Of those 23, only two other Mets pitchers threw accomplished the feat without allowing either a hit batsman or a walk — Tom Seaver against the Cubs in 1969 (his near-perfect game of 8 1/3 innings) and Steve Trachsel against the Rockies.

Niese and Seaver are the only pitchers in Mets history to throw a one-baserunner one-hitter (Trachsel’s game also included a Mets error).

– Mark Simon, ESPNNewYork.com.

I have to admit a big Phil Rizzuto WW — “wasn’t watching” — for last night’s game. I went to see Former Roommate Mike‘s unbelievable entry into a cartoon film festival in Tribeca and missed Niese’s gem.

Simon answered something I intended to look up this morning — how many other Mets have thrown one-baserunner games. Though Niese was only a hit away from perfection last night, it’s cool to accomplish a feat that only Tom Seaver had before for the Mets. That Seaver guy was good, it turns out.

The important feat is the lack of walks. Hits will eventually fall in — though with a groundball rate like Niese induced last night, not terribly often. But Niese walked 18 guys in 44 1/3 innings before his stint on the Disabled List and has walked only one in 16 innings since his return.

The timing on either side of the DL stint is probably a coincidence, but here’s hoping the improvement is not. His walk rate is now down to a reasonable 3.0 per nine innings, a level that will help him keep pitch counts low and traffic off the bases, and one he can be expected to maintain, based on his Minor League performance. Perhaps he needed a few Major League starts to earn confidence to pound the strike zone, or maybe watching Ollie Perez pitch so many times taught him the importance of throwing strikes.

For some reason, I always cite Howard Johnson’s performance against Todd Worrell when pointing to a hitter who owned an opposing pitcher. It’s nothing shocking — Worrell threw a lot of fastballs and HoJo hit a lot of fastballs — but for some reason that particular matchup has always stuck out in my head as one in which one player dominated the other.

I looked it up today to make sure I’m not full of s@#$, since I mention it with some frequency and haven’t checked the numbers since the Internet made that type of information readily available.

It’s a tiny sample, but it’s pretty absurd.

Against Todd Worrell, HoJo had six hits — including four home runs — and six walks (four intentional) in 19 plate appearances, good for a 2.016 OPS. Small sample, sure, but pwnership most certainly.

Now I’m straight trolling.

I’ve noticed a lot of Mets fans throwing around Fernando Tatis’ name when listing the players that have stunk up the Mets’ bench in the past couple of years, and that’s not really fair. I covered this during the offseason: Tatis has been a valuable reserve player for the Mets for the past two seasons. He’s certainly not an ideal starting first baseman — a role he’s been thrust into due to injuries and ineffectiveness at various points in the past two seasons — but he’s a player worth having on a reasonable contract.

The Mets signed Tatis to an $850,000 contract this offseason — less than half of what Alex Cora got, and without any vesting option. He has struggled so far this season, posting a .706 OPS across a small sample of 54 plate appearances, but look a little closer: His batting average on balls in play — .250 — is well below his career .309 mark and he’s hitting at least as many line drives as he ever has.

Tatis’ struggles are likely a sample-size blip, and though it’ll likely take him a while to get enough hits for his stats to normalize a bit, his rough start doesn’t make him any less apt to produce moving forward. Certainly he’s aging, and at some point it will stop seeming wise to hang onto an old utility player, but as long as he is demonstrating decent plate discipline with some power and the capacity to play almost anywhere on the diamond, he’s a guy worth having.

He doesn’t belong lumped in with the rest. Even to this point in the 2010 season, Tatis can boast a 0.3 WAR, placing him solidly ahead of Cora, Gary Matthews and Frank Catalanotto, all of whom have marks below the replacement-level.

There was always a cold feeling in the Mets clubhouse last year. Players checked in for work, but there was no sense that this was a team that was in it together.

That has changed.

These 2010 Mets certainly have their flaws, and their margin of error is slim, but that makes team chemistry even that much more important. When last night’s game against the Padres was rained out at Citi Field, David Wright walked past Mike Pelfrey’s locker. As he passed Big Pelf, he gave him a friendly little slap in the face with his batting glove, laughed and jogged away.

– Kevin Kernan, N.Y. Post.

Are the Mets winning because they’re getting along, or are the Mets getting along because they’re winning? Was there a cold feeling in the clubhouse last year because Ike Davis wasn’t around, or was it because basically every player got hurt and the team was out of the race by late July? It’s an impossible chicken-egg debate and not one I really care to expound upon further than I did here or here.

But I wonder why the team-oriented leadership of Jeff Francoeur didn’t propel the Mets to greatness in the second half of last season, why Rod Barajas couldn’t do much to help the Blue Jays last year, and why the 2006 Mets seemed to have no trouble winning with ol’ me-first Carlos Delgado slugging home runs?

No one could argue that it’s bad for a team to get along. It’s not. Everyone appreciates a cheerful work environment, baseball players included. But I bet the clubhouse doesn’t seem nearly as chummy when the Mets lose four in a row. Kernan says it himself in his conclusion: “Talent is always the difference-maker.”

That. Francoeur, Barajas and Davis do seem like pretty awesome guys, always charismatic and affable when pressed by reporters. And that’s good. In the grand scheme of things — whatever the hell that means — being a great person is probably more important than being a great baseball player. But the latter will probably win more games.

The Mets unveiled their player-designed t-shirts recently. Carlos Beltran’s got an Affliction thing going, John Santana has a 7-Train busting through a brick wall, Jose Reyes’ incorporates elements from his tattoos, and Jason Bay’s looks like this:

My, what a pleasant-looking t-shirt. The letters and numbers are red to pay homage to Canada.