Now that's what a ninth inning ought to look like: Five pitches, no fuss, put it in the books.

Now this is the kind of pitching line you dream of: 9 IP, 0 ER, 3 H, 0 BB. 113 pitches, 85 of them for strikes.

Johan Santana is 11-7 in mid-August, but just look at this game log.

In the 15 games in which Santana didn't get a win, he's given up this many earned runs: 1, 4, 2, 1, 3, 1, 0, 4, 1, 3, 2, 5, 2, 1, 2. In 10 of those games he clearly did everything one could have asked of him — with better offensive support and bullpen work behind him, he could be knocking on the door of 20 wins.

Santana's had exactly two starts that would qualify as lousy all year: He gave up 4 ER in six innings against the Angels back in June and 5 earned against the Reds last month. When your bad starts can be referred to by the month in which they occurred, with no possibility of confusion, I'd say you're doing OK.

Or consider this: Santana went winless from June 6 to July 4. During that stretch, he lowered his ERA from an already-solid 3.20 to 2.96.

There was an odd feeling of dissatisfaction with Santana early on, as if we expected him to not only pitch superb baseball but also to discover cold fusion and clean up the Middle East. (If I can be a horrible fan for a moment, I do still wonder why he's been more Al Leiter than Mike Hampton with a bat in his hands.) The man's highest ERA following any game this season has been 3.41. Big second-half pitcher? He's been a big pitcher in whatever half you'd like to choose.

No prospects-for-a-veteran trade can be fairly assessed just one season in, but Carlos Gomez is hitting .250 and has brought little beyond speed to the Twins. Kevin Mulvey has been OK for Rochester, but Philip Humber has an ERA over 5 and Deolis Guerra is scuffling with a similar ERA for Fort Myers. Santana, meanwhile, has had to learn a new league, find a place in a new clubhouse, deal with a ferocious media, forge a relationship with two managers and two pitching coaches, and not yield to the temptation of strangling a parade of incompetent relievers.

All things considered, I'd say he's done just fine.

Facing the same team on consecutive starts isn't ideal for pitchers. Facing the exact same matchup that yielded a cringeworthy disaster five days before isn't ideal for fans.

Yet this time around, Pedro Martinez vs. Zach Duke turned out just fine. Pedro might not have had as good stuff as he did on Monday, but he had a little more stamina and a lot better run support. And turned in a game that struck me as far more significant than you'd expect from a mid-August tilt with a second-division club.

Every athlete must eventually battle age, but Pedro's unearthly competitiveness and pitching smarts always suggested he'd have an advantage in that melancholy competition; the sad part is the idea has only rarely been tested, with all manner of injuries interfering. From the neck up Pedro's perfect, but it seems like everything below there has been balky and fragile. Last night, happily, the body supported the brain just fine: Pedro's flamethrower fastball is gone, never to return, but he used his changeup to deadly effect, supplementing it with a modest fastball made more effective by the addition of a few MPH here and the subtraction of a few there.

The sadness of Athlete vs. Age is that ultimately age will win — and often in a rout. Tom Seaver wound up a crafty journeyman in Boston colors. A bad back turned Keith Hernandez's Cleveland tour of duty into a farce and forced him from the game. Before we can believe it, David Wright will be a graying first baseman with a slider-speed bat. Jose Reyes will be known for his excellent baserunning and his good arm at short, but no longer for his explosive speed or the joyousness of youth. And then even those qualities will be beyond them, and they'll be gone.

Fairly soon, Pedro will precede Wright and Reyes down the road taken by Tom Terrific and Keith. But he's still got some time left — and with a little luck, he'll have more games like last night's, with brain and body in sync. Games for him and us to appreciate.

Y'know when I was reminded how much I love Pedro Martinez? Not Saturday night when he calmly put away the Pittsburgh Pirates for seven innings. It was last Monday afternoon when his surefire win was pissed away by his bullpen, none of whose members will be joining Pedro in Cooperstown for more than a few minutes spent staring at his plaque.

I hated our bullpen. You hated our bullpen. But Pedro, he whose line sagged most at the hands of the Flushing Arson Squad, was magnanimous in team defeat.

“With me,” he was quoted after that calamity, “it's OK. Everybody out there was trying, was trying to reel in and win.” Pedro even gave the Pirates credit that day: “They never quit; you have to give them credit.”

It pained me to admit it but yes, the five relief pitchers who allowed the Pirates six runs in three game-killing innings weren't working for Bucs Inc. They were trying. I have a tough time remembering no Met sucks on purpose or with intent even though it often seems that way.

