Same deal as yesterday, except only one of the two games the Mets played. Specifically, the one I watched:

The Mets lost this one to the Marlins in the 10th inning, 3-2. It was heartbreaking, but mostly for Keith Hernandez, who pretty obviously wanted to get out of there and was hoping they’d just call it a tie after nine.

Ralph Kiner was in the SNY booth, and Ralph Kiner is awesome. He told Keith Hernandez, “time stops with you,” which made me hope Ralph knows something about Keith that I don’t yet. Perhaps Keith Hernandez has the power to control time, like Zack Morris or something.

Marlins’ reclamation project Hayden Penn has some crazy facial hair. It’s like a modified Colonel Sanders, only blonde — not white. Just calling it a mustache and soul patch wouldn’t be doing it justice; the mustache is real thick, almost hanging down over his lips in the Nietzche fashion.

On the Mets side of things, Jenrry Mejia was clearly the most impressive part. See below for more details, and keep in mind that all this means very little.

Jon Niese was pretty damn decent, too. He did allow three hits and two walks, but none of the hits were terribly well-struck, and he struck out five batters in his 2 2/3 innings. He threw his cutter a ton, which was cool, and still has all that movement on his curveball.

SNY had a gun going today, so we got some early returns on Ryota Igarashi’s fastball. He was sitting in the low 90s and pitched pretty well, except for an near-inexplicable home run to Emilio Bonifacio — Bone Face, to some — who only has one home run in 722 Major League plate appearances. Luckily, this one doesn’t count for anything.

Mike Hessman is huge. He looks like he can smash a ball. I really have to get to Buffalo this season to see him in a lineup with fellow Quad-A masher Val Pascucci. Also, why isn’t Pascucci in the big camp?

Kai Gronauer, a German dude who I thought was only in camp because teams need lots of catchers in camp, played DH today. And he got a hit. Bully for you, Kai Gronauer. Or as they say in German, herzlichen glückwunsch.

I don’t actually speak German. I just looked that up. Come tell me I’m wrong now, Internet.

Wilmer Flores had a hit, a single up the middle. So that’s cool.

Bobby Parnell gave up the decisive blast in the top of the 10th, a two-run opposite-field homer to Marlins’ prospect Michael Stanton. Stanton has a buttload of power, and also two names. I’m not entirely clear on the mechanics of this, but his baseball-reference page calls him “Giancarlo Cruz-Michael Stanton.”

If I had to pick between those names, I’d go with Giancarlo Cruz, mostly because I once attended a game that Mike Stanton the lefty reliever lost without even throwing a pitch. Serious. I was in Milwaukee, and Stanton was making his Nationals debut, I believe. He came in to a tie game with a runner on third in the bottom of the ninth. He promptly balked, forcing in the winning run. Only time I’ve ever seen that happen.

Anyway, it seems as though the Mets’ book on this Michael Stanton involved not throwing him any fastballs over the plate. Pedro Feliciano made it work for him, striking him out on three straight changeups in the dirt.

Parnell hung a breaking pitch over the middle and Stanton made him pay, jacking a line drive the opposite way and putting the Marlins ahead for good.

Luckily, it doesn’t matter even a little bit.

So I’ve written a whole bunch about how I don’t think Jenrry Mejia should be in the Major League bullpen this year without having ever really seen the guy pitch.

Now that’s changed, and whoa, nelly.

Mejia just finished off 2 1/3 perfect innings in a meaningless game against the Marlins. He struck out four batters and yielded two grounders to short and a lazy fly ball to left.

By my count, Mejia threw 19 fastballs, topping out at 96 miles per hour on SNY’s gun. Most of them sat around 94 or 95, and I don’t think any were slower than 93. Of the 19 heaters, 17 were strikes — either swinging or called.

He threw two of what I think were changeups in the high 80s. One was a called strike, the other missed the inside corner.

He also threw four curveballs. They appeared to move a lot, but a couple of them missed pretty wildly. Three of them were balls, one was a called strike.

This is a tiny sample of course, and Mejia was hardly facing the Marlins’ Opening Day lineup, but, well, damn. I still obviously don’t think he should be anywhere near the Major League roster anytime soon, but when you see a 20-year-old rely mostly on one pitch to completely beguile big-league (or close to big-league) hitters, you can start to understand what all the fuss is about.

Fire up the hype machine.

So Jose Reyes’ blood test yesterday revealed a thyroid imbalance and he is traveling to New York for further testing.

This sucks.

This sucks for the Mets, it sucks for Mets fans, and it sucks, most of all, for Jose Reyes.

I don’t know anything about any thyroid imbalance beyond goiter, but I know plenty about undergoing medical testing when you feel more or less healthy, and I can attest that it’s awful. You feel fine, but you’re treated like a sickly person. They put you in a paper-thin gown and poke and prod at you with their instruments, then talk about you in a lingo you don’t understand as if you’re not standing right there. It’s humiliating and terrifying. And yesterday, Jose Reyes thought he’d be playing baseball today.

Maybe this is nothing, and for all I know it’s minor enough that it can be easily treated with medicine or therapy or something and this will just be a tiny little blip on Reyes’ MVP-caliber season in 2010.

But it sure does suck right now, because everything about Reyes since Mets’ camp opened had been so glimmering, so overwhelmingly positive. And now once again, due to no fault of anyone in particular, Reyes’ health is a big foggy mystery.

I’m still busy with actual work, and I haven’t figured out exactly how I want to handle games and recaps on TedQuarters, so for now, another stream of consciousness.

