That’s two in a row the Mets have lost now, and like a billion straight in which the bullpen looked awful. Forget that it’s 10 games into the year, that they have more wins than the Red Sox and Rays combined, that Yunel Escobar has a .458 batting average, that Willie Bloomquist has a 138 OPS+. Ignore that the Mets lost last night’s game mostly due to fluky errors, broken-bat hits and seeing-eye singles. The season might as well be over.

Wring your hands! Clasp them together and wring like you’ve never wrung before!

The bullpen is a problem and small-market Sandy Alderson stubbornly refused to spend money on the bullpen this offseason. Nevermind that it’s the second-most expensive bullpen in the division (to the wildly overpaid Phillies’ crew) and that spending a lot of resources on relief pitchers — see 2009 for details — is a blisteringly dumb way to go about building a bullpen. Forget that you know those things. Ignore them so you can be really angry because the Mets bullpen sucks and it’s not just a few rough nights it’s a damn pattern and everything is falling down all around us and, oh my goodness, we’re all going to die someday and we will have spent too many of our waking hours watching Bobby Parnell throwing the ball in the general direction of but not actually near the catcher.

And now that it’s out of your system, take a deep breath and think about the Mets’ bad bullpen for a moment. Its members have taken turns serving as goats, with only Tim Byrdak and the now-departed Blaine Boyer pitching consistently poorly, and really only Pedro Beato pitching consistently well — at least in that four outings can constitute consistency.

If I had to guess, I’d say — again — the main problem with the bullpen is not the personnel but the overuse thereof, since nearly every guy has been up and warming nearly every night. It’s no one’s Plan A to carry 13 relievers and a short bench, but the Mets have been forced to by early-season ineffectiveness throughout the pitching staff. I can’t imagine the roster will remain this way any longer than it needs to, and once the Mets can get a few decent starts in a row (and, ideally, their starting left fielder) they’ll shuffle things around and settle on a decent bullpen mix.

Last night’s outing notwithstanding, Parnell will probably be part of that mix when the dust clears. Yes, he’s off to a bad start. He also has over 100 outings before these four to show he’s a decent, if unspectacular, Major League reliever. Maybe he gets better from here, maybe he doesn’t. But entirely dismissing a 26-year-old with heavy 98 mph fastball because of a couple of rough — and they were definitely rough — outings in the first week and a half of the season is crazy talk. Settle down with that.

Settle down with everything. Seriously. Maybe the Mets suck, maybe they don’t, but 10 games is just way too few to assess anything meaningful. And I get that when I say, “It’s early, it’s early, it’s early” all the time I sound like a broken record. But it is early. I’m not about to tell you any of this is anything more than small samples in isolation when I don’t believe that’s the case.

Oh and the other thing: “Mike Pelfrey is not a No. 1 but the Mets need him to pitch like one.” No they don’t. No they absolutely don’t. They need him to pitch more like a legitimate Major Leaguer and less like he did in his first two starts, but there’s no rule anywhere that says the only way the Mets will be good is if Mike Pelfrey pitches like Johan Santana.

That’s good because there’s no way Pelfrey is going to pitch like Santana. Pelfrey is a durable league-average pitcher without swing-and-miss stuff. He’s a fine guy to have in a rotation but he’s unlikely to ever pitch like an ace for any sustained period of time because he yields too much contact. People seem to be off the “Mike Pelfrey is crazy” talk now that he threw a not-terrible game last night, but the “Mike Pelfrey needs to be an ace” discussion seems just as silly. Don’t get me wrong: The Mets do legitimately need their starting pitchers to pitch well and besides Chris Young they haven’t so far.

But… gahh it’s not even worth it. Let’s all just wring our hands until they bleed, or until the Mets win two games in a row and we all decide they’re surefire World Series champions again.

My Friday suspicions were confirmed Sunday evening: The Mets called up Jason Isringhausen and Ryota Igarashi, designating Blaine Boyer for assignment and optioning Lucas Duda to Triple-A.

The move came on the heels of a brutal extra-inning loss to the Nationals in which Boyer allowed four runs in the 11th, his second inning of work. Boyer got off to a pretty terrible start, reminding everyone of the value of Spring Training stats. To his credit, though, he pitched in more than half of the Mets’ games — rarely a good recipe.

Actually, D.J. Carrasco, Tim Byrdak, Taylor Buchholz and Boyer have all pitched in five games so far, which, probably more than Boyer’s ineffectiveness, prompted the roster shakeup. Isringhausen and Igarashi provide fresh arms when the team desperately needs them.

