To start off on a rather obvious note, game recaps are supposed to say something about the game you just watched, or missed, or fell asleep during, or were going to watch and didn't and now feel guilty about it. Let's dispense with tonight's game in relatively brisk fashion, then:

1. Mike Pelfrey was bad. Again.

2. Daniel Murphy had a miserable night against a tough lefthander, then it got worse. He wasn't even in your picture when Anderson Hernandez confidently fired the ball to first base in an attempt to complete a double play. The play would have been funny if it had happened to the other guys.

3. The totality of the Met highlights was Fernando Tatis cracking a triple off the center-field fence.

4. The wreckage of the 2009 Mets are easy prey for even an average major-league baseball team on most nights.

Earlier today a friend of mine inquired — with polite hesitation — what I thought the Mets' offseason considerations should be. It's a subject I warmed to almost instantly, in this year that can't end soon enough.

Such questions generally come down to positions that need filling; in deference to the form, I'll try my answer that way, while warning up-front that in my view these questions are not the ones that should be uppermost in the minds of Mets executives when they gather in conference rooms overlooking an empty Citi Field.

Corner Outfielders: Jeff Francoeur is overrated and an adequate player at best, which makes him essentially the inverse of Ryan Church, for whom he was traded — Church was underrated, but also an adequate player at best. Either way, this leaves the Mets in much the same situation in 2010 as they were in 2009: expecting big things from a right fielder whom you doubt can deliver. And as with 2009, that puts more pressure on left field.

The Mets' response to this question last winter was to assume there was an answer from some combination of an old player coming off a very good year (Fernando Tatis), a young player out of position (Daniel Murphy) and an older player who'd become a DH (Gary Sheffield). Tatis has been merely OK, Murphy was a disaster, and Sheffield has been far better than expected (and a model teammate, contrary to the bleatings of Wally Matthews and others) but still fragile and defensively challenged.

So what happens in 2010? Presumably the Mets realize neither Tatis nor Sheffield is an answer — though that's a dangerous thing to say about a team that thought another round of Gerald Williams and a mummified Moises Alou was a good idea. An obvious answer is to chase Jason Bay or Jermaine Dye, but the Mets resisted obvious answers (Manny Ramirez, Adam Dunn) a year ago. Looking internally, it's hard to imagine Fernando Martinez being ready, or Angel Pagan's bat being sufficient. My question: How is this not the time to give Nick Evans an extended audition?

Daniel in the Lions' Den: As was just amply proven, Murphy has some lessons to learn at first base. But mental lapses aside, he's shown soft hands and confidence there — certainly he's looked far better than he did in left field. But even if Murphy evolves into a .290 hitter and a high OBA guy (by no means a sure thing), can he put up sufficient offense to play first? Second would make more sense based on his numbers, but that brings to mind horrible visions of Gregg Jefferies stumbling from position to position, trailed by errors and vindictive teammates. I like Murphy, but one gets the feeling he makes the most sense as a DH.

Thanks Luis, But…: Luis Castillo has had a much better year than I'd expected, and shown admirable toughness after the wreck of 2008 and again after his dropped pop-up became the lowlight of the season (so far) and a dreadful memory that will be seared into our memories forever. Hats off to him. That said, he's still essentially useless in the modern game, with no power, poor range and a dreadful contract. His value will never be higher, which is to say he might fetch a AA prospect turned suspect if the Mets paid a good chunk of his salary. Do it. The idea of watching Luis trying to hit a sac fly in September 2011 makes me want to break stuff.

Soft in the Middle: Even assuming John Maine returns from injuries to be effective again, the middle of the Mets' rotation is suspect at best. Barring a startling reversal (and, perhaps, a brain transplant), Oliver Perez will be front and center in discussions of bad free-agent signings for years to come. And Mike Pelfrey has been simply terrible: 2009 has been the season we expected him to have in 2008. Given that the season is what it is, losing the chance to get a good long look at Jonathan Niese is another misfortune in a season that hasn't lacked for them. Here's hoping nothing jaw-droppingly awful happens to Bobby Parnell. At least then we might learn something, and have some hope besides a season in which Johan Santana is repeatedly followed by four rainouts.

So that's the positional questions as I see them. But as I said above, I hope the Mets turn to those after asking some more fundamental questions this winter. (Which is to say, starting right now.)

