero on the board for the Nats and the insane speed with which the 6th had arrived, I briefly wondered if I'd arrived in the middle of the improbable stalking the impossible. Could Tim Redding be 10 outs away from the Mets' first no-hitter? No, I soon found out, the pestiferous Willie Harris had led off the fourth with a bunt single. The mere suggestion that doing so violated baseball mores is ridiculous: 1-0 game. Rookie catcher. Fourth inning. But still, it was nice to dream for a second there. If Len Barker can throw a perfect game, who's to say Tim Redding can't throw a no-hitter? 2009's been weird enough — no way will you catch me saying it can't get weirder.

Of course, this does leave something out: Tim Redding throwing a Mets no-hitter would be a good thing. And that does seem to be impossible this year.

I was at the post office Friday afternoon and stood in line behind somebody who looked very familiar. It was driving me crazy, so I tapped him on the shoulder to ask if he was who I thought he was.

“Excuse me, aren't you the 2009 Mets?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Wow, I'm a big fan.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shame about how you've been going lately.”

“Yeah, well, whaddaya gonna do?”

“I've never seen you at the post office before.”

“Oh, I come here all the time.”

“Ya don't say? I don't mean to pry, but I can't help but wonder, big fan that I am, what you have in that box there.”

“This? It's just tonight's game.”

“Tonight's game?”

“Yeah. I'm just mailing it in.”

“You're mailing it in?”

“Yup.”

“Tonight's game?”

“Uh-huh, that's right.”

“You do that a lot?”

“Most of the time, especially this month.”

“You mailed in last night's game in Atlanta?”

“I mailed in that entire series. Last few series, actually.”

“You can do that?”

“It's easy. Easier than showing up at any rate.”

“How do you just mail it in?”

“It's easy. The post office has these boxes, designed to hold all nine innings in these compartments as you can see here. Then you just seal these flaps shut. They've already got adhesive, so you don't need tape or anything. I like to mail these games in as quickly and quietly as possible.”

The box wasn't yet closed and my curiosity got the best of me.

“Forgive me for snooping, but I only see eight innings in your box.”

“No, there's nine.”

“Nine compartments, but you only have eight innings.”

“Hey, you're right! Damn. I'm next at the counter, too, and I don't feel like running home to get the ninth inning to mail in. If there's one thing I don't like to do, it's run home.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Ah, I'll just mail in these first eight innings and go do the ninth in person.”

“Let me get this straight. You're going to mail in most of tonight's game against the Nationals, but you're going to show up for the ninth inning.”

“Yeah. I do that sometimes.”

“I don't remember you showing up for the ninth inning in a while.”

“I don't do it often, but on occasion, if I absolutely have to.”

“Well, good luck tonight.”

“Yeah, right.”

***

By losing to their new archrivals Friday night, the Mets have made it possible to clinch next-to-last Sunday when I'll be there. It'll be September 18, 2006 all over again! Except as farce! Four thoughts in honor of the 4th place magic number remaining at 4:

• A Rosh Hashanah gift from the Jerusalem Post: Michael Freund visits with the great Gary Cohen here.

• Just came across this July 2006 Web gem in print via the No Mas Frank 151 Sports Issue: An Amazin' remembrance by Steven Isenberg, an aide to Mayor John Lindsay, on how Hizzoner, down in the polls, latched onto the Mets' bandwagon forty summers before the one that's winding down now. Required reading here.

• Miss Amazin' Tuesday? Say it ain't so! But if you did, amaze yourself with Section Five Twenty-Eight's lively recounting of the action here. My thanks to Paul Vargas for chronicling our Two Boots doings so diligently and colorfully since June. He and I, I believe, are the only ones who made it to all four readings. (Danny Frisella would be proud.)

