The deciding game, as the Giants face the Mets yet again tonight. El Duque makes his second start since his return. He went less than 90 pitches last week, but while doing so kept the Marlins scoreless to lower his ERA to 2.13.  Hopefully he'll get more support than last time. He faces Cain (2-4). Cain won his last start, vs the Rockies, but the Giants have won just twice in the ten starts Cain has made this year.

The lineup:
SS Reyes
LF Chavez
CF Beltran
1B Delgado
3B Wright
C Lo Duca
2B Easley
RF Johnson
P El Duque

Ben Johnson will take Carlos Gomez spot tonight, as the Mets try to get a look at him as the return of Alou looms nearer.  Johnson was brought in to pinch hit but has yet to knock his first hit of the season.  Lo Duca has been hot lately, and notched hit 1000 last night. Only 1000 more to go Paulie.  For the most part, theres only room for improvement after last night, when the Mets went scoreless. So lets see…anything. Stolen bases. Some doubles. A homer would be cool. Anything to avoid another Mets 0. 

Gametime is 7:10 and can be caught on WFAN or SNY.  As always, head on over to the Hot Foot Bleachers to talk the game, Mets baseball, and other little league plays that Arod can try out.

Jeff Passan over at Yahoo Sports looks at who baseball is shelling out too much for, and who is a steal at twice the price.  The good new? Passan sees young Mets Wright and Reyes as bargains based on their current salary.  Both signed new contracts last season that extended their time with the Mets well into the future. Passan's feelings on these two can easily be summed up with this little quote:

No arguments here. Reyes has improved drastically as he's matured, and as long as he stays healthy is easily on pace to rack up better numbers than he did last year. We've seen how nervous he makes pitchers, and his increased patience has resulted in him reaching first safely at least once in all but four games so far this season. He'll never be a homerun guy, but considering his speed he'll have plenty of doubles and triples, not to mention infield singles.

On the other side of the coin, his most overpaid athletes include Carlos Delgado, who just recently seems to have broken out of his slump.  Delgado struggled for…seemingly forever. Of course, he hit two homeruns in one game just days ago, so he's back in all of our good graces. He's even broken back out his diary. I mean umm….at bat statistical journal.  Ex Met Armando Benetiz gets the nod for relief pitching.

It was a long slump, and even the elder statesmen in the Mets blogosphere were starting to queston Carlos. So I guess we can't hold it against Passan.  I know he did this by position, but for this one instance perhaps he should have started with the man the overpaid list should be named after: Carl Pavano.  Delgado wasn't hitting, but he was at least out there every day, chasing down pop fouls and providing calming words of advice to young Met pitchers in need, and probably tips on good places to by Cigars to left side infielders. 

Larry Dobrow over at CBS Sportsline talks about players who are better than their numbers indicate. His list includes Met ace Tom Glavine and the currently hot Paul Lo Duca.  Larry, on Paulie:

So far this season, Lo Duca has caught 11 while giving up 15 stolen bases, all while batting .327.  Other players on Dobrow's list include twins reliever Pat Neshek and White Sock AJ Pierzynksi.

A few quick links to a few of the more lighter sided peices floating out there today.

The guy's over at Deadspin have a glimpse at the inner party animal that is Mr Met, with pictures.

Mr Met clearly learned a lot from the 80s Mets. 

And Jerry Krasnick's starting 9 this week takes a look at baseball players turned actors.  Is there even a doubt in your mind towards the #1? Of course not, its Keith Hernandez, for his role in Seinfeld.  Strawberry gets a nod as well, for his appearance in Seinfeld as a ringer for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team

Lets face it, the episode that gave us the infamous second spitter will probably go down in history as the greatest episode of any tv show ever. That alone is probably enough for the veteran's commitee to right the greatest wrong in baseball history, and put Keith in the hall.  Though where is the honarable mention for Piazza's guest appearance on Married…With Children as himself, as a striking baseball player forced to be a tv news camera man.

Bob Klapish over at ESPN takes a look at Oliver Perez and his rise as a pitcher this season.  Nothing new to the Shea faithful out there, but a good read nonetheless.  A nice little clip for you:

Ollie is still a work in progress, and his flyball/groundball ratio can make one nervous, but from everything we've seen he's getting better and better.  The old Ollie would have melted down last night after giving up two first inning runs.  This new Ollie found his way back, tossed a decent number of strikeouts, and ended up lasting deep into the game. The work of Rick Peterson and leadership of elder Met statesman Glavine have seemed to really help Perez, and the thought that he might still have more to learn and the ability to improve makes it all the better. 

