Friday Good, Bad, Ugly

The Good

Aaron Heilman, obviously. [Cue laugh track. Crash! Bang! "Aaron! You got some splainin' to do ..." ]

But seriously folks. As far as I'm concerned, the Mets' 11-10 record is just fine, considering our health situation and how crappy we've looked at times. There's basically no ground to make up at this point, as the Bravos and Phuckheads are right with us in a clump. We're not the Dodgers, nominal contenders in the NL West, who already find themselves a whopping seven games behind the D-Backs. (But seriously, Joe Torre, I'm sure Nomar is the answer to your problems. Just keep hitting him third until you can't take the winning any more. Christ.)

Over .500 at much less than full strength, well, you'll take at at this point. Just consider the lineup the Mets ran out in support of Nelson Figueroa in the day game at Wrigley earlier this week:

SS Reyes
RF Pagan
3B Wright
CF Beltran
1B The Ghost of Carlos Delgado Past
2B Easley
LF Clark
C Casanova
P A guy from Lincoln High School

The results were what you'd expect -- five hits against Ted Lilly, the Bear Stearns of pitchers, and an ugly loss. Hoo-ah. What do you want for nothing?

I'm just not all that worried yet. We've got Moises Alou coming back within the week, and he'll hit while he's in the lineup. Castro and Schneider will be healthy at some point, and when they are, they'll give us a hitting boost out of the lower part of the order. I fully expect Beltran and Reyes to snap out of it. The bullpen will straighten out.

Metsblog linked this up today, but Billy the Kid basically agrees. He was on the ESPN radio with Michael Kay [cue laugh track] yesterday, and when asked if the team had found its identity yet, said, "No, and we shouldn’t have, it’s only 20 games…You don’t expect to be at your peak level. I think we are right where we need to be."

Just so. We've got the Bravos this weekend, a should-be-series-win against the Pirates, and then a tough West Coast road trip on the agenda. Let's re-evaluate after that. I see us coming together and picking up a couple of games, but we shall see.

The Bad

Please. Make the bad man stop:

First, Guillén gushed about Jeter. Guillén said Jeter had “everything in his life,” and then listed how Jeter lives in New York, has money and has four World Series rings. Guillén paused, smiled and, while trying to describe Jeter’s social life, delicately, especially for him, added that Jeter was not married.

“I look around when I was at the All-Star Game to see if he’s got anything I don’t like,” Guillén said. “I said, ‘Man, you’re the perfect man.’ Too bad I don’t have a daughter.

Ha ha ha ha ha! Anyone else get the impression that if Ozzie Guillen's firstborn had been a girl, it wouldn't have gone well for her or the wife? Just picking up that vibe for some reason. Also, someone might want to point out to Ozzie that, should she and Derek get together, the perfect man would likely bequeath his daughter a fancy New York sexually-transmitted disease. I believe those translate across all languages and cultures.

But pray continue:

Sounding like the president of the Derek Jeter Fan Club, Guillén kept the compliments flowing.

“He’s the best thing ever in the game,” he said. “He’s got everything you want. Who’s better than Derek Jeter? Nobody in the game."

Hmm. Well. "The best thing ever." I don't think I've heard that one before, actually. Even from the Paul O'Neill Fanclub. Now recall that this man is paid millions of dollars to run a professional baseball club. As there's nothing to possibly say to something like that, I'm going to dunk my head in a bucket of ice water until the pain goes away. Should be some time next week.

The Ugly

This is what I wrote in my season preview about Luis Castillo:

The guy's a stubby little bundle of energy, but you can only be so energetic on a pair of knees that sustained untold damage from a couple years on the Metrodome turf. His right peg was 'scoped over the winter, and it's really not back all the way. The knee has been balky in the past, as has the left one, and there's every reason to believe that both will worsen with time. ... And if Castillo's speed is compromised even a little bit, he quickly becomes a fairly sizable liability. His solid OBPs have always been compiled via a combination of plate discipline, dink singles, corner doubles and infield hits, and losing his legs takes two of those four options off the table. ... Without speed, Castillo basically becomes a much-poorer hitting version of Jose Vidro, which ain't helping anyone.

This might have been understating things a little bit. Not because Castillo's speed won't go if his knees continue to bother him -- it will. But I didn't realize that the knee, as it does with Big Papi, affects Castillo's ability to drive his swing with his legs.

This is basically how every Castillo at-bat goes these days:

• Gary Cohen makes a huge deal about how Castillo looks like George Burns coming up the dugout steps; Gary and Ron then discuss Castillo's agreement with Willie that he can ask off when he's hurting too bad.
• Luis, wearing a sharp pair of Tsuyoshi Shinjo's old wristbands, gingerly leans into the box and takes at least four pitches.
• When he does swing, it's with a choked-up grip a pitcher would be embarrassed of, and the swing is all arms; a slashing, diving jab swing.
• Groundout, dink, flare.

Now, Castillo has some of the best bat control around, and he's been able to kind of make this work so far. Kind of. I mean, the one extra-base hit and .288 SLG in 66 at-bats speaks for itself, but the guy is unquestionably skilled at putting the ball where he wants to. The problem is that as Castillo remains in the lineup, all the woes that we've discussed are likely to become worse, not better, and we are going to probe the depths of how effective a guy with less power than Cheddar Ben can be.

How far up will opposing outfielders play him? 30 feet behind the infield? Do we think Castillo will ever drive the ball to the wall again? I'm not kidding. Do we? And if not, we're going to run into a humiliating Castillo Shift before long where Shane Victorino is whispering in Chase Utley's ear the whole time and daring Luis to make him pay. This has to happen, unless Castillo proves he's got something in his arsenal other than infield singles, loopers and shallow line drives.

And that, friends, will be ugly.

BONUS UGLY: Joe Smith makes the case for removing caffeine from the clubhouse before games.