• Per the question Jason asked within the last 24 hours, which got such a wonderful response from so many, I'll throw in my Top Five Most Disappointing Mets Seasons in Mets History: 1) 1987; 2) 1996; 3) 1982; 4) 1991; 5) 1971. Mind you, that's not worst seasons or most crushing seasons or thuddingest collapses. Those were seasons when my hopes — sometimes high, sometimes middling — were dashed in ways I hadn't seen coming and it really, really ruined everything. 2009? It's one of the most demoralizing seasons in Mets history. There's a difference…though I'm too demoralized to delineate.

Shockingly enough, the Mets lost. They started feebly, offered a little spurt of purposefulness, then rolled over and died.

Which was actually an improvement from the night before, when they expired in a fashion that should have been gut-wrenching but instead was just numbing. Not so long ago, the Mets losing on a game-ending error would have left me fuming for hours on end. Last night, it barely registered. And tonight? I barely remember tonight.

At Amazin' Tuesday I was chatting with folks about whether or not 2009 is the most disappointing season in Mets' history. It's a subject worthy of exploration, in the same way that it can be fascinating to see exactly what's under that dirty scab oozing green stuff.

Mets history being what it is, there's certainly no shortage of data to sift through. What the heck, let's peel that scab.

The Mets began their existence with a seven-year run of hideous baseball, only failing to lose 100 games twice during that span. Granted, that wretched baseball childhood has been sentimentalized by the passage of time and recast as a prologue to 1969. But even then, disappointment implies a fall from some level of higher expectations, and no such expectations existed for the original crop of Mets fans. There was the giddy joy at having National League baseball back in New York, of getting to see half the game's stars again in an era when out-of-town players weren't available for viewing on SportsCenter or YouTube, of getting a state-of-the-art park in 1964.

I was but a babe when the Mets won in 1969, while Greg was a child just awakening to baseball's possibilities. So I turned to our esteemed commenter Joe D. for a sense of what those years were like, and he graciously agreed to share some memories.

“I felt no disappointments those early years because our expectations were modest,” Joe says. “WHN summed it up best when it opened every 1965 Met broadcast with a jingle that concluded, 'when Met fans say go, what they mean we don't know, we've got no place to go…. but up!' ”

OK, Joe admits to some disappointment about 1965, which started out with Warren Spahn pitching well and Ed Kranepool and Ron Swoboda leading a hitting attack, only to end with a ghastly 30-83 stretch. And 1967 was a setback. The Mets had escaped the cellar in '66 and entered the year with a seemingly promising lineup — Don Bosch and Bud Harrelson setting up Ken Boyer, Tommy Davis, Cleon Jones, Swoboda and Kranepool — but that team lost 101 games. Still, it had Tom Seaver, and hope for the future.

“Unlike today, nobody ever wanted those early seasons to end,” Joe says, adding that “losses were accepted as much as the occasional win was celebrated.” (I'll leave it to Joe to explain about the postgame clips of Casey Stengel on WOR. They're awesome.)

So I think those seasons are out of the running, awful though they were. I think the need to have fallen from something also strikes from consideration most of the Mets' three later fallow periods. Yes, 1977 through 1983 were utterly ghastly years (though Greg waxes sentimental about the second half of '81), but for most of that time, the Mets being bad wasn't a surprise. I remember the sublime hideousness of 1993, with its LBJ-esque 59-103 record, but it wasn't hard to see that one coming. I actually hated the 2003 Mets in a way I hope never to feel again, and I will always wish Roberto Alomar ill. But the Mets of that era were too awful to disappoint even the most pessimistic fan.

As I see it, there are five contenders for Most Disappointing Season.

1974: The Mets had just taken the Oakland A's to Game 7 of a World Series they may well have won if not for the idiocy of Yogi Berra. But 1974 made their crazy, gasping run to the pennant look like a brief respite from injuries and bum luck. 1974 came with elements of suck that will be eerily familiar to us. The team was undone by injuries to Seaver, Tug McGraw and George Stone. It was saddled with loads of bad press, from Buddy and Cleon fighting in spring training to Seaver lambasting Yogi and Jon Matlack calling out his teammates as gutless. It had a front office that looked variously cheap and stupid: The Mets passed on making deals for Jimmy Wynn and Ron Santo, and kept Harrelson on the roster as a pinch-runner despite having his broken hand in a cast. They finished at 71-91.

