NL East

At this juncture, there are not many of us that would trade places with Mets manager Jerry Manuel.

His team has been decimated by freak injuries and lingering illnesses to the point where they are out of major league-level players. The lineup these days looks like one out of an early March split-squad game.

I was always raised to never blame a loss on the officials, and while the umpires weren’t the reason the Nationals lost, they certainly didn’t help.

In the top of the second inning David Wright reached second base on a pop-up just outside the infield that Cristian Guzman didn’t bother to make a play on. Left fielder Adam Dunn lumbered in to try and make a play but was not able to charge nearly 200 feet in to catch the blooper.

The Mets last played the Nationals on May 25. The Mets had just taken two of three from the Red Sox and were fresh off a tough 12-5 loss. When the Nationals rolled into town, the New York did exactly what was needed by sweeping the series with ease.

Now it’s time for the Mets to do the same in hostile territory. It isn’t going to be easy with so many injuries piling up, but this is going to be a true test to see what the Mets are made of.

The New York Mets announced that relief pitcher J.J. Putz will undergo surgery for a bone spur in his elbow. He will most likely miss the next eight to 12 weeks.

Putz started the season off strong, but began to lose consistency on his pitches through the last few weeks.

In 29 games, Putz has pitched himself to a 5.22 ERA with a record of 1-4. This is not what the Mets were expecting when they acquired Putz from the Seattle Mariners in a three-team deal in Dec. 2008.

Kevin Burkhardt of SNY recently posted a report on Twitter that will make Mets’ fans around the world want to crawl into a corner and die. “Jose Reyes has a tear in his right hamstring tendon. Add SS to the list of Mets needs,” wrote Burkhardt.

He later added, “The Mets say this is a new injury and that he will rest for two days before being reevaluated. My guess is you won’t see him until all star break.” This is obviously terrible news for the Mets, but hopefully the re-evaluation will reveal that this is a mistake, but let’s be real.

Last year, when the Mets acquired Ryan Church and Brian Schneider in exchange for Lastings Milledge, I was one of the people who was ecstatic about the deal. Church was always a guy who was underutilized during his time in Washington, and Schneider is the excellent defensive catcher that we have been looking for the past couple of years.

But unfortunately for Church, things haven’t panned out

Future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine was released by the Atlanta Braves on Wednesday.

Matt Cerrone of Metsblog.com has listed some options for the Mets in the starting pitching market this season.

Among the names mentioned are Javier Vazquez, Jonathan Sanchez, Erik Bedard, Jarrod Washburn, Jon Garland, Roy Oswalt, Jason Marquis, Jake Peavy, Brad Penny, and Pedro Martinez.

No Reyes. No Delgado. No Beltran. No problem, as the Mets beat the Marlins today to take the series and finish 5-1 on this home stand. This squad just continues to win ball games and it’s been nothing short of amazing’

Once again, the super subs had key hits in this game to drive in all 3 Mets’ runs. First it was Angel Pagan who hit a two out double in the 5th to drive in Wilson Valdez to give the Mets an early 1-0 lead.