At 6’7″, he’s an absolute beast capable of eating up innings like Koreans eat up Starcraft. Combined with his heavy sinker leading to quick outs and DPs, you have the recipe for many complete games to come. Still kinda bummed he didn’t get the shutout tonight, but any night I don’t have to see a reliever run in from the outfield is a great night.

In related news, I don’t mind seeing Carlos Delgado in the field or at-bat anymore. How the hell did that happen? Two months ago, I wanted him tossed out onto the street. Unfortunately, I still want the entire bullpen tossed out onto the street, shot, and burned alive.

A month ago, I was all but ready to give up on this team. Carlos Delgado was a lazy, washed-up piece of Caribbean garbage. Oliver Perez was his usual 5th/6th inning imploding self. Jose Reyes was doing OK, but wasn’t exactly impressing anyone. Jose Castillo’s swing continued to be the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. The outfield was a disaster of concussions, old men, and underperforming stars and subs alike. The entire bullpen was worthless. Well, that last thing is still true.

But the Mets can actually beat the Phillies this year. After a devastating loss on Tuesday — a game I feel Johan Santana should’ve finished — the Mets answered with two huge wins to grab hold of first place all by their lonesome. Willie Randolph am cry.

I feel like the rest of the season is going to play out with the Phillies and Mets both alternating between mediocre and good-for-the-NL like they have so far. While the Mets have been on a tear in July, the bullpen is capable of blowing up at any time, Delgado isn’t going to keep this up, and Mike Pelfrey isn’t going to either. I’d love to believe that Moises Alou and Ryan Church are going to come back and contribute, but unfortunately Barry Bonds probably has a good chance of playing more games than either of them the rest of the season.

It’s going to be a ball-tingling race, especially with the Mets-Phillies rivalry now being one of the best in baseball. No matter what happens the rest of the way, at least the Braves suck.

The Mets probably should’ve SWEPT the series, considering Tim McClelland all but gave the Mets the series opener, when he chose to fuck with Jair Jurrjens after he showed him up on a close call. Four straight walks, the last three with the bases loaded. I think Sunday was the only time the Mets actually scored runs by hitting well. They had ONE good inning on Saturday.

I still don’t know what to make of the team — I bet now they’ll lose a couple of games in a row to the Pirates. Oh, and Moises Alou might be hurt again before he has even managed to get back in the lineup. AWESOME signing there. The guy was hurt coming out of the womb, at 124 years old it’s only going to be 5x worse.

Meanwhile, considering the other New York team (usually a reference to the Mets), Wang is pretty good. (lol) No really, he’s been pretty great this year. He’s like the total opposite of Barry Zito. I just complained about the Alou signing, but wow. Zito is now 0-6 with a 7.53 ERA. I bet when I check my Yahoo! fantasy league tomorrow, there’ll be a notice saying “Barry Zito has been dropped by 23674 teams.” The Giants wish they could do the same.

I just wanted to make this post before Chipper Jones absolutely demolishes the Mets this weekend. It’s going to be ugly. Jurrjens, Hudson, and Smoltz lined up for them. Oh God. I didn’t even realize it was that bad. Pelfrey, Maine, and Figueroa need to pitch at least 7 innings to win. I really don’t see it happening.

And Delgado sucks at first base too, by the way.

WHAT HAPPENED!?!?

3 HOMERS!!!

5 RUNS!!

SANTANA IS A BUST!!!

…

Oh wait, he still has the lowest WHIP on the pitching staff. (Nelson Figueroa doesn’t count!)

This wouldn’t be post-worthy if it weren’t for fans in attendance at Shea BOOING as Santana walked off the mound to the dugout. What the fuck is wrong with Mets fans? And when asked about it, Santana owned all of them:

“If they boo, that’s fine,” Santana said. “That’s a history they got from not being so good, I guess.”

The man’s got a point. He has one bad game — after throwing two gems — and he’s getting booed already. Mets fans are just way too angry and impatient for their own good after the epic collapse last year. The team is .500 even without Pedro, El Duque and Duaner Sanchez, the last of which is a big question mark coming back. The Mets bullpen would be about 150% better with Sanchez in 2006 pre-taxi-accident form.

Getting back to the booing, I can’t believe it happened as the Mets were going for their 4th straight win. Maybe if they had lost their last three games it would make more sense to me, no matter how little, but I mean COME ON. He’s the savior of the Mets pitching staff! Instead of booing, they should be offering him their first born, even after letting up the third HR of the day.

Skip ahead 24 hours, and Delgado is swinging at ball four again, the rest of the offense doesn’t score nearly as much as it should against the Marlins, and Pedro is out for however long the fuck knows. There’s no way that’s grammatically correct. Maybe it was a good thing Pedro got hurt, since he was getting demolished by the MARLINS. He heard a pop, which means he probably won’t be back for a while. Unless that was all an April Fools’ joke. I haven’t watched or listened to any sports today, so maybe they announced it on Mike and Mad Dog today.

. . .

goddamn it.

At least my fantasy team is doing well, even if Pedro did suck it up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQmNpBXJOTY

The best part is Keith Hernandez cracking up.

I still can’t believe this trade.

From ESPN:

In return for Santana, the Twins would receive center fielder Carlos Gomez and pitchers Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra — a package which some talent evaluators believe could be the fourth-best offer that Minnesota received during this process.

Excuse me while I laugh at the joke that is Twins management. (You should too, by the way.)

The amount of fail in this trade is immense. The very definition of EPIC FAIL. The Twins really must be run by a bunch of monkeys. First, they decide to build an open-air stadium in Minnesota, and now they push the Red Sox and Yankees so far that both those teams dropped out, leaving the Mets pitiful offer as the only option. Either that, or they *really like* Carlos Gomez. Just wow. I almost feel bad and hope that one of the pitchers turns out to be good. This of course assuming that Santana doesn’t break down. I will cry if that happens.

But I will probably hang myself if the Mets somehow botch the contract negotiations. They have 72 hours to agree on terms with Santana. There’s no way Omar will screw that up, though. I don’t want to contemplate upon the possibility. It’s just not possible. It’d be worse than finding Allison Stokke naked on my bed, but subsequently finding out that there’s a force field around her. Cocktease total.

I think this makes the Mets the team to beat in the NL, but they were the team to beat last year too, and we all know how that turned out. I still don’t see them being able to compete with the top of the AL. If Delgado doesn’t completely suck it up again, and the bullpen learns to get batters out, maybe they’ve got a chance. And obviously Pedro is a huge if. Him coming back like the Pedro of Old would definitely put them on the road to the World Series, and give them two lights-out starters. But the chances of that happening are probably like 25%.

For now, I will celebrate a great trade. One that almost makes up for the Kazmir trade of a few years ago. But not really. At all. God, that trade was fucking horrible.