Gulp

No use sugar-coating it. The Mets are playing like shit. A lineup, A-minus lineup, doesn't matter. This team is hemorrhaging losses at a rate completely unseen throughout 2006. And we're doing it against teams with a combined .457 winning percentage.

So that's the bad news.

Unfortunately, there's really no good news to counterbalance it with, aside from the fact that the games we're playing right now are meaningless.

I don't think it's anything worth getting overly concerned about, but I agree with what Tom Glavine said before the game last night: it would sure as hell be better to end this 6-game, season-ending road trip 4-2 rather than 2-4.

Beyond that, what more can you say? The team's not hitting. We all thought that big 12-run game against Washington over the weekend was going to be the break-out. Since then, we've scored 3 runs in 18 innings.

It gets worse. In 12 games since an off-day on Sept. 14, we've been shut-out three times. We've scored more than 3 runs twice. We've scored an average of 2.5 runs per game, and that includes one game where we scored 12 times. Take that away and we've scored 1.64 runs per game.

So that's the misery index.

And to top it all off, two teams we desperately want to avoid in the playoffs are surging at just the right time.

The Astros are 1.5 games back of the NL Central leading Cardinals, who are an almost unbelievable 4 games over .500.

The 'Stros have two more games in Pittsburgh followed by 3 in Atlanta, while the Cardinals have 1 more against San Diego tonight before closing their season at home against Milwaukee.

Out west, the Dodgers have 2 more games in Colorado before they close out their season with 3 games in San Francisco, while the Padres move on to Arizona after tonight's game in St. Louis.

Closer to home, the Phillies are a game out of the Wild Card sweepstakes. They've got 2 more games against the Nationals before closing out the season on the road in Miami.

So how's about some predictions? In spite of my general pessimism at the moment, I'm going to predict that things actually turn out the way we want them to here, with the Astros and Phillies just falling short of the playoffs.

I'm banking on the Braves and Marlins to show a little pride and come up with series wins against the Astros and Phils. Both teams were Wild Card contenders late in the year, and you know, if you can't make it to the big dance, ruining someone else's chance may be the next best thing.

Put it all together and the Mets are looking at the Dodgers for the NLDS while the Cards would square off with San Diego. I'd rather play the Padres in a short series, but I won't lose any sleep if it doesn't happen.

I may lose sleep, however, if the Mets don't snap out of this little funk they're in. Big game tonight. Pedro's on the hill.

I've already written a million times about how important his last few starts are -- hopefully we'll see progress again tonight. If Pedro gives us 6 innings with a little more life on his fastball I'll be happy.

And if the Mets score more than 2.5 runs tonight, hell, I'll be overjoyed.

- A.F.O.M.G.