Evaluate the Architects: The Mets' freakish run of injuries had given Omar Minaya a pass until he lost his mind and decided to attack Adam Rubin for revealing that Tony Bernazard was basically a psychopath. The Mets should take a hard look at their GM and ask if he truly deserves a pass. The front office can't manage a roster, is rumored not to listen to team doctors, has a fetish for hobbled, faded veterans peddling the suspect tonic of “leadership,” and can't even handle a simple, richly deserved firing. I don't know if the problem is Omar himself, his lieutenants, interference by ownership or something else, but it's something to be tackled head-on.

Doctor's Orders: You could fold this one into the question above, but let's go over it anyway. The Mets either have incompetent doctors or competent doctors whose recommendations are ignored by incompetent baseball executives. It's one or the other, and neither answer is acceptable. The question isn't why there have been so many injuries, but why so many injuries seem to have been misdiagnosed and/or mishandled, leaving guys sliding with excruciating slowness from Day-to-Day to We Don't Know to Being Re-evaluated to Finally on the DL to Still on the DL to Out for the Year. The Mets have consistently taken the field with 22 or 23 guys available, which is a dereliction of someone's duty. Fix. This. Now.

The Curse of Next Year: Let's assume Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes and John Maine all return healthy next spring. Those guys plus David Wright, Johan Santana and Frankie Rodriguez are a formidable core, no doubt. But is that team really one free agent or trade away from beating the Phillies and holding off the resurgent Marlins and Braves? I'm not so sure. If the Mets aren't sure either, stop trying to plug holes with pieces made of sawdust. Think about 2011, and figure out how 2010 positions us best for that year.

New York baseball fans have a reputation for treating such advice like it's cowardice, but that's talk-radio yip-yap. I'd like some confidence that there's a plan beyond hoping players are magically healed, veterans slurp from the Fountain of Youth and Prozac can be slipped into all the reporters' coffee. Give me that, and I will be patient. No, constructing a realistic blueprint and trying to make it work isn't shameful. What we've put up with for the last four months, on the other hand, fits the definition perfectly.

A key part of 2010: Enjoying Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

When it's a particularly positive development that the Mets have beaten the Padres, it can mean one of two things:

• The Padres are very good.

• The Mets are pretty bad.

The Padres haven't been very good all that often in their forty big league seasons. They've notched as many as 90 wins only three times. When they're not reaching for glory, they're usually wallowing well south of the National League West border. Beating the Padres when they're very good is a fine thing, but it hasn't been a possibility since 1998.

It was a particularly positive development for the Mets to beat the Padres Sunday because the Mets have been pretty bad, particularly in San Diego. When Daniel Murphy ranged far into foul territory to catch the final out, Wayne Hagin treated the feat the way those of us who have watched the Mets for more than two seasons reflexively greet a series win at Turner Field. Wayne said the Mets can finally enjoy the wonders of San Diego, having broken their streak of eight straight losses at Pitco. True, they'd be on their way to the airport 45 minutes hence, but it's Wayne Hagin, so you have to grade perspective on a curve.

Whoever, whatever, the Mets won where they hadn't been winning and they won behind Johan Santana, who earned it on both sides of the ball. A starter's W-L is an often misleading thus fairly useless barometer but even with Santana's ups and downs, he was gypped out of a win his last time around, the game K-Rod put in a Goodwill bag and Sean Green kicked to the curb. The Cardinal loss was his eighth of the year, more than he had in 2008, the year he was ND'd within an inch of his sanity. This year's Santana isn't being haunted by no-decisions. It's inconsistency hobbling his stats. Johan's a 13-8 pitcher by the numbers, but that doesn't seem right. So often, as on Sunday, he performs up to his 18-1 ace standards. When he's not on top of his game, he feels like some 9-14 non-entity of the latter-day Jeff D'Amico variety.

He's Johan. We expect him to be Johan all the time. We have so little left to expect besides the worst. Thanks to him for coming through. Frankie, too, who didn't have a save opportunity but made the most of a chance to make up for his recent shakiness. Third star, one supposes, goes to the Padres for not coming off like the divisional dynasty Braves and sweeping us despite Pitco mysteriously behaving as Turner West.

