When Air Metropolitan departs from Palm Beach International in a couple of weeks (assuming this perpetual Spring Training ever ends), I think we all know who's going to be sitting in the fifth row of the starting pitchers' section and who will be deplaning to meet his connecting flight, ETA April 11 or 12 against the Marlins, maybe sooner given the way rotations have of never, ever spinning as planned.

Meet the new Met, same as the old Met in that Liván Hernandez is classic fifth starter Met-erial. Is anybody here really surprised this veteran's veteran whose shiningest moment in baseball came in the previous decade wound up a Met? Isn't everybody more surprised that he hasn't already been a Met? Doesn't he seem just that familiar?

Tim Redding was injured before he ever had a chance to pitch well. Freddy Garcia was injured long before we signed him. Jonathon Niese was born not 22½ years ago, which makes him kind of young to be keeping this kind of company just yet. That leaves Liván, and not just by process of elimination. The old man has pitched well (embellishing his credentials with five very solid innings Wednesday), though it certainly helps that Redding, Garcia and Niese have a combined ERA of way more than Hernandez's age…whatever number that might be today.

Niese should have a future, Garcia has shown nothing more discernible than a past, Redding has a bad shoulder and Liván Hernandez — named World Series MVP right around Kid Jonathon's eleventh birthday — is undeniably the fifth starter of the present. Liván Hernandez is officially 34. And I'm the King of Sweden. But whaddaya want from a fifth starter: an accurate birth certificate or lots of innings, many of them dependable? That's Liván's stock-in-trade. He's big, he's durable plus he hits. I saw him hit a home run at RFK, and that's no mean poke. Let the “bat Liván eighth and Castillo ninth” talk commence in earnest (hell, let the “play Liván at second the days he's not pitching” talk commence, too). I'm not convinced Liván will endure into May or June let alone September or (deep breath) October, but let's get to the first week of the season with five starters on board and take it from there.

Santana had to shut it down at one point this spring. Pelfrey was seen wearing a boot. Maine ain't all the way back even if he's out there firing. Perez mentioned something about being tired from Playing For His Country. Hopefully they'll all be tip-top when everything counts again. Until then, I'm not going to look askance at someone with Liván Hernandez's track record, long-term or extremely recent. The King of Sweden would never be so shortsighted.

As for the man ultimately on the other end of the rotation's deliberations, Brian Schneider — not my favorite catcher by any means but surely a guy we need given the present roster composition — is experiencing “pain and stiffness behind his right knee“. I would assume all catchers experience loads of pain and stiffness, but Schneider hasn't played since Sunday and he required an examination that revealed “inflammation of the capsule in the knee”. Omar Minaya said he was not particularly concerned. I'm pretty sure that means Schneider will be out six to eight weeks.

Also, an X-Ray showed David Wright's left big toe is all right after he fouled a ball off it in WBC play. Excuse me while I go hyperventilate into a paper bag For My Country.

Thanks to the Eddie Kranepool Society for a glowing appraisal of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers — and at many fine bookstores near you, including Barnes & Noble and B. Dalton locations from Connecticut to Washington, D.C. All are welcome to join the FAFIF: AIPOTNYM discussion on Facebook here.

Thanks to Joe Dubin's New Breed-bred eagle eye for such things (though discounting the Odd Couple game we won only in fiction), it appears the Mets' winning ways date back further than originally thought, all the way to June 13, 1967, a full 44 games before the juncture initially calculated (when I was either too sleepy or too timid to wade through what loomed as a full and daunting pallet of L's on baseball-reference).

Commencing with that evening's doubleheader split against the Reds at Shea, specifically rookie Tom Seaver's eight-hit complete game 7-3 victory over Cincinnati in the nightcap (the fifth win of the young man's career), the Mets were 22-22 up to and including the aforementioned July 28 loss in Los Angeles…meaning that since the middle of play 6/13/67, the Mets are 3,308-3,307 (winning percentage: .50007559), marking the furthest you can go back in time and call the Mets cumulative winners. Before the second game of that June 13 twinighter, up to and including the 6-0 shellacking the Reds pasted on Bill Denehy in the opener, the Mets were 277-582 (winning percentage: .32246799).

The larger points stand as previously reported:

• The Mets were very bad well into their sixth season, covering a period of their first 859 games.

• They've been intermittently almost as bad since then but sometimes they've been pretty good and once in a while magnificent. Thus, for more than four decades, they've been the slightest shade over middling in a span that covers 6,615 games, right through last September 28's 4-2 defeat at the fins of the Marlins.

• They still need to win 82 games this season to have as many yearly winning records as losing records in their checkered 48-year history.

• They will still have an all-time losing record even if they go thirty games over .500 every year for the next ten years.

• Buy my book please.