I’m struggling to find the origins of the expression “barnburner” to refer to a high-scoring sporting event. The Internet isn’t much help, though the Wikipedia tells me a barnburner is a member of the radical faction of the New York state Democratic party in the 19th century.

Near as I can tell, the expression comes from the way a barn actually burns. What with all the hay and wood, those suckers really go up in flames once they catch.

That’s what happened here. This was a barnburner.The Mets beat the Cardinals, 17-11.

The wind was blowing out hard to right. David Wright and Gary Matthews Jr. hit homers that way that probably would have been contained in normal conditions in Citi. Shawn Bowman hit a double off the top of the wall in left that probably would’ve been a home run just about anywhere else.

The big shot came from Ike Davis, a grand slam in the top of the ninth. It went out to right field and the wind made it look ridiculous, but he crushed it nonetheless.

It’s worth noting, though, that the guy he Davis it off was Francisco Samuel, who had a 5.66 ERA in Double-A last year. Of course, it’s also worth noting that Samuel’s only real bugaboo has been the walk, and he’s yielded merely seven home runs in 162 Minor League innings.

Davis did make an error in the field on a hard-hit grounder right at him. Daniel Murphy made a slick play moving to his right.

I have to get a better, longer look at his face to judge, but I think Kirk Nieuwenhuis may look like a little like a younger, bigger version of Toby Hyde. Captain Kirk had an impressive at-bat off knuckleballer Charlie Zink, fouling off a slew of pitches with a 2-2 count before lining a single to center. He walked on four pitches in his second time up.

The Cardinals have a catcher named Matt Pagnozzi, Tom Pagnozzi’s nephew. The Cardinals should always have a catcher named Pagnozzi. I was in a band named “Pagnozzi” once, but on the way to our only gig we changed our name to “The Lewis Effect” for reasons I’m still not clear on.

R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball moves a lot faster than Zink’s, and a lot faster than most knuckleballs I’ve ever seen.

Sean Green is apparently still adjusting to the newer, lower arm slot.

Clint Everts’ breaking stuff moves a whole lot, but he didn’t appear to have a ton of control over it today.

I already weighed in on this once but it hasn’t quite gone away. Now Darryl Strawberry, too, has compared Mets’ top prospect Jenrry Mejia to Mariano Rivera and suggested he be given a place in the Major League bullpen post haste.

Everyone in the baseball world needs to agree to some giant pact to stop comparing people — especially 20-year-olds with 45 innings of experience beyond Single-A ball — to Mariano Rivera. Mariano Rivera is about the most dominant pitcher of all-time. Probably not the most valuable — that honor should go to a starter — but, inning for inning, the most dominant.

Check out the historical ERA+ leaderboard. Stare. Gape. Look at where Rivera is, then look at the pack.

Now tell me that some 20-year-old kid, an impressive prospect no doubt, compares somehow to Mariano Rivera. No one compares to Mariano Rivera. Mariano Rivera is incomparable.

Hey, guess what? Ike Davis is the next Lou Gehrig. Fernando Martinez? Babe Ruth.

And I know no one has quite said Mejia is the next Rivera, only compared their pitches. But the frustrating thing about the comparison, I guess, is that it would take Mejia becoming Rivera — or something close — for moving him to the bullpen to be a worthwhile decision.

Human, non-Rivera closers aren’t worth nearly as much as good or great starting pitchers. And if Mejia’s stuff is electric as everyone seems to say it is, and his arm is strong and the Mets are careful with him, he has a chance to be a front-of-the-rotation Major League starter in a couple of years.

But to do that — and I touched on this the last time around — he’ll have to develop his secondary stuff. And he won’t have that opportunity relying mostly on his cutting fastball in a Major League bullpen. Plus, spending a season in the bullpen would prevent Mejia from approaching an innings target above the 109 he threw between the Minors and the Arizona Fall League in 2009. That complicates a transition to a starting role down the road.

You can point to recent examples of now-successful starting pitchers who broke into the Majors as relievers, like Johan Santana and Adam Wainwright, but the situations are not the same. Wainwright had excellent breaking stuff in 2006 and enough confidence in it to throw it in big spots — Mets fans know that all too well.

Santana spent 2000 mostly getting torched in the Twins’ bullpen because he had been a Rule 5 draft pick. He didn’t become the Johan Santana we know until 2002, after a stint in the Minors. From the Wikipedia:

In 2002, the Twins sent Santana to the minors for 2 months to work almost exclusively on perfecting his changeup. He did this for 10 starts and came back up to the majors with a terrific changeup to complement his very good fastball. While in the minors, pitching coach Bobby Cuellar made Santana throw at least one changeup to every batter. According to Cuellar, Santana would sometimes throw 20 in a row during games.

You can’t throw 20 changeups in a row in Major League games. It would be very, very bad.

Naturally, Mejia is not Santana, just like he’s not Wainwright and he’s not Rivera and he’s not Doc Gooden, either. I’m as excited as everyone else is about his potential, which is why I’m hoping that, for once, the Mets can be patient and allow his ability to match his hype before they elevate him to the big-league level.

Y’all know I don’t spend too much time shilling for SNY programming here, but this is awesome. The picture of young Johan with Clark Kent glasses alone makes it worth watching.

The show, Going Home: Johan Santana airs tonight at 9:30 p.m.

Santana comes from Tovar, Venezuela, a small coffee-growing town in the Andes, but descended from the mountains to share his awesomeness with the world.

Some of the people working on the show happen to sit right near me here, so I’ve seen a bunch of it. It features a whole lot of Johan Santana doing stuff, and talking about himself doing stuff, and so is predictably amazing.