1977: The Midnight Massacre. Tom Seaver becomes a Red on June 15, with Dave Kingman gone as well. M. Donald Grant's place in Hell is instantly and forever assured. (Don't speak ill of the dead? Fuck that and fuck M. Donald Grant.) I will always remember seeing the paper the next day and staring at it, first in shock and then in panic that anything so awful could happen. The Mets lost 98 games and would be the laughingstock of the National League until resurrected by Fred Wilpon, Nelson Doubleday, Frank Cashen and Davey Johnson.

1991: The Mets are 15 games over .500 on July 13, 2.5 games behind the Pirates, but trouble is brewing. Darryl Strawberry has been replaced by Vince Coleman and Hubie Brooks. The Mets seem determined to have all their players, many of whom are stone-gloved in the first place, play out of position. Buddy Harrelson's dealings with the press remind fans of Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now,” if Brando were 150 pounds lighter and even worse handling late-inning defense. The pitiable Gregg Jefferies makes a fool of himself with an open letter to fans read by the jackals on WFAN. (Bizarrely, Ron Darling then does the same thing.) Kevin McReynolds exists. After July 13 the team goes an ungodly 28-50. I remember watching the wires that summer and simply laughing in disbelief, like I was flipping a coin that would only come up tails.

1992: The Worst Team Money Can Buy. Vince Coleman. Bobby Bonilla. Eddie Murray. Jeff Kent. (Extra demerits for the presence of the feckless Al Harazin and Jeff Torborg.) There has never been a more noxious collection of human beings wearing Mets uniforms at the same time. Daniel Murphy may have his problems at first base, but I have faith that he will never injure a two-year-old girl with a quarter-stick of dynamite. In addition to being terrible people, this bunch was supposed to make the second half of 1991 a distant memory. Instead they went 72-90, the start of a six-year slide.

2009: Haunted by memories of two final-day washouts, we get picked by SI to win the World Series. Instead we get a run of injuries that would have made Pharaoh let Moses & Co. go a few plagues early. Owners with financial losses we're left to guess at. A player-development chief tearing off his shirt and challenging minor-leaguers to fight, followed by a GM apparently losing his mind. Salary dumps and skinflint draft signings. A pitching staff that specializes in bases-loaded walks, and a team that can't hit home runs. Doctors you wouldn't trust to give you an aspirin. Missed bases, dropped pop-ups, unassisted triple plays. It's sucked … and we're not done yet.

I dunno, folks, how would you rank these?

“If he’s so dumb, how come he’s president?”
—Gerald Ford’s campaign slogan, as reported by Chevy Chase on Weekend Update, 1975

Those who cut the Mets miles and miles of slack for sucking as badly as they do point to the injuries. How could have we expected them to contend without their key players? I’ll buy that. I’ll buy that substituting for All-Stars and even regulars wasn’t going to be easy. I’ll buy that if you told me ahead of time that we’d endure most of 2009 missing mass quantities of Reyes, Delgado, Beltran, Maine, Perez and Putz (plus assorted other dollops of the disabled) I’d have no right nor reason to expect this team to be in the middle of a pennant race in mid-September.

But I’d also have no right nor reason to expect what we’ve gotten. We’ve gotten dumbass baseball from the moment the season started right down to its final weeks. We’ve gotten amateur baseball from professionals. We’ve gotten neophyte mistakes from those who have been playing the game continually since childhood.

It’s not that we don’t have good players. We don’t, for the most part, but it’s not that. It’s that we’re getting bad baseball. Dumbass baseball.