It's a fact: The Mets and Padres aren't good simultaneously all that often. We and they had winning records together in '84 and '85; '88 and '89; '98; and '05 to '07. It took them ten seasons to achieve a .500+ year. Their first pennant, 1984, felt like a fluke — a welcome fluke considering how much we hated the Cubs heading into that October, but a fluke whose luck ran out against the big-time Tigers. They were a juggernaut in '98, but you wouldn't have picked them over the Randy Johnson-enhanced Astros in the NLDS or 106-win Atlanta in the next round. But they beat both and their reward was a sweep at the hands of the Yankees. Since then, the Pads have been primarily an undercover operation. Their making the playoffs in '05 and '06 was big news in Mission Valley, likely nowhere else. They choked a Wild Card away in late 2007 and almost no one took note that they committed maybe the second greatest collapse in baseball history. Then they went back to their customary wallow.

With a profile that low, it's no wonder the Padres wear camouflage.

This little detour into Friar inertia was taken to demonstrate what a downer they almost always are, making it extra frustrating to watch them exert themselves only mildly en route to three consecutive victories over the Mets. We don't have many franchises to look down on, traditionally speaking. We can't look down on the Phillies anymore. No matter how embarrassing the latest name of El Sacko del Soilmaster and no matter how empty it is 78 dates in any given year, any team that was racking up two world championships while we were racking up none — and ending our last two seasons to boot — has something over us, so there go the Marlins. The Pirates, whose last winning season was clinched when Barack Obama was 31, have blocked too many chip shots for us to get all high and mighty on them. Whatever's wrong with the Nationals, it hasn't stopped them from nipping at our anatomy at all the wrong times the past couple of Septembers.

The Padres? Now there's a Padres curse? We're supposed to be relieved that we finally won a game in San Diego? Like that's a monkey off our back? You have to respect all your opponents and take 'em one game at a time and all that, but somewhere in this league, can't we have a gimme? I know we had a good run in Arizona for a while, but pending this week's set, that's currently inactive. We've won a lot of games at home against Colorado, but they were in the World Series when they weren't supposed to be two years ago while we weren't when we were due in Detroit three years ago.

We seem to have not lost a season series against the Reds since 2001. And they have no great recent success against anybody else. Plus we beat them when it really counted in 1973 and 1999. But we gave them Tom Seaver and they stuck us with George Foster, so it's kind of a wash. Hard to think of the Reds as our patsy. Not that I really thought of the Padres as our patsy, but if we were going to have one, you'd kind of think a franchise with less overall success than us; with no head-to-head body blow against us; with no playoff spot picked from our pocket; with not even a no-hitter on their ledger could be a little more cooperative and lose to us a little more. We beat the Padres eleven out of twelve in '69 and ten of twelve in '86. When we beat up on San Diego, it usually means we're very good.

We're not now and haven't been lately. They swept a cringeworthy four-game series at Pitco last June. They opened Citi Field by taking two of three. Then the first three of this series. Finally we beat them. It shouldn't feel like an accomplishment. It should feel like business as usual. But it's the Mets who have been in the patsy business in 2009.

And haven't they taken care of business efficiently?

When the Diamondbacks close the roof, you can open the pages of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

The bad news was as plain as the grin on Mat Latos' face after he laid down a successful sac bunt. Why shouldn't Mat with the missing 't' be grinning? He was beating the New York Mets. That and $2.25 qualifies him for a Metrocard if the fare hasn't gone up by the next time the Padres come to New York, so yeah, it was bad news per usual Saturday night in San Diego. But because we've drowned in bad news lately, let's divine a few happier tidbits.

Bobby Parnell was good news. Not his line, not even his pitching, but the mere fact he started was good. Why dredge up the modern-day equivalents of Jose Lima or Brian Lawrence? Why not take the kid who was a starter who became a reliever but who may really be a starter and give him a shot? He needs that secondary pitch, something that he might have perfected with a summer in Buffalo, but he's got plenty of minor league games ahead of him from now to the end of the season — and with major league meal money!

Nelson Figueroa and Tim Redding were good news. Figueroa walked in one of Parnell's runs but was sound otherwise. Redding has adopted to his non-role with aplomb. I never wanted to see either one of them in a Mets uniform after tasting a small sample of their fifth-starter work, but they're here, they're getting paid and they're earning it.

Mike Pelfrey will be good news. He had to miss his turn in the rotation to be on hand for the birth of his son. The good news is the son was born and he named him Chase, because Mike Pelfrey plans to go to Chase Field Monday night and own the Diamondbacks. Gotta love the confidence given it was the future dad who was slapped on the bottom the last time the Mets got to Phoenix. Chipper didn't name his progeny Shea until he had actually done something there.

