Oliver Perez

With Carlos Beltran headed for an MRI tomorrow and still no sign of Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, and Oliver Perez, I think now is an appropriate time to discuss trading for someone who could provide some steady offense, especially if Beltran hits the DL.

The problem for the Mets is they have very few trade chips to work with.

Huh? What? Really? According to David Lennon of New York Newsday (click here for the post) the Mets have pulled Oliver Perez from the rotation. There really shouldn’t be a surprise there, despite the amount of money he’s being paid. He’s currently sporting a rotund 9.97 ERA and 2.26 WHIP over his first five starts, numbers that are simply unacceptable.

A few weeks back, I attended the Mets' opening practice at Citi Field with my fellow B/R writer, Lou Cappetta. 

The event was more of an opportunity to check out the intricacies of the new park and sneak a peek at all of our favorite players up close.

We decided to sit in center field to get a good view of the action and also get a chance to catch some long bombs. 

Oliver Perez has certainly been a bit of a project since he became a Met. There have been some days in which he looks ike an ace, and there have been others that make people think that he shouldn’t be in the major leagues. So far this season, there has been more of the latter.

He has only lasted five or more innings once, and that was when he earned his only victory of the season against Dan Diego on April 15. He has already walked 15 batters in just 19.1 innings, and he is going to need to get his act together if he wants to stay in this rotation.

How much longer is Mr. Wilpon going to deal with Omar Minaya as the general manager of the Mets? What will it take for him to realize that he is the wrong man to be running this franchise?

Take a step back a couple of seasons. Minaya's bullpen wears down and the Mets collapse to finish off the 2007 season by losing 12 of their last 17 games and missing the postseason.

I like to think of myself as a realistic Mets fan.

This offseason, while many of my fellow Mets fans were picking the Amazins to finally overtake the Phillies and win the division, I was quietly optimistic while still taking a wait-and-see approach.

I even picked the Phillies to win the division in my National League East season preview article on Bleacher Report.

With that even-keel mentality in mind, I think it may be a long season for us Mets fans.

Over the first 12 games of the season the New York Mets compiled a record of 6-6. That means that the Mets are .500, that's not bad for most teams.

For the Mets it apparently is. I don't know the reasoning for that, maybe because they are favored to win their division. 

Whatever it is, "Don't Worry 'Bout It". I say that because all the Mets have to do to get in good shape is at least take two out of three from the St. Louis Cardinals in their upcoming series.

I watched last night's game against the Orioles and came away impressed by several things I saw.

Although Oliver Perez still wasn't throwing his best fastball, he certainly looked much better than he did his first couple of outings back from the WBC.

The first thing that I noticed was that Perez was throwing a lot of strikes and getting quite a few ground balls. I watched Perez in the WBC a couple of times and it seemed that keeping the ball down was a priority for him this spring—not that it worked that well for him in that tournament.