It was fun while it lasted

The dream of the undefeated season came crashing to earth last night at the hands of the mighty Washington Nationals.  Perhaps it was too much to expect the Mets to continue their early season dominance, especially against a team picked by most pundits to finish fourth in the National League East.  The real story of the game was the who's who of Mets playing the field, as in "The Mets have who playing where?"  I played the fun game of "name three Mets in the starting lineup tonight" in the locker room after a hockey game last night.  Between five people and eight guesses, they got three players.  The actual starting lineup is below:

     SS Ruben Tejada
     3B Ronnie Cedeno
     2B Daniel Murphy
     LF Jason Bay (no, really!)
     RF Lucas Duda (DOOOOOOD!!!)
     1B Justin Turner
     CF Scott Hairston
     C Mike Nickeas
     P Dillon Gee

When your cleanup hitter has been compared (well, by me) to an end-of-his-career Luis Castillo, you are probably in for a long night.  Predictably the make-shift lineup made Nationals starter Ross Detwiler look like an in-his-prime Johan Santana.  Meanwhile Dillon Gee and the Mets bullpen were undone by a solid combination of poor pitching and terrible defense.

Player of the game: Ronnie Cedeno who has a career .286 on base percentage (note: really, really bad) had a 3-for-4 day at the plate filling in for the injured David Wright.

Key moment: Danny Murphy booted a sure double play ball with one out in the top of the 6th leading to two additional runs for the Nationals.

Silver lining: After a rough first inning Gee actually looked pretty competent until he ran out of gas in the 6th.

Inevitable downside: News came during the game that x-rays showed a fracture in David Wright's jammed pinkie which will keep the slugger out of the lineup until he can hold a bat again.  Given the historic troubles of the Mets' training staff in seasons past, expect a botched amputation leading to the accidental death of the face of the franchise in the coming weeks.  On the bright side, they will probably give him some great tits for the funeral.

Next up: An intriguing afternoon match-up of once and future aces headlines the slate of games today as Johan Santana toes the mound for his second start against flame-thrower Stephen Strasburg.