We’ve seen it emanate from just about every source imaginable since April, but from no one as repeatedly or as regularly as from Daniel Murphy. Since it’s a teamwide epidemic, I’m assuming we’ve seen more bad baseball out of Murphy in ’09 because he’s had the dratted luck to remain healthy this entire season. He’s played in ten more games than David Wright, twelve more than Luis Castillo. It only figures that by exposing himself more, he would be more exposed than any Met.

All Mets play bad baseball. Daniel Murphy plays it the most.

Murphy, to the best of my knowledge, was not granted a contract by the New York Mets because he clipped and sent in coupons from empty cartons of Dairylea for the honor. I assume he plays because he succeeded at it in school well enough to be drafted and played it well enough in the minors to be promoted. That’s where I came in to the Daniel Murphy story. I saw him, same as just about everybody else, for the first time last summer. For the better part of two months, he impressed with the bat. He held his own, albeit sometimes shakily, with the glove. He was handed left field for this year.

Then he charged out to left and proved he couldn’t play it. There is a tendency to offer the kid his own yard of slack for his glovework to date. Daniel Murphy had never been an outfielder before 2008. He was an infielder — a third baseman. Third base was taken. He had played some second base, we were told, and tried it again in the mythical Arizona Fall League (where we assume everybody’s shortcomings can be curtailed), but it didn’t work there and besides, we were blessed with a terminal case of Castillo. Carlos Delgado’s hip, Fernando Tatis’s limited utility and Jeremy Reed’s frightful experience gunning a ball to the backstop in L.A. made Daniel — who remained healthy and willing — the de facto everyday first baseman.

It wasn’t a disaster. Sometimes Daniel Murphy at first base was downright competent. Once in a while, as on a freak play against the Dodgers in July, he appeared brilliant. That’s both encouraging and a little misleading. I remember watching Dave Kingman play first base after he wore out his welcome in the outfield, and he managed to periodically appear brilliant if only by comparison to his defense elsewhere. Even Mike Piazza was once witnessed diving for a ball there. Anybody, with the exception of luckless Jeremy Reed (who, incidentally, has played the fourth-most games of any Met in 2009…who’da guessed?), can get by for a spell at first.

But Daniel Murphy is never going to be Keith Hernandez defensively. He is never going to be John Olerud or David Segui either. If we’re lucky, he’ll be Dave Magadan, no great shakes in the field, but no great shame — and a heckuva stick usually minus the power. Mostly, he’s Daniel Murphy. He’s likable, he works hard, he gave us that most appetizing glimpse in ’08…we want him to succeed.

To this point in his young career, he is not succeeding. He is not close to doing so. And if he didn’t give us two nice months and didn’t have a name that a lot of fans seem to enjoy slapping on their backs with his number, I can’t imagine a lot of us would particularly care whether he was here next year or not.

If it were just about last night and three dreadful moments in a brutal ninth inning when sensible people were sleeping — failure to corral (or go after) a fair ball down the line that didn’t have to be a double; failure to cleanly pick up a grounder; and compounded failure to grasp that same ball as it practically bounced into his glove — the impulse would be to say, as Murph himself did, that it was just a “pretty awful day” at the office. We’ve all had those, particularly at the age of 24. But Murphy has actually had a pretty awful year by every measure except health and attitude.

While not proceeding gracefully afield in 2009, he has also shown he’s not yet a big league caliber hitter. Murphy didn’t hit Wednesday night. Not hitting is typical behavior for the Mets, who strangely lead the N.L. in batting average yet don’t seem to drive runners home. It’s not to his credit that Murphy went 0-for-4, but that’s just an ohfer. His .258 average is about as high as he’s batted since May. He’s on base barely more than 30 percent of the time; he slugs at a .403 clip — and those are after compiling his best stretch of OBP and SLG of the season. These are not the numbers you’d expect out of a cleanup hitter, which is what he’s been on paper for much of the year, but we know that’s a technicality, and we understand it. But they’re not numbers you’d readily accept anywhere in the lineup, save for the pitcher’s spot.