Alex Cora was good news. Good to see the old pro break an ancient homerless streak. He was one of the four guys with the longest stretch of at-bats without a home run in baseball. Natch, Luis Castillo was one of the other four. He's still got his .500 beard, he's still out there making most of the plays (his Rey Ordoñez one-knee-down impression didn't work so well), he's still in there more than he ever should have been. Cora's dinger landed somewhere in Julio Franco territory, but if that's the way they wanted to build Pitco (I'm officially renaming it), let them suffer the consequences when old infielders remember old tricks.

Jeff Francouer was good news. He shaved his .500 beard (killjoy realist) but he walked unintentionally and tried to throw Latos out at first in the second — and despite Murphy being flummoxed by the trickish play, the ball didn't go into the dugout, or into the stands, or onto the beach. It was a good idea and it's a reminder of what fun it is to have a rightfielder capable, theoretically, of executing a 9-2 putout.

Luis Castillo was good news. He walked to the plate and didn't fall down. He struck out as a pinch-hitter and didn't fall down. He returned to his seat in the dugout without incident.

Cory Sullivan was good news. Made a great sliding catch in left that nabbed the ball and avoided the wall. Not only didn't he get hurt making that play, but neither did Luis Castillo.

Brian Schneider was good news. True, he drives I-97 to the plate now, but he got himself a call, no matter how mistaken it was. Chalk it up mostly to another blunder in blue by a crew that includes Angel Hernandez (who has somehow found colleagues who belong at his level), but Schneider knew enough to tag Everth Cabrera after Cabrera touched home with his hand. Lance Barksdale didn't think Cabrera swiped the plate, which replays proved was a ludicrous conclusion, but Schneider didn't give Lance a chance for a second glance.

Dick Williams was good news. Williams was inducted into the Padres' Hall of Fame Saturday night — for you Mets fans out there, a team hall of fame is what a team maintains and embellishes when it's run anything like a proper enterprise, not a total sham steered into the ground by clueless clowns who only care about taking your money and crushing your spirit — and was interviewed by Kevin Burkhardt. Williams owed his A's success in the 1973 World Series primarily to Yogi Berra's (and Bob Scheffing's) decision to pitch Tom Seaver and Jon Matlack on short rest in Games Six and Seven. He could have said, “We were a dynasty, of course we'd win,” but it was comforting to know the way we lost those final two games wasn't just our fevered imagination. Even the opposing manager knows George Stone should have started Game Six.

None of the above would pass for good news in better years. But late on a Saturday night from San Diego in a year you wouldn't describe as “better” than anything, you take what you can get.

The right call to make is picking up a copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

They all felt something
But I felt nothing
Except the feeling
That this bullshit was absurd
—Diana Morales, A Chorus Line

There’s your team sucking and there’s your team when they suck. It’s admittedly a fine line, but the Mets have decisively crossed it. The Mets are no longer a team sucking. They’re a team that sucks.

Really sucks.

They played badly often in 2007, but we knew they were better than that. They played badly often in 2008, but we knew they were better than that. There was even a suspicion for nearly two-thirds of 2009 that their prevailing bad play was a temporary condition, a brief malfunction of the we are experiencing operating difficulties — please stand by nature.

The picture’s no longer fuzzy. It’s as crystal clear as it is unfortunate to our cause. The Mets have ceased to exist as we knew them for the past not quite five seasons. The Mets are no longer a basically good club wandering waywardly until they straighten up and fly right. That path has reached its end point. The Mets are a bad club…a bad club with a third of a season left to kill.

It’s hard to believe some of us were monitoring Wild Card standings as recently as the beginning of this week. I sure was. I saw a faint wisp of hope when we won five in a row against “other” Wild Card contenders. I thought we could inch forward and stay plausible long enough to take on San Francisco when they came to Citi Field in mid-August and maybe inch up a little from there. I didn’t really think we were good enough to compete at that level, but I just wanted the illusion to endure as long as possible.

Then came Tuesday night and Albert Pujols in the role of Dr. Kevorkian, mercifully assisting our team’s suicide with his tenth-inning grand slam. I must confess that as Sean Green faced Pujols, I wasn’t just confident he would give up a death blow; I was not altogether rooting against it. I’d felt like a tool for taking these Mets so seriously so late in their decline, at least a month after they revealed themselves incapable of keeping up with the Phillies let alone the Giants. C’mon Albert, I thought after Green hit DeRosa with the bases loaded to make it 8-7. Just pull the plug on us already, you bastard. Just put us out of our misery.

