NL East

On Tuesday night I sat down and turned on the beginning of the New York Mets vs Detroit Tigers game.

I did have some vesting interest in the game since I have Ike Davis and Brennan Boesch on my fantasy team, but I also had interest in the game due to the fact that Justin Verlander was on the mound for the Tigers.

I have always enjoyed watching Verlander pitch, mainly because he is one of the few pitchers in baseball who can throw a 100 mph fastball and also snap off a knee-buckling curve ball.

What an unbelievable day it was in sports yesterday! How about that soccer game!

When Landon Donovan scored that goal, I screamed, "YES!" in my office. I felt bad because one of the girls on my team was giving a demo of our product and I completely threw her off.

I am pretty sure that is not in the being a good manager manual.

We also saw a 10-hour tennis match yesterday. A 10-hour tennis match! I can’t even sleep for 10 hours, let alone play a highly competitive tennis match.

Chad Durbin left the Phillies' 7-6 victory over the Cleveland Indians in the ninth inning due to an apparent hamstring injury.

The Florida Marlins have fired manager Fredi Gonzalez, naming Edwin Rodriguez his replacement, but only on an interim basis.

Rodriguez has spent the past one-and-a-half seasons as manager of Triple-A New Orleans.

The team also said Wednesday it would be dismissing bench coach Carlos Tosca and hitting coach Jim Presley.

After an offensive outburst last night—their biggest since 2008, scoring 14 runs—the Mets will hand the ball to knuckleballer R.A. Dickey tonight. The Mets are 10-3 so far in interleague play and will go for the series win against Jeremy Bonderman and the Detroit Tigers.

You know by now that there are two pretty appetizing starting pitching options on the Mets' radar right now. 

Those two, obviously, are Cliff Lee and Roy Oswalt.  Both are outstanding pitchers on underachieving teams that are trying to dump them in order to clear payroll or to acquire young talent. 

But which one is better for the Mets, both for now and down the road?

It has been reported that Carlos Beltran worked out in front of Omar Minaya and the New York Mets training staff on Sunday.

Beltran showed his hitting and base-running ability. Beltran impressed Minaya and the medical staff. They believe that he is ready to move on to the next step of his rehabilitation. Exactly what rehab is needed and when it will start is uncertain. It is possible that the next step is a minor league rehab assignment.

Minaya and Beltran are supposed to talk to the Mets' head doctor later this week to come up with a plan of action.

The Jenrry Mejia experiment is over in New York…at least for now.

The Mets did the right thing when they sent the 20-year-old rookie to the minors Sunday. While Mejia was an adequate if inconsistent reliever for the Mets this season, GM Omar Minaya’s decision to send him to the minors to start is what’s best for Mejia and the Mets organization in the long term.

I'll be the first to admit that I haven't watched John Lannan's starts very closely recently. Tonight, I'm going to try to watch some of the starts that I only heard on "Charlie and Dave," and afterwards, I'll share more thoughts.

But my first gut reaction to like Mike Rizzo's decision to demote Lannan to AA was not good. The first person I thought of was Steven Shell. ("I didn't like his whole aura on the mound.") Then I thought of Daniel Cabrera. ("I was tired of watching him.") And then I thought of Elijah Dukes and Lastings Milledge.

Despite losing their last two consecutive games against the New York Yankees, the New York Mets have showed improvement.

Going 8-2 in the last 10 games they’ve played, the Mets are currently 39-30 and second in the NL East, trailing the Atlanta Braves by 2.5 games.

Since calling R.A. Dickey and Hisanori Takahashi from the minor leagues, the Mets have found success. Dickey is 5-0 on the season with a 2.82 ERA and Takahashi is 6-2 with a 3.13 ERA on the season.