Isringhausen we expected, since he was in extended Spring Training waiting on just this occasion. Igarashi might come as a bit of surprise, but Manny Acosta can’t be recalled within 10 days of being designated for assignment, plus he hasn’t pitched in a week. I imagine, unless an injury arises or someone else pitches terribly, Igarashi will be the one to go whenever Jason Bay returns, if not sooner.

As for that: The Mets could use Bay right about now, with Brad Emaus and Angel Pagan struggling a bit and Willie Harris apparently returning to being Willie Harris. But it’s way, way, way too early to be concerned about Pagan, especially since he’s maintaining a .310 on-base percentage despite his .171 batting average.

Bay’s return would move Harris back to a more familiar bench role where the Mets could use him.  Duda, Scott Hairston, Daniel Murphy, Chin-Lung Hu and Mike Nickeas have combined for a putrid .136/.212/.169 line in the team’s first nine games. That’s unlikely to continue, especially once Ronny Paulino replaces Nickeas.

Ah yes, a bad bench and a bad bullpen. It’s like 2008, except it’s still really early in the season and the Mets’ front office appears conscious of the team’s weaknesses.

One other thing: At least one person that is actually paid to analyze baseball criticized Terry Collins for pulling Chris Young after 108 pitches yesterday. That’s silly. I’m plenty skeptical about the value of strict pitch-count limits, but it’s April and Young is coming off three straight seasons shortened by injury. Yes, Young was pitching really well yesterday and perhaps would have continued doing so into the eighth inning and secured a win. But jeopardizing his health means risking wins down the road. You need to have a bullpen you can trust to hold the Nationals off for two innings. That’s the issue here, not the pitch count.

The only thing I really want to remember from this afternoon’s game is Angel Pagan’s running over-the-shoulder catch way out in right center by the 415 mark and his turning, falling throw into the cutoff man to double up the unsuspecting baserunner. Carlos Beltran and David Wright hit doubles that were pretty cool too.

As for the rest of it: Meh.

R.A. Dickey split the nail on the index finger of his pitching hand in the first inning, right before he struck out Ryan Zimmerman. He filed it down between innings and managed to scrap through four more frames, but he lacked control of his knuckleball and walked five batters. The Mets hit a bunch of balls hard but right at defenders. They also struck out in some big spots.

Dickey said he’ll be fine by his next start, so the main concern from this one is the performance of the bullpen. For the fourth straight night, Terry Collins had to use at least three relievers. For the third straight night, some of them struggled. After the game, a reporter asked Collins if he was concerned about the amount of innings his bullpen has thrown recently.

“Yes,” he said. That’s all. There was a long pause before the next question.

It doesn’t seem typical of Collins to admit concern or be so curt, so it’s probably more than paying lip service to the reporter’s question.

Bobby Parnell struggled a bit tonight, but Blaine Boyer and Tim Byrdak have been the main culprits so far. Actually, the main culprit has probably been a starting staff unable to eat up innings. That’s hardly atypical this early in the season, granted, but not one of Mike Pelfrey, John Niese and Dickey managed to pitch into the sixth these past three games.

It seems knee-jerk to make roster moves so early in the season, but with Chris Young and Chris Capuano set to go tomorrow and Sunday, the Mets’ bullpen appears unlikely to enjoy a ton of rest anytime soon. Jason Isringhausen tweaked something in his back last weekend, but he is apparently OK — at least in that he ever can be. I wonder if we’ll be seeing him soon, if only to get the Mets a fresh arm in the ‘pen for a few weeks while the starting pitchers pull it together.

Ugh, whatever. A cold and underwhelming home opener at Citi. Tomorrow brings more baseball, though, and this evening brings me a sandwich.

Thanks to all those who emailed the silly Philly.com article about the Mets.  You’ll have to excuse me; I’m rather exhausted today and I can’t seem to muster up the effort to pen an appropriately snarky response.

Plus, at this point I just don’t care that much. Haters gonna hate. Would you be all that surprised if tomorrow someone somewhere wrote a column about how David Wright stomps puppies and Jose Reyes is the actual son of the Devil, (SPOILER ALERT) Rosemary’s Baby-style?

The only way the Mets can put the negativity behind them is by winning baseball games. And I think the Mets will win baseball games. If in September, by some chance, the Mets are still in contention, we can dig up all these stupid, pointless, unsubstantiated columns and laugh at those responsible. Until then, ignore ’em. Don’t feed the trolls, like they say on the Internet.