Light production isn’t necessarily the most vexing problem with Daniel Murphy in the wake of his first full season (though it sure doesn’t help his cause). It’s not even that he made two to three lousy plays in the ninth to cost the Mets a ballgame they should have won. It’s that this is how too many Mets play, Daniel Murphy more frequently than any of them in 2009. If Murphy dove for Garret Anderson’s double instead of thinking, in essence, “um, it’s not foul?” Anderson might have been caught at first. He certainly would have been held there. As for the double-muff that ended this sodden affair from Atlanta, of course he should have come up with Ryan Church’s grounder. It was an in-between hop, but it didn’t appear (on television) all that tricky. But Murph literally took his eye off the ball and — where have you seen this before? — didn’t use both hands available to him. When the ball somehow caromed right back in his midst, he simply missed it. A lot going on there, much as there was when Reed melted down at Dodger Stadium (which happened to be the same game wherein Church skipped by third base; oh the irony).

Is all that bad luck? Inexperience? Unrefined instincts? Or dumbass baseball? After a full year spent in the company of Daniel Murphy, I’m veering to that last choice. We saw it in the outfield until it could be seen no longer. We saw it on the basepaths in Philadelphia Sunday night when he took off for third despite having no chance — none — of being safe on a ball that trickled a few feet from Carlos Ruiz. We’ve seen poor slides. We’ve seen tepid production that hasn’t been close to the taste we received last year, before the league got a look at him.

It’s just bad, dumbass baseball out of Daniel Murphy, just as it’s been from most of the Mets for inconceivable spans of 2009. Usually, however, there’s some redeeming feature justifying the presence of certain of his teammates in this expectation-lowered annum. For example, I wanted Castillo released the night of The Popup, but (despite laughing my fool head off at sympathetic rhetorical questions like, “Where would the Mets be without Luis Castillo?”) he has hit to the best of his Luis Castillo abilities. Jeff Francoeur is a half-assed defender and has no sense of the strike zone, but he hits a ball out of a park now and then, throws like Roy Hobbs and — cliché alert! — plays hard, even when hurt. Angel Pagan has revealed his dumbass tendencies in spades, but we’ve also seen his speed, his power and how they manifest themselves into triples, which is no small consideration at Citi Field.

What the hell do we have in Daniel Murphy? A power-free first baseman who doesn’t hit for average, doesn’t get on all that much and has no expertise at or feel for his position. But he did have a nice August in 2008 and people do enjoy wearing shirts that say MURPHY 28.

I don’t particularly want Carlos Delgado to return, not even for incentives — though I wonder what ever happened to, “You’ll be compensated at no less than $400,000 to play baseball with meal money kicked in, there’s your incentive.” He’ll be close to 38 on Opening Day 2010; he’ll be, save for a minor miracle, inactive since May 10, 2009; and, if memory serves, he’ll still have the kind of seniority and sway that is alleged to have held David Wright back from assuming his presumably predestined informal team captaincy (not that that sort of thing isn’t vastly overrated, but all reports indicate Delgado has never exerted the “positive influence in the clubhouse” that was supposed to be his value added). Delgado’s not a long-term answer and I kind of doubt he’s a short-term answer.

But what evidence is there that Murphy is suitable where Delgado isn’t? His youth and fading good first impression notwithstanding, I wouldn’t hesitate to shop him if anybody else sees something in him. After a year like this, there aren’t many Mets of whom I wouldn’t let it be known around baseball that we’ll listen to any reasonable offer. The only major leaguer this organization has developed in the past five seasons with an MLB tenure longer than Murphy’s is Mike Pelfrey. Pelfrey has been, save for his own two good months in 2008, a vast disappointment, to put it mildly. Somebody wants to talk to somebody about trading for Mike Pelfrey, I wouldn’t hang up the phone either. But at least Pelfrey has shown recurring flashes of what he is thought to be. He’s not a “No. 2” starter right now. He’s barely a No. 5, to use that sickening term. He’s backpedaled behind Nelson Figueroa, for cryin’ out loud. But there’s something there with Pelfrey. It would take a lot to make me consider letting him go with his 26th birthday yet to come.

