This is what characterizes the Phillies of this era, and what separates them from the Mets:

Swagger. Arrogance. Condescension toward opponents…

The collective personalities of both clubs are clear, and in direct contrast with one another. Wounded by divisional collapses in 2007 and 2008, the Mets lack a cocky culture of winning. This weekend, they will field a team comparable in talent to the Phillies, and filled with people you might rather have dinner with. And, sadly for the Mets, that is part of their problem.

– Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.

GAL:SJKHASD:KLJSDAL:JKASD.

OK, first of all, a column about the Mets’ attitude that doesn’t mention Jeff Francoeur even once. That’s somehow notable.

The players Martino singles out? Well, Jesus Feliciano and Chris Carter, of course — because, you know, there’s not a single nice guy on the Phillies bench. Ross Gload? Massive a**hole. Wilson Valdez? Shanked Greg Dobbs in the clubhouse after he struck out twice earlier this week.

Potshots are also directed at “kindly giant” Mike Pelfrey and “pleasantly spacey” Jose Reyes.

Meanwhile, this part gets one line. One line:

While the roster is not the deepest, the Mets have never wanted for championship-level talent.

Emphasis mine.

And look: Maybe the Mets’ attitude is not a winning one. What do I know? Sure, everyone cited JUST THAT a month ago, back when the Mets were winning, but now that Carlos Beltran’s back it’s making the rest of the Mets too nice or something. Not Beltran himself — he’s too focused, too serious. But that’s different from wanting to win like the Phillies do.

Since 2007, he’s moved down on Baseball America’s Top 100 list from the 20th to 30th to 77th position. Now, according an e-mail from BA editor Jim Callis, he’s off the list. All this has happened before Martinez’s 22nd birthday. Is it him, or is it a curse of expectations that became too high?

Martinez has spent this season with Triple-A Buffalo. A recent surge, after Callis sent his e-mail, has his average up to .256. He has struck out 59 times and walked just 17, a ratio the sabermetricians hate. But he has 12 homers in 258 at-bats with an isolated slugging (batting average minus slugging average) above .200. That’s at the level of most developing sluggers.

– Mike Salfino, SNY.tv.

I would argue that it’s totally fair to cut down Fernando Martinez’s prospect status based on his inability to stay healthy for any great length of time. Though there have certainly been examples of injury-prone players turning into mostly healthy ones once they grow into their bodies, Martinez’s propensity for injury is troublesome and makes it pretty hard to remain bullish about his future.

I agree with Mike, though, that it’s still hard to dock Martinez too many spots based on performance. He’s 21 and was rushed through the farm system. As Salfino points out, it feels like he’s past prospect age because we’ve been hearing about him for so long, but is younger than the average player on the Brooklyn Cyclones.

Martinez is more than a year younger than Kirk Nieuwenhuis, the man recently anointed the Mets’ new best outfield prospect (replacing Martinez). Nieuwenhuis steals bases and reportedly plays center field pretty well so they’re not exactly comparable players, but Martinez’s .825 career Triple-A OPS isn’t terribly far off Captain Kirk’s .869 Double-A line across a similar sample size.

Does that mean Martinez should still be considered a top prospect? I don’t know. Jim Callis knows way more about ranking prospects than I do.

I’m just not ready to count out a 21-year-old with some — albeit limited — success at the Minors’ highest level.

New York Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon said Thursday that Omar Minaya will remain GM beyond this season.

While in East Hartford, Conn., for an announcement of a partnership between the Wilpon-owned SNY network and University of Connecticut athletics, the Mets owner rhetorically asked “Is the sun going to come up tomorrow?” in response to a New York Post inquiry about Minaya remaining GM in 2011.

– Adam Rubin, ESPN.com.

I mean, you know, technically the sun’s not going to come up tomorrow. Really the earth is going to rotate to create the illusion of the sun coming up tomorrow. Maybe Fred Wilpon’s being super cagey.

Or maybe, and more likely, he was peppered with questions as he got into a car and provided some throwaway answers. I doubt that, given the situation, he’s going to be all, “hell no! That guy’s toast!”

Obviously I don’t know the truth one way or the other, and considering the Mets’ reluctance to cut bait on sunk cost it’s entirely possible Minaya will be back as the Mets’ GM in 2011. At some point, though, it should become clear to the team’s ownership that it can likely earn back more than Minaya’s salary with a championship club, and that Minaya is apparently not the man to construct one.

For some reason, people labeled last night’s Mets-Braves game a “must-win” for the Flushing Nine. I’m not sure why. Over the course of a 162-game season, there is seldom a true must-win. Must-win games are ones like the Mets’ losses on the final days of the 2007 and 2008 seasons. A victory in last night’s affair would have earned the Mets a series win over the first-place Braves, but ultimately would have meant only one more notch in the season’s win column.

It didn’t, of course. It was a miserable loss, a brutal gut-punch. If last night’s game was any man in the whole damn town, it would have been Leroy Brown. The baddest. And not bad in the hip jazzman sense. Bad like Jeff Francoeur’s approach at the plate and Luis Castillo’s range and Jerry Manuel’s bullpen management. Godawful.

But one game is one game. Last night’s game won’t cost the Mets their shot at contention. Their roster probably will. And that shouldn’t be too big a surprise.

The Mets sit at .500, 54-54. If he hadn’t thrown himself off a cliff when he couldn’t find a rational square root of 2*, Pythagoras would say the Mets have been a tiny bit unlucky and should be something more like 56-52 since they’ve outscored their opponents by 18 runs. Whatever.

They are who we thought they were, like the fella said. Like many Mets fans, I fell victim to the inherent whims of a .500 ballclub, got excited and hopeful about the way the team teased us a couple months ago, started thinking they were better than I thought at the season’s outset. Turns out they’re not.

Some players have been better than we hoped, some have been worse. These things happen. Optimists never would have guessed that Jason Bay would struggle for so long or that Francoeur would revert to being Francoeur. Pessimists would have expected David Wright to repeat his weak 2009 and Angel Pagan to turn back into a fourth outfielder.

Whatever. I’m struggling to muster too much emotion one way or the other. Like the Mets, I am middling.

There’s hope on the horizon, for sure — the Mets seem to have a crop of decent young players, guys who can develop into the complementary and cost-controlled contributors for whom we’ve pined. But then they’re still stubbornly clinging to sunk costs, still being operated by the same crew that gave Gary Matthews Jr. starts over Pagan, and gave Alex Cora a vesting option and all that.

Maybe something will happen. Maybe last night’s sloppy play and team’s recent struggles will spell the end Jerry Manuel — rightfully or otherwise — and the Mets will flourish under a new skipper. Probably not. My suspicion is that these are your 2010 Mets.

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.