During last Sunday’s game in Los Angeles, minutes after R.A. Dickey howled at Jerry Manuel about the decision to remove him because of an upper leg injury, the pitcher and manager happened to see one another in the men’s room of the visitors’ clubhouse at Dodger Stadium…

They emerged from that conversation with enhanced trust and mutual respect.

– Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.

Sorry.

Cerrone posted a link to my bit about dangling Perpetual Pedro from yesterday, and it seems like some of his commenters misunderstood the point I was trying to make there. So I want to revisit that in case I didn’t make it clear enough.

Here’s what commenter SwannaintSeaver wrote:

Thanks Ted, you’ve confirmed the point that anyone with web development savvy and an opinion can publish a Blog that will be find its way into the mass media. Write off the season, huh? I guess you’re another person who is in love with a “home grown infield”, and thinks that Cliff Lee is coming to Flushing.

I am glad to not be around when you wake up from your pipe dreams. I am a Mets fan since I was six years old (1969), and I have seen your kind. You will try to find positives in anything (like Lenny Randle playing second base, Donn Hahn playing center field, or even John Pacella as a starting pitcher). Sure, let’s dump all of our productive pieces while we are at it, we are a “small market team” after all.

Congratulations, you are batting 1.000 in my book. I don’t agree with you on anything.

Here’s my response:

I’m pretty sure you’re misreading or misunderstanding the post. I never said the Mets should write off the season. I’m saying that fans, analysts, and sometimes teams themselves tend to take the mentality of “buyer or seller” as though it’s some sort of black-and-white thing. It’s not.

I’m saying that if you can get a disproportionate return on a largely replaceable commodity, you should take it regardless of where you are in the standings. That’s very different from writing off the season.

Does that make sense at all? I tried to hammer out a solid food metaphor with TedQuarters resident maverick economist and former roommate Ted Burke, but we just wound up talking about ice cream and trying to pigeonhole this situation into convoluted scenarios about running ice-cream shops in heat waves.

The point is, Pedro Feliciano will not make or break the Mets’ season. He’s a good lefty specialist and, in fact, one of my favorite Mets. He’s also a free agent after the season. And the Mets have two other lefty pitchers already in their bullpen and one in Triple-A who appears adequate. The Mets have a large supply of something that is reportedly in great demand.

If Scott Downs’ trade value is even in the same stratosphere as the Blue Jays’ supposed asking price, some team is going to pay way too much for Scott Downs. The Mets should get in on that action. Not because they are sellers, because they are a baseball team, and one in a particularly good position to shoulder the short-term hit. If they can spin a third of a season of Feliciano into a cost-controlled future contributor, it’s a no-brainer.

Bob Ojeda will be doing another live chat on SNY.tv during the third inning of today’s game.

I’ll be helping out, so maybe I’ll end up on TV again. Not sure about that, since it’s entirely possible there was some sort of mandate from on high to never, ever allow for this type of awkwardness again.

Anyway, Bob is excellent and the chat should be cool, so, you know, do it.

Jerry Manuel shuffled the Mets’ pitching rotation this week, at least partly because Mike Pelfrey has pitched better at night than during the day.

Looking at Pelfrey’s career splits, it’s true, kind of. Pelfrey is 10-13 with a 5.30 ERA during the day and 28-24 with a 4.12 ERA at night.

Of course, Pelfrey has yielded almost identical OPSes during the day and night — .775 and .769, respectively. His strikeout rate is ever-so-slightly higher during the day, as is his BABIP. The whole thing smacks of completely meaningless randomness, and if I had to bet on it, I’d guess that moving forward, Pelfrey proves equally effective at any hour of the day.

Unless — UNLESS! — he’s a vampire. Look, we can sit around rifling through spreadsheets all we want and explain how little hiccups like this one show up in splits all the time, even across relatively big samples. But that would discount the possibility that Pelfrey sucks during the day because he is crippled by the sun’s powerful rays.

I mean, just look at him:

A postscript to last night’s affair: Awesome game, crappy ending.

BradP, in the comments section, writes:

What was Jerry thinking leaving Feliciano in to face Pujols in the 13th? Feliciano should only face lefties. His splits dictate that. Leave in a pitcher who is bad against righties to face the best right handed hitter in the game? Check. Lose? Check.

I imagine Manuel was again considering platoon splits where they do not exist and misplaying the ones that do. Manuel only had lefties available in the bullpen and no option to face a lefty hitter — Matt Holliday was on deck with one base open.

But Raul Valdes has actually been better against righties than lefties this year (although he has walked a lot more of them, for what that’s worth). During the game I figured Manuel didn’t want to use Valdes since Valdes had thrown four innings over the Mets’ last three games and has pitched a ton lately in general. But then, when has that stopped Jerry Manuel?

And, indeed, he then brought in Valdes to face Matt Holliday after Pujols drove in what would ultimately be the winning run.

I don’t even know how this game ends yet, but now that we’re 11 innings deep I can say for certain it has been an awesome one. I’m not leaving ’til it’s over, but I’ve got to wake up early tomorrow to get into the office to caddy for Bob Ojeda again so I’m not posting after it’s over, either. So here are some awesome things that have already happened:

1) Carlos Beltran’s homer: This gets top billing because it was such a wonderful thing to see, even if — at the time — it seemed like it was in vain. Towering shot down the left-field line. Don’t look now, but it seems as if Beltran may be starting to hit.

2) Ridiculous cavalcade of facial hair: After Jamie Garcia’s exit, Tony La Russa trotted out five straight relievers with prominent and varied facial-hair styles. Jason Motte, Mitchell Boggs and Trever Miller were all rocking thick, full beards, Dennys Reyes sported a clean goatee and Kyle McLellan showcased a particularly disgusting full-beard/goatee thing that extended down below the top of his jersey. And it should be noted that though Reyes’ goatee covers a smaller portion of his face than the beards of his teammates, he may actually have the greatest volume of facial hair. He just has a giant face.

3) Mike Hessman’s double: The legendary quadruple-A masher missed a home run by a few feet in his first at-bat. But the double was nonetheless impressive and began the Mets’ comeback after Johan Santana got beat up in the first.

4) Francoeur walks: On four pitches, no less. From my angle it was unclear if Jaime Garcia was anywhere near the plate, but still. Also, Francoeur’s 10-pitch battle with Motte in the eighth was impressive, even if it culminated in a lazy flyout to left.

5) Jose Reyes on base four times: And it looked like he was safe stealing second. Seems like he’s fully back from the oblique thing now.

6) Angel Pagan remains awesome: If it didn’t feel like a particular brand of nerdiness to nickname people after Simpsons references, I’d refer to Pagan as “Donuts;” there’s nothing he can’t do.

Less awesome: Santana’s performance, a bunch of sloppy fielding, a bit of crappy baserunning. But whatever. We’re here to celebrate (fingers crossed).