Johan Santana has practically broken his face trying not to act grumpy when one of his wins is ND'd or worse. It's obvious Santana is suffering bullpen foolishness ungladly. He can't speak in more than code about doing all he can because it would be poor sportsmanship and poor team protocol to do so. Santana could take a page from Pedro in that respect and just roll with the punches. Johan's got his contract. His W column is immaterial. If he does everything he can to win, the team's wins will take care of themselves and I sense he'd be saner in the long run.

Pedro's fine right now. More than fine. Pedro is a legitimate starting pitcher again. That's no small feat when you add up the physical duress his body and the emotional anguish his mind have endured in 2008. I saw a wire service photo of Pedro placing a baseball in his father's burial plot last month. It's tough enough to go through the death of a loved one. Then it's photographed and disseminated and everything he does is watched. Then he has to go get himself together and pitch and pitch well and pitch like he's completely healthy. He's paid and paid well to do it, but he's a person. So are each of his relievers.

Martinez and his support crew took care of the Pirates for nine full innings Saturday night. Pedro got seven of them done with minimal fuss. It's tempting to say, oh, it's the Pirates, but we know from the fallacy of oh, it's the Pirates. Eddie Kunz and Joe Smith aside, Pedro's relievers took care of him at the end, just as his hitters took care of him early (for fun, let's count Pedro — a hit and a run — as one of his very own offensive weapons).

It's not a bad rotation, occasional mogul on the slope aside. Maybe it will be an OK bullpen, Wagner or not. And this team surprises you often with its resiliency. Could there have been a more discouraging loss than the 7-5 choke job on Monday? Could there have been a better response than the five straight wins that have occurred since? Remember the ten-game winning streak that changed the tenor of this season came off a dreadful defeat in Philadelphia. We were 5½ back and in third after that. We're in first now, two games over the Phillies, 3½ ahead of the Marlins. We have Pedro, Johan, Pelf, Maine and Ollie in any order you like. We have every reason to be magnanimous on those nights when the wins don't come so simply.

FYI, I'll be joining Mike Silva of NY Baseball Digest to talk Mets (what else?) Sunday night at 7:00. Give us a listen and call in if you feel like it.

No, no, no — that's not the Mets @ Pirates game I know. The Mets @ Pirates game I know ends with the Jolly Roger flying high and the Pirate Parrot squawking proud. It ends with missed Metropolitan opportunities galore and relievers whose heads are tucked somewhere south of the NEW YORK on their funereal black jerseys.

How did we not get that Friday night? How did the Mets hold on? How did the Mets win?

How did the Mets not lose?

That was one exceedingly losable Mets @ Pirates game. It had all the elements. It had the out-of-the-box scoring in the top of the first; it had the nagging sense we should have pushed more than two across the plate; it had the eerie calm of a no-name, no-stuff starter quietly mowing us down inning after inning; it had an atrocious call go against us on a stolen base attempt; it had a lead that began to look too lonely for too long; it had a pitcher pulled just in time in favor of a bullpen in whom trust is never to be placed.

It really did. It really proceeded as a Mets @ Pirates game in every sense of the word. The Mets' two bang-bang-bang runs at the start represented a suspiciously light total. Jason Davis didn't seem particularly overpowering — or powering — but gosh if he didn't shut the door from the first through the seventh after he allowed those two runs. Nary a rally flickered and Reyes really was robbed on an out call at second by an umpire who, it must be respectfully opined, is sightless, crooked or both. Pelfrey was at his non-Marlin best, good for seven scoreless. No way he should have been taken out, but Manuel said he wanted to keep his innings down because as a third-year pro in his first full big-league season Pelf's “in uncharted waters”.

How many of y'all assumed some Pirate would deposit some eighth-inning pitch in the uncharted waters of the Allegheny once it was delivered by a Met pitcher not named Mike Pelfrey? You can put your hands down now. Granted, Jack Wilson didn't quite splash down, but the punchless shortstop punched Duaner Sanchez's fourth pitch into the left field stands and our lead was cut in half and it was Mets @ Pirates per usual.

But then it wasn't. First, there was recovery as Sanchez retired the ageless (or perhaps just old) Chris Gomez. Then it was Feliciano time and Other Pedro got Nate McLouth, didn't get Freddy Sanchez but eventually got whichever LaRoche he says he is to make the third out.

The other distinguishing characteristic of this Mets @ Pirates affair was stupendous Mets defense. We saw it impressively in the sixth when Pelf handled a tricky Ryan Doumit tapper and ignited a 1-6-3 double play. We saw it startlingly in the seventh when Carlos Beltran gunned down, nailed and threw out one of the LaRoches at the plate (it was such textbook execution on Carlos' and Schneider's part that it deserves all the clichés it can carry).

But the bottom of the ninth…now that's the Mets @ Pirates inning that made Pittsburgh National Corp. famous. We've seen bottoms of ninths in PNC Park open up and swallow the Mets whole. We've seen them take the shape of sea monsters that rise up from each of the Three Rivers and shred the Mets alive. We've seen some bad stuff there.