Thanks to reader imkeithhernandez17  for the link

The San Francisco Giants come to Shea for a series starting tonight.  To kick it off, Ollie Perez takes the mound.  He's currently 6-3 with a 2.54 ERA. His last start was a 3-0 win over the Braves, the sole win of the series. He can still be a bit inconsistant at times, plus a little…well, crazy. But for the most part has pitched pretty well, including a game he kept scoreless into the 9th.  No word on whether or not the Giants will force him to remove his bling.  He'll face Tim Lincecum (2-0).  Perez lost his last matchup against the giants, which was the only loss during the series against them on the west coast.

The lineup:
SS Reyes
LF Chavez
CF Beltran
1B Delgado
3B Wright
C Lo Duca
2B Easley
RF Gomez
P Perez

It was snuck in their all sly, but Delgado has been placed back in his old home, the cleanup position, moving Wright to fifth.  Since he's been off on an incredible tear of late, Lo Duca will hit after Wright in Green's spot.  LoDuca who not long ago was hitting in the .270 neigborhood, is now at .329. This puts him just below Chavez (.337) for team leader of the current everyday players.  Paulie is actually hitting. 425 for May, including a 4 for 5 night in Saturday's win over the Marlins.  Gomez is in right, as is the new tradition when Perez pitches, and bats 8th.

Gametime is 7:10, and can be caught on the WFAN, SNY and WFAN.  As always, head on by the Hot Foot Bleachers to talk the game, Mets baseball, and probably some Bonds hatred.

Earlier today the Mets sent Shawn Green to the DL.  He had broken a little bone in his foot after hitting a foul ball into it back during the Marlins series.  AAA outfielder Ben Johnson will take his spot. Johnson has actually been with the team since Sunday's game, but arrived too late to be activated.  Johnson was hitting .282 in NO, but was just starting to heat back up after spending some time on the minor league DL, hitting .308 with 12 hits over his last 10 starts.

Mike Vaccaro at the Post takes a look at booing Barry Bonds and the reasons for it, asking us if as fans are we hypocrates if we boo Bonds for his use of the roids, yet support Mota.

Vaccaro does make a point, but of course there is the generally unwritten rule of sports fans.  Perhaps Mota was a cheater, but he was our cheater. As fans I think its our right to be hypocrites, and support our players while booing the opposition for doing the same thing. Its not like we haven't done it in different situations countless times before. And while both Bonds and Mota are users or performance enhancers, there is some differance between a relief pitcher and a guy looking to set the all time home runs record. I'm sure though as a Met fan though I could sit here all day and come up with reasons to boo Barry while not boo-ing Mota.  It all comes down to simple facts though: I'm a Met fan, not a Giants a fan. If Mota comes back and pitches well, Shea Nation will embrace him.  If he falls apart in his first few appearances, he will be boo-ed like he's A-rod after striking out in October at Yankee stadium.  And Bonds? Well, he's just not the most likable guy in the world, and he's one of theirs not one of ours. Sure, we've had our share of unlikable Mets over the years, even ones that used one performing enhancing drug or another. But, they wore our colors. So right or wrong, it made ok. Or at least less bad. So I for one, support booing Barry, and cheering Mota. 

As long as he can still pitch.
 

The word is, Ben Johnson is with the Mets. After Gomez got hurt, word went to the Zephyrs in Omaha, and Johnson got ready to ship out.  But Johnson doesn't have a private jet, he didn't join the team till immediately. The Mets more than survived, winning by three with Green, Gomez and Lo Duca all sitting out. This however, isn't something they can keep up.

Lo Duca was scheduled to be off anyway, and should easily be back in the lineup come Tuesday. So that brings us to the others: Green and Gomez.  Both are scheduled for tests once they're back in NY, no word on if that will happen tomorrow's or if the holiday will stall it till Tuesday.  Either way, Green has a broken bone and is in a boot, meaning its almost certain he's out Tuesday. Barring a secret mutant healing ability. Alou has admitted he's not 100%, so he won't be back to swap out.  So that puts more than anything else the big question mark on Gomez.

Gomez says he's feeling better, and the SNY guys said he looked to be moving better today. If he can play Tuesday, that lets the Mets try to skate by w/o DLing Green if they think he can be healthy by weeks end. It'll be tighter, they'll be short a bench player with Green hurt but active. But should tests indicate otherwise, the mets will have no choice: at least one of the two will need to go on the DL.  Even if Gomez thinks he'll be up by Wednesday, can the mets take that risk? They'd have to be willing to throw caution in the wind, and hope no one else gets hurt. They'd have to assume Ollie will go long, and not suffer one of his meltdowns that results in a 3rd inning pull. In a close game they might even have to put Glavine in to put down a sacrifice bunt.

With the off day tommorow, barring bad test results on both, I don't expect to see any moves made. So till then we have to sit and wait and see if there's a move.  At least Ben Johnson gets to see the sites of NY during memorial day.