I don’t see anything there with Murphy. He has none of the so-called five tools in abundance and that sixth tool that one would think comes free with every player — baseball sense — is completely lacking. Whoever develops Mets prospects, whoever coaches them, whoever manages them once they reach the majors and whoever oversees the entire baseball operation share some fault for Daniel Murphy coming here ill-equipped for the long season’s haul, but how do we not hold Daniel Murphy accountable for forever playing dumbass baseball?

Is there really a good player underneath all this bad play? Will he, as Ron Swoboda once did, persevere past his youthful indiscretions and reward us with some great and memorable moment in a better year than this, thus practically erasing public recollection that his early career was marked by chronic boneheadedness that overwhelmed his good first impression? Is replacing Daniel Murphy with an actual player whose craft is first base going to be prohibitive because we’re always going to run up against the Madoff factor?

And if the Mets are so dumb, how come I’m still watching them?

(FYI: Philly’s win over the Nats cut our 4th place magic number to 5, but after this latest Turner Field debacle, who can enjoy even that much out of life?)

The New York Mets whittled their magic number to clinch 4th place in the National League East to 6 when the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Washington Nationals 5-0. The Mets, however, continued to imbue the Battle for the Upper Basement with tension, strategically configuring a shutout loss of their own at the hands of the Atlanta Braves, 6-0. The Mets' four hits can be taken as a sign that their eyes are focused squarely on the 4th place prize.

Any combination of Mets victories and Nationals setbacks totaling 6 will give the Mets their first 4th place crown since 2004.

Four things to think about as the quest for next-to-last continues:

1. The 2009 Mets, who abandoned their quest for a winning record Sunday night, have now ensured their 25th losing mark in 48 seasons of operation by making Tuesday's loss their 82nd of the year. The Mets' two other full-season 4th place finishes (1996 and 2004) yielded records of 71-91. To be as good as those Mets, these Mets must win eight of their final seventeen games. In 2007 and 2008, the Mets went 5-12 and 7-10, respectively, having entered the last two years with presumably impenetrable divisional leads of 7 games in '07 and 3½ games in '08.

2. The Mets record since peaking at 28-21 on May 31 is 35-62 for a winning percentage of .361 that translates, over 162 games, to a 58-104 record. After a five-game winning streak brought the Mets to 49-51 on July 30, they have gone 14-31, for a winning percentage of .311, a rate producing a 50-112 record across 162 games. It would thus seem delusional, even taking the team's myriad injuries into account, to assert some form of significant Met retooling isn't necessary. Are they a 58- or 50-win team in 2010 if those on whom they counted in 2009 are healthy and back? No. Are they, as Bart Hubbuch contended in the Post, “a potential 97-win team” just because they went 15-10 with Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes and David Wright playing together? Even more no. Reyes 2010 is an unknown quantity. Delgado will be even less of a certainty, if he's invited back. And given the long recovery time from the bone bruise, there has to be at least some question mark attached to Beltran's long-term viability. We also haven't seen Wright hit with power outside Citizens Bank Park. Even if all four guys are here and healthy, how can a team piecing itself together after four horrible months, the last two of them particularly abysmal, not be considered ripe for retooling? Not necessarily blowing them up, as Hubbuch puts it, but seriously considering every possibility? The Mets at their worst have played like a 50-win team. At their best, they didn't look remotely like a 97-win team.

3. The 2010 Mets will open their season at home against Florida on April 5 and close it at home against Washington on October 3. It is unclear how those games and the 160 games in between will develop, but Matt Artus of Always Amazin' examines the phenomenon of dynamic pricing and surmises few of the 81 home dates will be bargains despite this year's questionable value: “You can bet that things won't get cheaper anytime soon. If you want to watch a winner, you'd better be prepared to pay.”

