The Mets traded Francisco Rodriguez and cash to the Brewers last night for two players to be named later.

He finished 34 games for the Mets in 2011, 21 shy of the 55 needed for his $17.5 million option to vest. More to follow.

It boils down to getting a good pitch to hit. Why anybody would not want to get a good pitch to hit is beyond me. I’ve tried to poke holes in it, in my philosophy. I’m always trying to figure out, how can I do it a little bit better, how can I teach this a little bit better. But when you come down to it I don’t understand why anybody would disagree with getting a good ball to hit.

– Dave Hudgens.

So it’s the All-Star Break, as you know. That means all over the Internet, people are churning out halfway-point fare like “midseason report cards,” which never made a whole lot of sense to me. I mean, I get why they happen — they’re fun, and they’re an easy way to recap a half season’s worth of events.

But the grades are always all over the map. Check ’em out when you read through them today. Are players being graded for their actual performances, or for their performances against preseason expectations? David Wright will inevitably get a crappy grade and Ruben Tejada will get a good one, but how much more has Tejada contributed to the club than Wright?

Anyway, because I’m not interested in either creating my own report card or nitpicking over others’, here’s something both self-serving and lazy: Select Tweets from the first half of the 2011 season to serve as a recap.

April 2: Hey everyone, Mets derp dee derp derp bad heyooo amirite?

April 3: Terry Collins said “That’s my fault,” about something today. Can anyone find evidence that Jerry Manuel ever did that?

April 6: I know the concept of “rallies” seems weird, Mets fans. But this sometimes happens when you rid your lineup of out machines.

April 8: I’d rather have questions about Brad Emaus’ defense than no questions about Luis Castillo’s.

April 11: Some guy on the Mets vaguely reminds me of some notably bad guy from the past, so they should trade him because he is obviously the same.

April 14: Fun fact: Sandy Alderson makes every roster decision based on on-base percentage alone. Matt Stairs will be the Mets’ 2012 shortstop.

April 16: When Mike Pelfrey yields ground balls that find holes, that means he’s obviously feeble minded.

April 17: Mets win a game! Mets win a game!

April 19: Jason Bourgeois enters the game in left field, presumably because he’s finished eating at a strip-mall chain restaurant.

April 22: I’ve been sick of the K-Rod games-finished countdown since like the second night. He’s going to finish some games. Call me when it’s at 45.

April 26: I want to know which Mets hate America, but only if they overlap with the Mets that I already hate.

April 26: They should make Celebrity Wipeout and get Todd Coffey to go on it.

April 28: Problem with starting Capuano today is he’s not available to pinch-hit for Willie Harris here.

April 30: The Phillies have a great record in day games. Also: Night games.

May 1: Somewhere Steve Phillips is watching this game and saying something stupid about it.

May 3: Carlos Beltran should not have taught Jason Bay how babies are made.

May 5: We’d probably be a lot sicker of the “Hu’s on first” jokes if he ever reached base.

May 6: I’m hungry, there’s no food in the house and my wife’s out with the car. Not cool, Carlos Beltran.

May 10: Mental weakling Josh Thole sometimes takes 95 mph fastballs fouled off his face then leans back in to do it again.

May 10: The only reason Wright hit Ike there is he’s left handed and it’s early in the game.

May 13: Carlos Beltran is so awesome he’s making it difficult to ironically blame him for stuff.

May 16: Classless Mets announce David Wright injury at time that is legitimately inconvenient for me.

May 20: Just three seasons before the Mets signed him, Moises Alou played in 155 games. THE CURSE!

May 21: People compare Yankee Stadium to a shopping mall but I’ve never seen a shopping mall it was so easy to hit opposite field homers in.

May 24: Carlos Beltran shouldn’t have given himself such a big contract if he wasn’t going to surround himself with a deep roster of good players.

May 26: Mr. Einhorn, my newspaper had no idea this was happening until after it happened. Why do you hate America?

May 26: Mr. Einhorn, did you know that THE METS ARE CURSED?

June 1: Carlos Beltran only has one RBI since Terry Collins liberated him to be an RBI whore.

June 2: Ruben Tejada changes and steps around mob of reporters near his locker. “We’re here for you,” one says. He smiles sheepishly and returns.

June 3: If you’re a scout and you’re picking Derek Jeter over Jose Reyes in 2011, you probably shouldn’t be a scout.

June 6: When the Mets draft some guy tonight I’ll be PISSED! Then when he tears up A-ball next year, I’ll hype him up something fierce.

June 8: Miguel Cairo has out grand-slammed the Mets 1-0 this year, but every member of the Mets has out not-being-Miguel-Cairoed Miguel Cairo.

June 12: It’s funny to credit Omar Minaya for Justin Turner now when the Mets had Luis Hernandez starting games last year with Turner mashing in AAA.

June 17: The small bright side to Jose Reyes signing with the Yankees would be Derek Jeter’s hissy fit.