How many of ya'll assumed we'd see more of that in Friday night's ninth? Shoot, I did. Hangdog Heilman takes the mound and I'm groaning and cringing, not just for the usual Aaron's pitching reasons. I'm groaning and cringing because it's Pittsburgh and the game's on the line and it doesn't have to be Heilman trying to protect a one-run lead but, of course, it is. You know something's coming, you just have no idea if it will show up in an ambulance or a hearse.

First there's a LaRoche. You know what they say about LaRoches: they're the only ones who will survive a nuclear holocaust. Sure enough, LaRoche grounds one to first that grazes Delgado's glove. Well, you think, that was gettable but it wasn't gotten and now Hangdog Heilman's burying this game in the backyard and…HEY! ARGENIS REYES SCOOPED IT UP IN THE HOLE…but LaRoche will be safe because Delgado's all out of position and…HEY! HEILMAN'S HUSTLING OVER THERE…but there's no way he's going to beat the runner and…HEY! HEILMAN BEAT LAROCHE TO THE BAG! HE'S OUT!

He was! He was! Like I said, stupendous Mets defense. It can really change the game you think you know.

After the highness of Argenis, the angst of Aaron subsided some if not altogether. Heilman struck out Brandon Moss but walked Jason Michaels because what would a bottom of the ninth with a one-run lead be without a Pirate baserunner? It wouldn't be PNC with the Mets in town. But my goodness, Jack Wilson, he of his first home run of 2008 in the eighth, didn't win the game for the Buccos. He didn't tie it and he didn't extend it. He popped to Jose and ended it. Ended it as a Mets win. Ended it so although ancient Jamie Moyer outpitched equally antique Greg Maddux on the other side of the continent, the Mets could wake up Saturday to a first-place lead and an icy cold Iron City.

That's not the Mets @ Pirates game I know, but I was sure glad to make its acquaintance.

For those of you who missed the West Coast final:

Phillies 1

DODGERS 3

The Phillies got themselves swept out of Chavez Ravine, enabling the Mets, who for once treated a last-place team like dirt, to retake first place all by their splendid lonesomes.

Question then: Are the Phillies that lame? 'Cause I suspect we ain't quite that good.

Oh, we're all right, all right. We're capable. We pitch with confidence for seven or so innings most nights. But we're also coming off a three-game series against the Washington Nationals, a unit so bereft at this time they should be demoted to Regionals. Last time we played a non-National entity, we gave back a 5-1 lead — and we're playing that bunch all over again. Yes, the Pirates are technically underwhelming, but we know better, don't we? We know what happens when the Mets go to Pittsburgh. We play our worst baseball in the league's best setting.

In 2005, they left us hospitalized.

In 2006, they were party killers.

In 2007, they forced us to erase history.

I love PNC Park. I hate the Mets playing there.

Meanwhile, the talented Phillies of Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Pat Burrell and Shane Victorino (among others, though few of the others are pitchers) drag their tails to San Diego. The Padres are about as dismal as the Nats, yet that didn't stop the Pads from brooming us in June, which is to say anything good or bad could happen to anybody in the N.L. from here on out. I would choose to get comfortable alone in first place but I wouldn't necessarily plan on it.

Since when does that work?

Wham! Biff! Pow! Sock!

The Mets were finally doing what they're supposed to do to teams like the Nats, the torrential rains that threatened to engulf New York had spared D.C., and Oliver Perez was looking unbeatable, benefiting from absurd movement on his pitches, overaggressive Nats hitters and a generous strike zone. I extracted some bitter amusement from Carlos Delgado hitting one over Willie Harris's head — earlier in the night SNY showed Harris in a Brave uniform robbing Delgado, a short-circuited comeback that Joshua and I witnessed at Shea last year, and that still struck me as deeply unfair. (How DARE you deny a four-year-old boy's belief in happy endings, you Brave fourth outfielder! The NERVE!) Only thing of note on the night's schedule was I had a 35th-birthday affair for a friend in lower Manhattan.

Ah what the hell, I thought when Emily returned from Pilates for the handoff of parental duties. It's 5-0 and Oliver looks great.

So I blithely headed out into the suddenly rain-free night, and what's more — this is the point where I'm pretty sure the baseball gods looked down from the diamonds of Olympus and frowned — I decided not to take the radio. Um, because I was already carrying an umbrella, or something, and there wasn't room for a radio in the giant pair of cargo shorts with all the extra pockets. As if Monday's freaking disaster — I was not only in attendance for but also kept score for the first time in years — was something that happened years ago.