4. AMAZIN' TUESDAY was truly Amazin' and we thank everybody who spoke, everybody who attended, everybody who helped spread the word and everybody working at Two Boots Tavern for making it such a fantastic time. If I were to tell you several dozen Mets fans sat together in a room with the Mets game on and had loads of fun, you would never guess the event took place in the present. But it did. Our team may have expired, but Mets fandom dies hard, baby.

For those of you following the most underreported race in baseball, the New York Mets' magic number to clinch 4th place in the National League East is 7. Any combination of Met wins and Washington National losses totaling 7 will give the Mets their third full-season fourth-place finish ever and their first since 2004; they also finished fourth in the second half of the 1981 split season.

In recognition of the 2009 Mets' ultimate goal, 4 things to keep in mind today:

1. It's AMAZIN' TUESDAY! Tonight at 7 (when else?) at Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side, join your friends from Faith and Fear in Flushing and Mets By The Numbers for one more evening of reading, rooting and Rusty Tillman. Joining Jon Springer and me will be John Coppinger, a.k.a. Metstradamus, and Jeff Pearlman, a writer of many articles and books but, in our hearts, the author of the indispensable 1986 chronicle The Bad Guys Won. Bring a Mets baseball card, get a free beer. All the details you need are here.

2. Ex-Nat Anderson Hernandez had the honor of hitting the Mets' 6,000th home run ever, a fact dutifully recorded by Mark of Mets Walkoffs, where the countdown is on to determine the Sixty Most Metmorable Home Runs in Mets History. Nos. 60-51 are given the Delight-is-in-the-Details treatment here.

3. Wonder why the Mets are focused on 4th and not a higher position? Could it be because the Mets haven't developed themselves more than one starting pitcher on whom they can still depend this entire decade? I Hate the Mets, a blog written by JF — who relates to the Mets as only a true Mets fan can these days (judging by the site's title) — recently worked up a most revealing chart. It's not your imagination that the Mets never seem to bring up a solid starter who sticks around for very long. Maybe Mike Pelfrey, but solid is still debatable with him. Other than Pelfrey and Jae Seo, no Met-bred starter has contributed more than a season's worth of starts to the Mets in the 2000s…though a few have pitched pretty well for other teams. Examine the whole mess here.

4. One of my favorite lines from The West Wing was uttered when Leo (John Spencer) came to work early and found Sam (Rob Lowe) had slept on his office couch. Go home and get some rest, Leo told Sam. No, it will be all right, Sam countered, I'm just going to change my shirt. Leo: “I think you're putting too much faith in the magical powers of a new shirt.” I thought of that yesterday when I put on a new shirt of my own, one that says I'M CALLING IT SHEA. I had seen these around Citi Field and was impressed by the loyalty so many Mets fans were showing to the dear, departed homestead, yet had resisted buying one for myself. I love Shea Stadium and I still mostly meh Citi Field, but except out of habit (such as when an LIRR conductor stares at my Penn Station ticket, my wardrobe, my ticket again and asks me where I'm going), I don't call Citi Shea. Shea was Shea and Citi is Citi. If the naming rights to Shea had been sold while Shea still stood, that would be another matter. But Citi is a place all its own and, though it would have been appropriate to christen it something like Shea Field, its corporate name is its birth name — and pretty accurate considering the vibe it emits. Nevertheless, a thoughtful person sent me an I'M CALLING IT SHEA shirt and I have to say I felt a surge of empowerment just holding it in my hands. They can pave over my stadium, they can hide our past, they can make it so we mindlessly utter the identity of a financial institution when all we want to do is talk baseball, but here, in glorious blue and orange (not Citi Field's official colors of forest green and Phillie crimson), was somehow a magical statement. I may not call it Shea, but I'm proud to wear it. If you think you might want to try one on, just click here.