To paraphrase Vin Scully, it was 10:26 PM in the City of Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 31,101 was sitting in on history. Claude Osteen had just shut out the New York Mets, 2-0, on July 28, 1967, dropping the visitors' record for the season to 39-57 and their lifetime franchise record to a staggering 299-604. Since their founding, the Mets had lost slightly more than two games for every one they won.

That night marked the end of ancient history. The next night is when modern history began, as that Dodger Stadium crowd saw the beginning of something bigger and better, at least where Mets fans were concerned. True, it was just another loss in another losing Mets season, 2-1 to Bill Singer. But, with ample hindsight, we can say our winning ways date back to July 29, 1967.

Starting with that defeat on 7/29/67, the Mets' record for the balance of 1967 would be 22-44, a typically unimpressive 22 below .500. But — and it's a humongous but — beginning in 1968 and running straight through to the end of 2008, the Mets have compiled a record that stands 23 games above .500, a nifty 3,264-3,241. Start the clock with those final 66 games of '67 and you have, over a span of 6,571 regular-season Mets games, an all-time mark of 3,286 wins and 3,285 losses.

In 1967, the Impressions recorded a single called “We're A Winner”. In 1967, we had yet to make much of an impression beyond a certain Rookie of the Year pitcher, but progress was and is progress. The Mets are forever a work in progress. A winning percentage that measures out to .50007609 over a span of not quite 41½ seasons after Casey Stengel's and Wes Westrum's troops came limping out of the gate at .3311849 is…well, if it's not impressive, it is sort of progressive.

We're a winner! From July 29, 1967 to September 28, 2008 we are! Other franchises may define their success by championships or whatever, but that's too much forest and not enough trees, especially after your first several seasons were comprised of acorns falling on your head. The New York Mets, as you probably know, began their existence 0-9 and 40-120. They followed that up in 1963 with 0-8 and 51-111, and it was considered a great leap forward. Going 53-109 in 1964 was posited, straight-faced, as the best record in team history — which it was.

So don't tell me there's not something magical about an almost 41½-season winning record, even if it's a one-game-above winning record, even if it encompasses part or all of eighteen losing seasons, most of them horrendous to have endured. Every win, like every one of Warren Zevon's sandwiches, should be enjoyed, savored and treasured. What the 1962 Mets wouldn't have given for one extra winning sandwich every month.

This line of thought is relevant because the Mets can do something very special in 2009. Statistically speaking, by one particular measure, they can stop being losers for the first time in their not-so-brief history.

The Mets posted losing records every year from 1962 through 1968. Then winning records for seven of the next eight seasons through 1976. Then they went off on a losing binge for seven years. They followed that Biblical famine with seven years of plenty…and followed that with a six-year, sub-.500 stroll through the desert. Winning returned in 1997 and hung around through 2001. Losing made its uninvited reappearance for three seasons after that, but starting in 2005, it's been, a couple of final days notwithstanding, nothing but peaches and cream.

Let me add it up for you: 47 seasons, 23 winning records, 24 losing records. After 2008, the Mets stand one winning record away — 82 victories without cancellations — from having as many winning seasons as losing seasons. After 48 years, they can be 24-24 in this regard.

I'd regard it highly. To rise up from, at various junctures, 0-7, 7-15 and 14-21 to make it to 24-24…I don't know if it would be Amazin' cubed, but it would be nice. We've had similar chances before, reaching 7-8 in '76 and 14-15 in '90, but there was always that darn backsliding into a state of un-Met-igated disaster. When the Mets land on disaster, they rarely just check in and turn around. They usually embrace it.

This is their chance to escape. This is their chance to be a .500 franchise.

They'll never reach that milestone in terms of individual wins and losses. Never, ever, ever, ever, not with that yoke they started building on April 11, 1962 and carried on their backs clear to July 28, 1967. To have fallen 305 games below .500 in just over 900 games' time and then need well over 6,500 games to supercede that level by exactly one game — Mets' all-time record, 1962 through 2008: 3,585-3,889, or 304 games below .500 — is to produce as shovel-ready a project as any stimulus package is ever going to find. The Mets dug a hole so deep by the middle of their sixth season that they could go thirty over .500 every year for the next ten years and still be under .500 forever after 57 seasons of operation.

I'm not counting on them to go 96-66 every season from 2009 to 2018. I'd take it, but I'm not counting on it. I'm not necessarily counting on 82-80 this year, actually, because I've learned to never, ever, ever, ever count on the Mets to do anything. But if this team, generally considered a contender for some reason, can do the bare good-team minimum and put up a winning record, then we can say — if so inclined — that we've had as many winning records as losing records in our sometimes triumphant, sometimes calamitous, always fascinating history.

And if we can do that, we can literally be, at last and for all Mets time, what the naysayers say we are.

Mediocre.