So I walk into the Tribeca Tavern and it's 5-3. As in “no longer 5-0.” If baseball were a fishing trip, 5-0 would be reeling in flounder and the humidity's low and the bugs aren't an issue and perfect song after perfect song is coming in on the transistor radio. 5-3 is different. 5-3 is warm beer and the boat is leaking and the fish aren't biting and you have Deet in your eyes and you've got an uneasy feeling you screwed up the tide tables and so matters will soon be worse.

“Goddamnit — who blew it?” I demanded somewhat anticipatorally of a luckless guy in a Met hat who seemed to be looking at the TV. (Points to the Tribeca Tavern for consigning the Olympics to the little satellite TVs, BTW.)

“Oliver got tired,” he said.

“Not the bullpen?” I asked, genuinely shocked.

No, not the bullpen.

Chastened, I settled down to my proper station and the business of willing miscreant relievers across the finish line. (What the hell, Tim had about 8,750 hours to get used to being 35.) Joe Smith's slider wasn't going anywhere near where it should have been going. He was excused. Duaner escaped thanks to a nifty jai alai pickup by David Wright. And then the Nats commenced to play stupid, and that was that. But I wasn't so much pleased as I was relieved. The baseball gods had proven their point, we were safe, and no one — even if it would have just been me in the privacy of my superstitious little soul — could claim it was my fault.

There's a phrase I use almost as frequently as “oh boy, the Olympics!” and that would be “I love me some Los Angeles Dodgers!” But I do love me some Los Angeles Dodgers (!), for it is they who have won three consecutive games — including two in resounding late night walkoff fashion — over your Philadelphia Phillies. And with your Philadelphia Phillies stumbling around in the dark, your New York Mets have reconvened a first-place tie in the National League East.

Joe Torre…we love it!

Brad Penny…we love it!

Sure, why not? Pennant races make strange bedfellows when it's after most decent East Coast people's bedtimes (I, of course, was wide awake when Nomar Garciaparra took Clay Condrey deeper than the night, stronger than the north wind blowing; I, of course, make no claim on decency). Should it all come back around to another Mets-Dodgers playoff series…well, talk about carts and horses all out of sequential whack. For now, we've got one more game in which we love us some Los Angeles Dodgers (and, for that matter, some St. Louis Cardinals in Miami). Brett Myers is pitching for the Phillies tonight. With Brett Myers on the hill, the repressive forces of communist China would look sympathetic.

Meanwhile, little-known American swimmer Michael Phelps strives desperately to garner the tiniest bit of attention within the vast shadow cast by the worldwide phenomenon that is Daniel Murphy. Phelps has won five gold medals, albeit in total obscurity, this Olympiad. Murphy, as the nonstop headlines and newscasts constantly remind us, is batting .467 in his first thirty Major League at-bats. NBC has left behind a skeleton crew in Beijing to record the remaining swimming events on the off chance anybody's still interested. Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira and Al Roker are broadcasting live this morning from in front of Murph's hotel room in Washington. Can't they let the poor kid excel in peace?

Faith and Fear does occasionally have some business to attend to, so periodically your bloggers get together to exchange blog-related news and ideas. (“Faith and Fear: The Interpretive Dance” will blow you away with both its kinetic nuance and its rococo wardrobe.) But tonight we were wary that the Olympics would squeeze the Mets off the TV in various bars and pubs, so we opted for a sit-down at my house. And thus it was that Greg and I held down either end of the couch and passed papers back and forth with the Mets as backdrop.

And what a backdrop! While we were chewing over our agenda for the night, Mets kept hitting and running around and getting walked and the score kept climbing. “You know,” Greg said finally, with cheerful disbelief, “I just realized that the Mets have been up since I got to your house.”

If only it were always so easy. I actually felt sorry for Jason Bergmann, left in to absorb a fearful beating for no apparent reason. Soon enough Keith was doing his usual blowout thing of all but ordering SNY's viewers to turn off the game and do something more interesting with their evening (they must love that in the truck), the two of us and Emily were comparing the horrible local ads that run in Kings County with the horrible local ads that run in Nassau County, and the only suspense was whether Brian Stokes would earn a rather ludicrous save. Well, unless you count whether any Nats fans would be left above the loge. If there were, I tip my cap to them. The Nats had four hits and are now 33 games under .500 — at the risk of getting all Mex on you, that's devotion, even on a nice summer night.

These games are the flipside of fiascos like Monday's implosion against the Pirates, which was the kind of game that's like letting the water gurgle out of the warm bath of the soul. Except we tend to go into cruise control during laughers, chatting and reading and attending to household business, while bullpen meltdowns and ill-timed offensive brownouts and other varieties of cruel defeat leave us stretched out on the rack, helplessly focused on the awful things that are happening to us. Or, to borrow from some writer preoccupied with something other than baseball, laughers are all alike, but every bitter defeat is bitter in its own way.