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The Mets won the first six games that Pedro Martinez pitched in this season and Tom Glavine and Pedro were carrying the rotation in the early goings. After Pedro's first six games, the Mets lost the next four games Pedro started and then split the next two. Basically, we knew that Pedro and Tom would not carry the rotation for the rest of the season and the Mets had some big problems on the horizon. They ended up having big problems and obviously a lot has changed lately and the Mets rotation is vastly improved.

With Orlando Hernandez and Alay Soler in the rotation, things are a lot better. They are 3-2 in their six starts with the Mets between them and the Mets are 4-2 overall when they have started. Combined, they have a 4.50 ERA, 8.29 H/9, 6.63 K/9, and a 1.34 WHIP. For me, those numbers are just fine out of the last two spots, but they are really better than that. If you take Soler's one horrendous start out, they have a 3.27 ERA, 7.36 H/9, 7.36 K/9, and a 1.21 WHIP in five games. You certainly will not get a gem every game out of the back end of the rotation, but if they put up two good games for every bad one, this Mets team will be alright.

Rotation depth worries are largely a thing of the past as the Mets rotation seems set for the rest of the season. With the current five pitching like they are and with Mike Pelfrey settling in for Binghamton coming off of a dominant seven inning shutout performance in which he allowed only two hits last night, things look very good. At this point, there is no more well rounded team than the NY Mets to call them the best team in the National League is not a stretch whatsoever.

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The shit has probably hit the fan for Major League Baseball as it relates to drug testing. The Player's Union might be stronger than Major League Baseball, but they are going to have a problem going toe to toe with the government.

"Major League Baseball needs to get its house in order," Clay said. "After the hearings, with all the information they have, with all the information we have, that players would still try and cheat the game is very disturbing to me. It sets the wrong example."

It is true that you would have thought that some players would have thought twice. However, when you simply look at the salaries that even bad players are making the risks and rewards are being weighed. With no criminal action and the alternative for a fringe player being not even being in the bigs, it seems like a no brainer for most. As it relates to the top tier players, there is literally tens of millions of dollars on the table.

Clay was even more disturbed by the section of the affidavit in which Grimsley described the common practice of major league clubhouses having two coffee pots, one marked "leaded" and the other "unleaded." The "leaded" coffee, according to the affidavit, contained amphetamines. "That was even more unbelievable," Clay said.

We know speed has been around the league for a long time and is a more serious problem than HGH or steroids, but that seems harder to police. Even if greenies and illegal amphetamines went away, there are just too many legal ways to get serious doses of caffeine or energy.

In an interview yesterday morning with radio shock jocks Opie and Anthony, Leyritz confessed to taking "greenies," or amphetamines.

"I can remember my first amphetamine," Leyritz said on the "Opie and Anthony Show," which airs on 92.3 FREE FM as well as XM Satellite Radio. "I was out all night drinking with Andy Hawkins and some of the guys on the team. I was a young player.

"I came in. I was hung over, sleeping by my locker. And all of a sudden, [Don] Mattingly came to me and said, 'Hey, you're in the lineup.' And I went, 'What?' He goes, 'Yeah, I just hurt my back.'

"Now I'm walking around, I'm going, 'I don't know how I'm going to do this. There's no way that I can go play this game today.' I ran into my teammate who I knew had some of the 'little helpers,' as they called them.

"He said, 'Take one of these. It should help. It'll take the edge off.'

"So sure enough, I took one. He goes, 'OK, you can take two, but no more than two.' So I popped one more, and I went out and went 3-for-4 with two homers."

Matsui's days as a Met could be numbered.

In the near future, Kazuo Matsui's days as a Met could be over.

When Xavier Nady comes back from the disabled list - which could be as early as Tuesday - Matsui is a candidate to be released by the Mets, according to a person with knowledge of the club's thinking.

Enough already.

The Mets are "conducting an investigation" into some inappropriate comments posted on the Web site MySpace.com by Scott Schafer, their sixth-round pick (184th overall) in Tuesday's draft, a person familiar with the situation said yesterday.

Team officials didn't find any red flags in their predraft interviews with the 18-year-old righthander, and Schafer even pitched for Pasadena (Texas) Memorial High, which is located in the hometown of Mets director of amateur scouting Rudy Terrasas. The club also was concerned that Schafer used a Mets logo in his profile and referred to himself as a member of the team, even though he is unsigned.

Things are getting just way too ridiculous these days.

Are we even remotely going to say these two in the same sentence?

Ummm...yeah...



Good the see the NY Post’s journalistic integrity is firmly intact.