“We have a new leader in the Most Likely to Get Severely Injured During a Walk-Off HR Celebration contest.” – Mike Salfino.

Yeah, after what happened to Kendry Morales, watching Martinez’s teammates jump all over him like that is damn near terrifying. I was even scared watching him maneuver around the opposing players walking off the field.

Also, it’s awesome and hilarious that the mascots are a part of the walk-off celebration, especially since last year I spent about a half hour in the bowels of Coca Cola Field with the guys inside those mascots, and they were themselves awesome and hilarious. I’m not sure if the same fellas are in the suits this year, but here’s (a small fraction) of that, from June. Also, terrible hair day. Good lord man, pack some gel next time:

This morning, I went to Howard Megdal’s press conference announcing his intention to campaign to be the Mets’ general manager.

Howard is a friend and a colleague, and I’m always intrigued by offbeat movements within the Mets’ fanbase. I visited the ill-fated Jenrry Mejia rally back in March, as well.

And when Howard stepped to the podium and read a lengthy, well-penned speech announcing his hopes to run the team with logic and transparency, I couldn’t help but consider how closely so many of his big-picture arguments for how the Mets should be operated resonated with all I’ve written here and elsewhere. After all, on matters pertaining to baseball and the Mets, Howard and I frequently agree.

But here’s the issue: The Mets are winning games. Eight of their last nine, 35 of 63 for the season. On the year, they’ve outscored their opponents by 36 runs. They’ve been playing good defense and running the bases exceptionally well. Their pitching has been a surprise and their offense appears to be starting to click.

It’s awesome. Straight up. And while there are still legitimate gripes to be made whenever Alex Cora takes another step toward locking up $2 million of the Mets’ 2011 payroll, and whenever prized pitching prospect Jenrry Mejia throws a mopup inning with an eight-run lead, it’s difficult to complain about a team succeeding so frequently, and it makes fans less likely to jump aboard any movement to shake things up in the team’s front office.

And what matters most, of course, is that it lasts.

Through 63 games, the Mets’ offense has posted a 94 OPS+, a hair below average for the National League. But two of the Mets’ best hitters — Jason Bay and Jose Reyes — have significantly underperformed their lines from their past few (healthy) seasons, and it’s reasonable to expect both to be more productive offensively moving forward. Only Rod Barajas has been much better than could be expected. Second base has been, to date, a complete black hole of offense.

So the Mets should actually be even better offensively moving forward. Just having Gary Matthews Jr. off the team and not wasting at-bats should help them improve. The bench is much better now that it has got Chris Carter on it. If Carlos Beltran ever returns, that’ll obviously help too.

As for the pitching: Against all odds, Mets pitchers have been great this year, posting a 109 ERA+ that’s well above the league average.

Problem is, it appears to be fueled by unsustainable performances. Johan Santana and Mike Pelfrey have been great and should continue to have success, but neither has the type of peripheral numbers that suggest they’ll be able to keep their ERAs below 3.00. There’s certainly something to be said for pitching to weak contact — especially when half your games are in Citi Field — but as the weather warms up both pitchers will likely allow a few more home runs.

Jon Niese, who actually has a better K:BB ratio than either Santana or Pelfrey, has been great. It won’t all be one-hit shutouts for Niese as the league gets more of a look at him, but his performance isn’t terribly out of line with his Minor League history. Hisanori Takahashi and R.A. Dickey are wild cards, but it’s hard to expect either to continue pitching quite as well as they have.

It never seems like his saves come easily, but Francisco Rodriguez has been excellent out of the bullpen. His K-rate is as high and his walk rate as low as they’ve been in several years.

The rest of the bullpen has been far less impressive. Pedro Feliciano has a low ERA but has allowed an enormous amount of baserunners. Raul Valdes had been great until a couple of terrible outings in San Diego. Mejia and Fernando Nieve have both walked nearly as many batters as they’ve struck out, and Ryota Igarashi has been downright awful since returning from the disabled list.

Still, it’s hard to get a decent read on the bullpen since so many of its members are dealing with very small samples. And now that John Maine and Ollie Perez are out of the starting rotation, Jerry Manuel hasn’t been overusing any one reliever. It will be interesting to see how they perform with more rested arms.

So can the Mets remain in contention? It’s starting to seem that way. They’ve got flaws, of course, and it would be silly to expect the starting pitchers to perform as well as they have for the past few weeks. But an improved offense can mitigate that regression. The Braves appear strong and the Phillies will likely soon start playing better, but the Mets look apt to stay in the playoff hunt.

I’ll have more on the Mets in a bit, but while working on that I took a gander at David Wright’s season stats, fresh off his two-homer day in Baltimore.

Wright now has a .906 OPS, precisely .001 off his career .907 mark. His park- and league-adjusted OPS+ is 141, exactly the same as it was in 2008. He has not played in as favorable an offensive environment — probably due to some combination of Citi Field, the early season weather and a general downturn in offense around the league — but he is producing at exactly the same rate he did in 2008, back when he was everyone’s hero.

The major difference, of course, is the strikeout total. He is striking out in 27.8% of his plate appearances for the season, a significant uptick over his 18.1% career rate and even the 22.7% mark he posted last year. We can point to the most recent stretch to show hope that they’re tailing off — Wright has struck out only 19.6% of the time in June and 16.4% of the time since his recent hot streak started on May 30 — but that, of course, assumes all the risks inherent in isolating small sample sizes by arbitrary endpoints.

Wright has looked awesome at the plate lately, jumping on pitches early in the count and seemingly not bailing out from curveballs on the inside part of the plate so often. Of course, players always look good when they’re hitting well.

But Wright should look awesome because Wright is awesome. Remember that he’s proven to be one of the very best players in the game over the course of his career, and though the strikeouts are worrisome, there’s really no reason to believe Wright will be anything short of excellent moving forward.

Stacey from CamdenChat.com joins the Baseball Show:

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.