Thanks to Will Leitch for citing something we had here regarding one of the less triumphant, more calamitous events the Mets have ever conjured and, in the process, introducing Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets to the readers of New York Magazine. And thanks to so many of you for having expressed your enthusiasm — via e-mail, comments and Facebook — at receiving your copy of the book (and seeming to be happy with what you've read so far).

If you enjoy it, please don't be shy about letting other folks on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers know about it by posting a review. I'm told they really help spread the good word. And if you haven't ordered your copy of FAFIF: AIPOTNYM, you can do so via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Powell's, Deep Discount, eCampus…what I'm saying is, there are lots of options, and all of them are presumably better than whoever's going to be our fifth starter.

I'm still a little dim on things like this, but I somehow managed to add a Facebook page for Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets here. Become a fan, get updates, post your thoughts on the book and do some of that social networking I keep hearing about.

And if you haven't ordered it already, FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine retailers.

Duaner Sanchez is gone. Pedro Martinez isn't coming back. You have to steel yourself and say that's how it should be.

Baseball's civil war between intuition and statistics, between jocks and geeks, can be reduced with only moderate oversimplification into a struggle between Heart and Head.

Heart thinks of the past. Heart offers odes to grit and pluck and fire. Heart is nostalgic, wistful about once upon a time. Heart spins daydreams of comebacks and redemption. Heart is reluctant to say “never” or “never again.” Heart loves the idea of second chances. Or third or fourth ones.

Head thinks of the future. Head is quantitative, and grit and pluck and fire don't enter into the equation. Head preaches that past results are no guarantee of future performance. Head crunches the numbers and tries to predict not what will happen (impossible), but what makes the desired outcome most likely.

Both are perfectly good ways for those who love baseball to lose themselves in the greatest game of all. Heart exults in stories of faith rewarded and misery transformed into delirious happiness, in '69 Mets and '91 Twins and '06 Cardinals and (almost) in '08 Rays. Head tries to tease out evidence that redemption is about to arrive, that almost-good teams are about to gel or overlooked players are about to have their luck even out. That can be pretty satisfying to have come true, too. That's the thing about baseball — it's beautiful no matter how you come to it.

Heart remembers Duaner Sanchez as lightning in a goggle, as a comeback story from uncertain shoulder surgery with a triumphant ending yet to be written. But Head notes that results are everything, and Duaner's haven't been anything special. His 2006 second half was bumpy before the taxi accident derailed him, 2007 never happened, 2008 showed his bravery was intact but his fastball wasn't, and March 2009 did little to convince anybody that anything substantive had changed. Middle relievers turn ordinary even in the best of times; the Mets had to consider the likelihood that ordinary was Duaner's new ceiling. Yes, Heart still thinks of Duaner as part of a three-headed bullpen dragon with Aaron Heilman and Billy Wagner. But Head notes Heilman is in Chicago, where one hopes he can rediscover his change-up before the winds start blowing out of Wrigley, and Wagner is in physical therapy, most likely never again to throw a pitch in anger. The only surprise turns out to be that Sanchez was the last head still breathing lukewarm fire.

And then there is Pedro. Pedro throwing in the 90s for the Dominican, Pedro striking out guys, Pedro charming all onlookers, Pedro playing cat and mouse with the Mets front office the way he once played cat and mouse with terrified hitters. Pedro has pushed Heart around all through his long decline, whispering that next time his location will be pinpoint, that next time those one or two bad pitches won't happen, that next time his wiliness and will can see him through. Heart, left cold by the flailings of newcomers Tim Redding, Freddy Garcia and Livan Hernandez, burns to give the old charmer one more chance. But Head says no. Head knows it's over. Well, Head doesn't know, but Head can guess pretty confidently, because that's what Head does.

So it is, always has been and always will be. Heart will possess you to leap up and down on the couch and hug strangers in the stands. But when the money gets spent and the slots get allotted, Head has to run the show.

And Head has a secret advantage: Heart is a sucker. And always will be, in a way we'd never want to lose. Heart is always ready to fall in love all over again. With rare exceptions (we're looking at you, Mr. Coleman), Heart will find something praiseworthy in any player who visibly does his best, at least tries to say the right things and delivers results decently north of utterly execrable. (We're looking at you, Mr. Castillo.) Unless everything goes truly awfully, simply by being a professional baseball player Tim Redding will demonstrate grit and pluck and fire and write a story that may not have the bravura of Pedro's, but will have us rooting for him nonetheless. We'll see something in Sean Green's mound glower or the way Bobby Parnell gathers himself before each pitch or how little Casey Fossum stares down a huge Philadelphia lefty, and Heart will be off to the races once again, forgetting that once these players were anonymous imports brought in by Head at the expense of previous beloveds.

And then, of course, Head will get rid of them too.

Heart and Head will both sing hosannas when you pick up Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available for pre-ordering now via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine retailers.