The Nats come to Shea tonight. The question will be, can the Carloses stay hot?

Nelson Figueroa , the once and future Hometown Hero, takes the mound. Figgy is 2-2, 4.81 ERA. Pretty good for a guy who almost had to play in Mexico. He’s coming off his worst start of the season, a five inning, five run, eight hit affair that resulted in a loss by just one out in LA. However, Figgy is an Brooklyn boy, and he’s back at Shea tonight, where he’s 2-0 with a 3.32 ERA. Add in his 2.76 career ERA against the Nats, and maybe we got ourselves a nice little ball game. Thats right, getting Figgy with it.

He’ll face Odalis Perez, who is still hunting for his first win of the season. Perez is 0-3, but only has a 3.43 ERA, and has served up 34 strikeouts. He’s given 55 of them to the Mets over his 17 career appearances against the team, during which he had a 3.93 ERA. He took a loss last time he met the Mets, in the 6-0 blowout, of which he gave up 2 runs and walked 4. While he does have five no decisions, the Nats won three of them.

Lineups courtesy of Mets Blog:

• SS Reyes
• RF Church
• 3B Wright
• CF Beltran
• LF Alou
• 1B Delgado
• 2B Easley
• C Schneider
• P Figueroa

In hopes to be more like Arod, Luis Castillo is out with a quad injury. There is no word on if he will get the DL hook, though its safe to say if he does they might wait until Wednesday when they need to call upon a pitcher to do so.

With Luis out, Ryan Church comes back to the sacred second in the batting order spot, and Damion Easley joins the lineup, batting seventh. Church by the way, leads the team in average (.321), HRs (7), runs (28), and bad jokes in blogs about churches (308). He’s hitting .364 against his former team, including one home run and two doubles.

Moises Alou meanwhile, is .318 against the former Montreal Expos, over 280 at bats. In a slightly smaller sample size, he’s .375 against Perez, in 16 at bats. He’s hit in his last five games.

Lastly, Carlos Beltran , whose May is better than his April, is .375 against Perez, and had a home run in his last appearance against the Nats. It was his last home run till he knocked one out yesterday afternoon against the Reds.

Game time is 7:10, and you can watch it in all its glory on SNY, or enjoy the sweet tones of Howie on WFAN. If you prefer reading, join us in the Hot Foot Bleachers where we’ll discuss the game, Mets baseball, and other blogs that Keith Hernandez reads.