This Much Is Certain

It's a measure of how far we've fallen (with farther to go) that I switched off the TV feeling that the Mets had eked out something akin to a moral victory by only allowing the Phillies to beat them by two runs. Nelson Figueroa bit and scratched and came out of things only vaguely mussed, Ken Takahashi conducted himself well and our Triple-A lineup was gallant in tilting at a few windmills before its predictable unhorsing. Now that it's over, though, it's just another loss on the march to 90 and beyond. And I find myself shaking my head over the season as a whole yet again. This time it's not the injuries, or the incompetence, or the off-field embarrassments, though there have been plenty of all three. Rather, it's that the Mets will go into the offseason having learned almost nothing about key players for 2010, and burdened with worries about players they thought they didn't need to worry about. A baseball plague year generally at least teaches you...