June 18: The RBI trick Beltran turned last inning traveled 460 feet, per the stadium PA.

June 29: Ronny Paulino batting cleanup!? OMG LOL! It’s like 2010 Opening Day again, only this time the Mets have scored 36 runs in the last 3 games.

July 3: If Reyes weren’t in his contract year, it’d be a grade 2 strain. Or he’d play with it. Or wait, no. HOW TO FILTER THIS THROUGH MY NARRATIVE?

July 6: Jason Bay is hitting .500/.500/2.000 since July 5.

July 8: Everyone says they’ve been writing all year that the Mets are unlikely to trade Reyes, but that’s not what I’ve been reading all year.

“These guys are having me do things I’ve never done before in the game, like this,” [Beltran] said, raising his arm above his head to demonstrate his own version of the claw.

– David Waldstein, N.Y. Times.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

– John Greenleaf Whitter, “Maud Muller.”

No one really blames Carlos Beltran for anything anymore.

A joke that started as backlash to a pesky, ill-conceived idea forwarded in many corners of the fanbase and media has become a tired cliche, embraced now even by many of the same talking heads and columnists whose unsubstantiated insinuations prompted it in the first place.

And sure, a few stubborn fools maintain that Beltran is somehow at fault for all the Mets’ troubles, and in weak times we may turn to their blogs or Twitter feeds to see how their warped minds will twist his latest contributions to fit with their nonsensical narratives. But it is only a macabre appeal, like peeking through our hands at a train wreck. Anyone still blaming Carlos Beltran has long since careened off the rails.

Beltran has quieted his detractors. Quietly, of course. Now the last man standing among the Mets’ elite hitters — and I type this with fingers and toes crossed while knocking on wood — Beltran leads the teams in doubles, home runs, RBIs, walks, and, most surprisingly, games played.

His .283/.372/.502 line almost exactly matches the one he posted in his last fully healthy year in 2008. The arthritic knees have cost him some stolen bases and some range in the outfield, but Beltran is playing like Beltran. And people finally seem to recognize it as awesome.

Plus, there’s more to appreciate than the on-field performance. There’s Beltran relinquishing center field to Angel Pagan in Spring Training. Beltran instilling confidence in a struggling Pedro Beato. Beltran stopping Ruben Tejada in the dugout after he failed to run out a pop-up. Even Beltran doing the claw when we know it runs counter to everything in his dignified disposition. All those familiar, Phillipsian accusations — Beltran is selfish, not a leader, playing in his own world — appear handily disproved when examined under the microscope afforded by a new manager, a fresh set of teammates and the final year of his contract with the Mets.

Ah, but therein lies the rub. It looks entirely likely that sometime soon — either later this month, sometime next month or in late September — Beltran will play his last game for the Mets.

Many now argue the Mets should try to bring Beltran back on a new, short contract, but it probably won’t happen. Beltran likely presents more value for an American League team that can use him as a designated hitter at the back end of his next deal, and, though it pains me to write this, signing a 34-year-old outfielder with 40-year-old knees to a multi-year contract doesn’t seem like the type of prudent move favored by the Mets’ current front office.

So we’re left watching Beltran enjoying a grand season and enjoying himself in a lineup full of decent players some 10 years his junior, and wondering what could have been if the Mets had only managed to field better clubs around him for the bulk of his seven-year stint in Flushing. If only, if only.

But during Beltran’s extended curtain call, we can take solace in knowing that it now seems the best center fielder in Mets’ history will be recognized and remembered as such, and in realizing that though Beltran’s subtle grace and understated excellence proved to be an acquired taste for many, many ultimately did acquire it.

That’s not worth as much as a World Series win, and for plenty of fans the way the hope attached to Beltran’s contract and the promise that came with the 2006 club never amounted to anything marks the whole era as a huge disappointment. I get that.

But watching great players play great is worth something too. And in Beltran, we got that. We still get that, for who knows how much longer. It’s pretty sweet.

So that sucks. The bright side, I suppose, is that the Mets still have a lineup full of guys that can capably get on base and score runs even without their best hitter.

The other side is we don’t get to see Jose Reyes playing baseball for the next few weeks. But it’s probably better they play this one safe.

Obviously it has sparked a lot more talk about the Mets’ medical staff, since the initial diagnosis was that this would be a day-to-day thing and now, clearly, it is more than that. I’m not eager to defend the Mets’ medical staff here, but it’s hard to ignore the way our biases impact the way we now perceive every Mets injury.

We have decided that the medical staff and/or something about the way the team processes injuries sucks, so we cite every new piece of injury-related information as evidence of that suckitude. But of course it’s equally possible the Mets are playing this one correctly — that Reyes’ hamstring didn’t respond as well as they hoped it would to rest so they took the most prudent course of action.

Either way, here’s hoping he comes back soon.