I couldn’t find the walk-off job off Madson discussed in the comments section below. It turns out SNY.tv only started getting Mets highlights in mid-June of 2006, which is exactly when I started working on the site. I figured it had been that way since Day 1. Anyway, in lieu of that, here’s this, from June 11, 2008:

And for kicks, a Twitter exchange with Mets fan @gregpomes (with a little help from Baseball Prospectus injury expert Will Carroll) that I decided not to let die:

OGTedBerg: Remember when Carlos Beltran did this? http://tinyurl.com/3xpoh3q
gregpomes: @OGTedBerg I remember Beltran looking at strike 3 in the 2006 NLCS.
OGTedBerg: @gregpomes Do you remember that they wouldn’t have been in the 2006 NLCS without Beltran?
gregpomes: @OGTedBerg when it was time for him to step up he didn’t. He just stood there. He’s a soft player.
OGTedBerg: @gregpomes You know he had three home runs in that series, right?
gregpomes: @OGTedBerg and when it mattered he struck out looking. He’s great at padding stats but he’s a choke artists when the game is on the line
OGTedBerg: @gregpomes The entire series mattered, as did the entire season. Striking out in one at-bat does not make a choke artist. Baseball is hard.
gregpomes: @OGTedBerg that at bat was the most important at bat in the series for them and he didn’t come through. #Mets
OGTedBerg: @gregpomes That much is true. Doesn’t make him soft.
gregpomes: @OGTedBerg what makes him soft is that he’s constantly hurt.
injuryexpert: @gregpomes @OGTedBerg I wonder how soft you’d be if your knees were grinding with every step.

<3 Beltran. Hat tip to Devon for the reminder.

After a rough homestand with the Reds and Braves, the Mets’ first-half ended with a flurry of good news: Beltran showed up, three Mets pitchers shut down the braves, Jerry Manuel confirmed that Angel Pagan will get the lion’s share of playing time in right field, and Jeff Francoeur was cool about it.

Cool on all counts. Frenchy becomes about a billion times more lovable as a right-handed bench bat. He mashes left-handed pitching and affords the team defensive flexibility that Chris Carter does not. All but three of Francoeur’s 6849 innings in Major League outfields have come in right, but since Pagan can play all three spots and Beltran will certainly need rest, Francoeur’s arm becomes a valuable late-inning weapon whenever the team has a big enough lead to shoulder his puny on-base percentage.

Replacing Francoeur with Beltran in the lineup massively upgrades the Mets’ offense, even if Beltran is a mere shell of his former self. Assuming Jose Reyes returns to full health soon, the Mets’ lineup should be good enough to keep the team in the pennant race regardless of if they improve their pitching.

Oh, and a fun note, for what it’s worth: Since word came down that Beltran was ready to start playing rehab games on June 22, Angel Pagan has hit .412 with a .446 on-base percentage and a .686 slugging (though he missed a few games with the oblique injury). Jeff Francoeur has hit .197 with a .234 OBP and a .295 slugging.

If you’ve read this site with any regularity you know I don’t put much stock in small samples in isolation or in assuming a player’s inherent clutchness, but it’s hard not to give it up to Pagan for distinguishing himself from Francoeur once it became clear he had to. I’m certain it’s more an effect of Pagan being the better player than Pagan stepping up under pressure, but he picked a very convenient time to announce his superiority with so much authority.

A little background info: Martin from TalkingChop.com likes to tweak me about the Jeff Francoeur deal because last June I said I’d quit if the Mets traded for him.