After allowing two late runs that ultimately cost the Mets a win against the Nationals last night, Miguel Batista said he believes the Mets are the best team in baseball.

To his credit, that’s pretty much what you want baseball players believing and, when pressed, saying. It’s just funny timing to say it coming off six straight losses, the most recent of which is in part your fault.

The Hall of Nearly Great book, which came out today, features most of my favorite baseball writers in the world. Also: Me. I wrote about John Olerud and I hope I did him justice. You can find out by buying the book, which is available in various digital forms.

I went on a brief Twitter rant about this last night in response to some Mets fans clamoring for Jonathan Broxton: Though his ERA looks good, Broxton has been nothing like the pitcher he was when he was awesome. Chris McShane spells out the details at Amazin’ Avenue.

If Broxton’s available for just money and the Mets have money to burn, then sure, the Mets should take him on just because he’s not currently a member of their bullpen. Still, if they have any sort of capped budget for taking on money, I have to believe that money could be better spent elsewhere. If it weren’t for Sandy Alderson’s steady hand at the wheel, it’d be pretty easy to imagine Broxton coming to the Mets then pitching to his peripherals, prompting all sorts of woe-is-us stuff from everywhere.

Patrick Flood does a nice job defending the Mets’ decision to start Miguel Batista over Matt Harvey. BUT I DEMAND HARVEY NOW!

I missed most of the Braves’ thrashing of the Mets this weekend. I caught the series finale yesterday on radio — Braves radio, no less — but only saw the box scores for Friday and Saturday’s game. Let me guess: some bullpen meltdowns, some poor defense, the Mets losing games the way the Mets lose games.

The difference this time, of course, is that David Wright mustered only two hits in the series and both R.A. Dickey and Johan Santana turned in underwhelming starts. Those three stars carried the Mets to a successful first half, so when they disappoint — however briefly — to kick off the second half, the flaws they’ve helped cover become more striking.

Plus, with Dillon Gee out until at least September, the healthy rotation that worked to keep the ball out of the hands of the woeful bullpen suddenly looks, well, it looks like it might have Miguel Batista in it. Gee is second on the team in innings pitched, so the Mets need people to occupy those innings — ideally as capably as Gee did.

Where have you gone, Mike Pelfrey?

At this point in this post, I intended to point out that Matt Harvey is pitching tonight, putting him on turn to pitch Saturday when the Mets next need a fifth starter. And so I was planning to note that it does not benefit the Mets in any way to commit to putting Harvey in the rotation until they accidentally do, and that if Harvey pitches well tonight he could well be pitching at Citi Field on Saturday.

It turns out that’s pretty much exactly the case, and I missed Terry Collins saying as much on Saturday. If Harvey puts up a clunker or the Mets see something they’re sure won’t translate to the Majors, they can start Batista on Saturday without rolling back on their word. If Harvey pitches anything like as well as he has since the middle of June, he should make his next start for the Major League Mets.

Harvey has thrown 158 innings in the high Minors over the last two years, about 20 more than the minimum the Mets want before Major League promotions. Toby covered this last week, but to reiterate: Calling up Harvey is not optimal for his development, but it’s hardly crippling. He’s 23, he’s been their best Triple-A starter this year, and his last five starts have been excellent.

Harvey’s acceleration through the Mets’ system has earned comparisons to Pelfrey’s, but beyond the surface-level they don’t really bear out. Pelfrey dominated High-A and Double-A in his first professional season, 2006, then got called to the Majors and into the thick of a pennant chase after only two starts in Triple-A. He returned to Triple-A to start the 2007 season, but Harvey already has 58 more Minor League innings under his belt than Pelfrey ever did.

Also, Pelfrey whiffed the world in Single-A and Double-A but never really did at the Minors’ highest level, where — by reputation at least — professional hitters can turn on a mid-90s fastball and lay off breaking pitches out of the zone. Check this out: in 82 innings in Triple-A across 2006 and 2007, Pelfrey struck out 62 batters. Harvey has struck out 102 batters in 98 1/3 innings at Buffalo this season. That seems to me like a pretty important distinction between the two.

More importantly, Harvey is his own unique snowflake, as is Mike Pelfrey, as we all are. Supposedly he still needs some work on his secondary pitches. I buy that. But the Mets do have coaches and side sessions and video scouts and everything. Presumably it’s easier to sharpen your changeup against lesser hitters and away from the Major League spotlight, but the Mets have a shot at a Wild Card and a hole in their rotation and Harvey looks like the best person to fill it. No reason he can’t keep working on his arsenal in Flushing.

Also, for what it’s worth, I think scouts are very important and that baseball teams should put a lot of stock in the things scouts say. But I suspect that among many fans, the pendulum of trust in Minor League evaluations has swung a bit too far back toward traditional scouting. Results matter too. And putting too much faith in the opinions and biases of any one scout or even a small handful of scouts seems sort of silly, what with the human element.