When he did, it was more of a relief than I expected. My team that played badly long enough to undermine the stretches when they played well in 2007 and 2008 (ultimately leading to two toxic Closing Days that have preyed upon my sanity every damn day since) was not going to sap any more goodwill from my being in 2009 with their endless rounds of Tease & Torment. Once Pujols put them behind 12-7, they were certifiable noncontenders for the duration, not even eligible for “stranger things have happened” miracle contingency. I knew beyond a shadow of plausible doubt they wouldn’t be contending for anything more this year than the challenge of placing nine healthy men on the field — never mind that they weren’t doing so hot there either.

Thus, I could go Wednesday afternoon unburdened by any trace of expectation, free to stop deluding myself that a single Mets game meant anything in the grand scheme of baseball things. Let others eyeball an out-of-town scoreboard or perform “if we can win 27 of the 34 we have left with San Fran, Colorado, Atlanta, Florida, Chicago and Houston…” mental gymnastics as prelude to inevitable letdown. That wasn’t our civic duty anymore.

Wednesday afternoon, despite the senseless indignities visited upon loyal patrons in the name of tone-deaf almighty Policy, was fun. Of course it was fun. I was with my pal, the pulled pork was exquisite and it was a summer weekday afternoon at the ballpark. Plus the Mets won. Did they gain a game on anybody? Keep pace? How the hell would I know? I stopped checking.

Thursday night, however, shorn of Dave Murray, Blue Smoke and seasonable humidity, it really sunk in how there’s nothing left to what’s left. The 2009 Mets were now a contemporary version of any number of their hopeless predecessors whose shortcomings we still know by heart and gut if we got here before 2005. They were, as in days of dismal yore, the Mets who couldn’t patch together a useful Dog Days lineup with a Singer sewing machine. Their starter was one of those heretofore valiant veterans whose tank was empty but was taking the ball nonetheless because there was nobody else to do his job. Their opponent, no matter how feeble on paper, was simply better equipped to play than we were, a commonplace occurrence about to get distressingly more common. Thursday’s rather routine loss went quickly yet seemed to drag on for hours. That it began at 10:05 Eastern made it that much worse. You waited all day for this? Surely there’s something better to watch.

There won’t be much good on SNY between now and October 4. There will be more of this: this void, this emptiness, this whole lotta nothin’. This is what rooting for a bad team is like. This is what it will be like for the next 54 games. Every last one of them, even the wins, will be something like this. There will be no larger point to it except that it’s what you’ve always done, it’s what you always do, it’s what you’ll someday say you always did when it’s not like this — when you persevered as a Mets fan no matter how bad things got in August of 2009.

That day of well-earned hindsight can’t get here soon enough.

A recent Facebook status update from yours truly: Watching the 2009 Mets is like smacking yourself in the head with a pan for three hours a night. And yet here I sit. WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WTF is wrong with me?

Livan is still in, because what's the point. Padres rotate around the bases like a pinball game. Mets make errors, strike out, hit into double plays. Jerry stares from the dugout. Perhaps later someone will fall down the dugout stairs or accidentally poach themselves in the whirlpool or pry off a fingernail with a taco chip.

It's a horseshit year. Pretty much everything that could go wrong has, and there's still eight weeks left of go-wrong that can't happen. I can't turn away, no longer how much I want to, because I know that soon after the pain ends there will be the playoffs with other teams and the sound of, say, Ron Darling on another station will make me sad. And soon after that there will be no baseball at all, and that will make me sadder. I will sit in front of football bored half to death and think that watching David Wright strike out wouldn't be so bad after all.

But right now the Mets are doing horrible things in what's about to be the middle of the night. And suddenly that added torment is too much. If I go to sleep, it's possible that I might dream. I might dream things that aren't true: that our lineup is rich with Carloses and Joses, that our front office can manage a roster, that the Mets can get through, oh, three or four days without some astonishing injury. I might dream it's 2010, as opposed to the waking nightmare that is 2009.

I think I'm going to get a head start on that now. If they somehow win, I'll miss it. That's fine. (And I'm sure Greg will chronicle it.) Blame me if you will.

And if I can't sleep, I'll comfort myself with Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.