New York Mets

Coming into this season, Oliver Perez was one of the bigger question marks for the Mets' rotation, and after four starts he’s more of a question mark than ever.

If the Mets need a big strikeout out of the bullpen, Hisanori Takahashi may just be the guy.

Despite giving up at least one run in his past three appearances, the Mets call on Takahashi to eat up some innings out of the pen.

He leads all MLB relievers in strikeouts with 21. That's 21 strikeouts in just 14.1 innings pitched. His last two appearances have especially added to his total.

Last Friday against the Atlanta Braves, Takahashi pitched three innings in relief.

Despite giving up a run, he struck out seven batters.

The Mets continued their hot streak with a 7-3 win against the Dodgers today behind some early offense and a strong pitching performance by John Maine. They have now won seven games in a row, and have wrapped up this homestand by winning 9 out of 10 games. Not bad.

Be careful though, these Mets were clearly not as bad as they were early in the season, but they probably aren’t this good either.

What a whirlwind first four weeks of the 2010 season the Mets have had.

You could argue that no team in the National League felt more pressure to get off to a hot start out of the gate than the Mets.

After the debacle that was the 2009 season, lots of people believed, and still believe, that there could be repercussions for another poor finish in 2010.

The worm is turning.  New York's most beloved franchise is in first place, one-half game ahead of the defending National League champion Philadelphia Phillies. 

There comes a point during a long baseball season that a particular game proves to be the turning point of a season. Last June that proved to be the case on the wrong side for the Mets when Luis Castillo stumbled and dropped a Alex Rodriguez pop up in a 9-8 loss to the Yankees.

Even though 2009 was lost, that one moment began a total spiral out of control that left the Mets as a franchise twisting in the wind.

Fast forward to 2010.

David Wright became the youngest ever New York Met to reach 1,000 hits on Tuesday night when he lined an RBI single to right field off the Dodgers Ramon Troncoso in the fifth inning of the second half of a twi-night doubleheader.

Wright, who is 27 years and 127 days old, is the eighth Met with 1,000 career hits. He is also the fastest player to reach the milestone in a Mets jersey, recording the historic feat in his 868th career game.

After putting the finishing touches on a sweep of the Dodgers in a twi-night double-header on Tuesday night, the Mets (12-9) see themselves tied with the Phillies for first place in the NL East.

The Mets have taken eight of nine games on this current home stand, thanks to solid pitching, timely hitting, and even better pitching.

There are a lot of reasons to like this team. 

They have speed, they have defense, and surprisingly, they have pitching!  The starting rotation and bullpen have both pitched well beyond anyone's wildest expectations thus far.

Now in its second season, Citi Field finally feels a little nit more like the home of the Mets. For fans who went to games there last year, it was nice and it had that new ballpark smell, but something was missing.

Mets officials have tried to sort that out for the 2010 season, and all-in-all I think they've done a pretty good job. There are some big changes, like adding a museum charting the clubs' history, and some subtle tweaks, like painting the stairwell walls orange and blue.

Seems obvious, right? Yet this eluded the club 12 months ago.

Earlier in the day, I wrote about how the rainout could cause the Mets to burn through an already taxed bullpen, but I left out some good news.

The rain delay has caused a change to the starting rotation. Oliver Perez and Johan Santana are now pitching on the same day.