Now the baseball stuff:

https://twitter.com/GSchif/status/223424645775368193

I’d take Castro, partly because he’s hit a bit better, partly because he’s ever-so-slightly younger, and mostly because he’s performed well over a sample nearly twice as large as Tejada’s. To succeed like he has in the Majors at his age bodes extremely well for his future. Sam Miller covered this at Baseball Prospectus recently. This sounds ridiculous, but it’s basically even money Castro winds up a Hall of Famer.

That I had to think about it speaks very well of Tejada, who’s not exactly an old man himself. Tejada doesn’t come with Castro’s prospect pedigree, but I suspect that is more an indictment of the fickle hype machine than the player. Tejada’s not flashy in any way, but he’s quickly becoming one of my favorite Mets to watch play. And I know I’m not alone.

And check this out, following Miller’s lead: If Tejada stays healthy this year and plays well enough to keep his career OPS+ at 92 or above, he joins a very short list of guys who have regularly played shortstop in the Majors at his age and not embarrassed themselves offensively. Only 16 shortstops in history have amassed 1,000 plate appearances with at least a 92 OPS+ through their age-22 season. Of them, five are Hall of Famers and one of them is A-Rod, and every single one that played after the dawn of the All-Star Game was an All-Star at some point.

https://twitter.com/JamesPJennings/status/223414750879555584

No, and thank heaven for that because I want to enjoy Mike Trout unencumbered by any of those thoughts. The Angels had two consecutive picks that year from New York teams that had signed away their free agents. With the Mets’ pick — 24th overall — they took a high-school outfielder named Randal Grichuk who is now in High A ball. With the Yankees’ pick — 25th overall, a compensation for Mark Teixeira’s signing — they took a high-school outfielder named Mike Trout who is now impossibly good.

So yeah, if the Mets had their 24th overall pick that year they could have taken Trout. Didn’t happen, but there’s no guarantee they would have anyway. Also, check this out:

The Angels traded Casey Kotchman for Teixeira and got a decent part-season from Teixeira that helped them to the 2008 playoffs, then the pick that brought them Trout. Following the Teixeira transaction-thread back, the Braves’ role in it looks awful. They traded Neftali Feliz, Elvis Andrus, Matt Harrison and Jarrod Saltalamacchia (and Minor Leaguer Beau Jones) to get Teixeira and Ron Mahay.

Mahay left in free agency after that season, and the Braves got a sandwich-round pick they used on lefty Brett DeVall, who never pitched in the Majors and appears to be out of baseball. They kept Teixeira for essentially one full season, then traded him for Casey Kotchman and Minor Leaguer Stephen Marek.

They kept Kotchman for 54 games then traded him to the Red Sox for Adam LaRoche, who provided them excellent production over 57 games but whom, as far as I can tell, they declined to tender a contract in the offseason — meaning no draft-pick compensation.

So for Andrus, Harrison, Feliz and Saltalamacchia — all Major Leaguers, three of them All-Stars — the Braves got one season of Mark Teixeira, part seasons of Casey Kotchman and Adam LaRoche, and two guys who never played in the Majors. For Kotchman and Stephen Marek, the Angels got a part season of Mark Teixeira and a draft pick that netted them Mike Trout.

https://twitter.com/e_lobell/status/223412225451376640

I don’t think they’re going to give up on him in right field this year, nor do I think they should. Duda has been woeful defensively, no doubt, but he’ll likely hit better than he has at some point and we’ll all suddenly be willing to cut him some slack. Plus, if they determine conclusively that he’s a DH/1B type, he’s got to have some value in a trade. And in that case, they’d probably want to keep playing him regularly until they ship him out.

Left field might be an option down the road, but he’s not going to be rangy anywhere. His arm might play a little better in left, but I don’t know that it would make a huge difference for his defense in total.

https://twitter.com/Huerts31/status/223411261868740608

They have Rocky Mountain Oysters in Denver. I seriously considered them for the novelty, and I’m not normally squeamish about anything, but it came time to get on the line and I just couldn’t do it.

I don’t know that I’ve had anything particularly weird at a ballpark. I had an Ichi-roll in Seattle because I couldn’t not, but though that’s not standard ballpark fare, at this point I’d hardly call sushi “weird.”

I can tell you the most satisfying ballpark food I’ve ever had though: Corn. In the midst of a long baseball roadtrip during a brutal heatwave, stuffed with all sorts of greasy fried food and fast food, my friends and I went to see the Peoria Chiefs. I didn’t know I wanted corn until I saw the corn, but I guess my body was trying to tell me to take a break from the processed food because the corn — roasting over a charcoal grill — looked so amazing. And it was. That’s corn country, after all.