I kind of went into panic mode there…. I just messed up.

– Justin Turner.

The ellipsis there replaces Turner detailing the plan the infielders discussed before the fateful play in the Mets’ 4-3 loss to the Marlins on Tuesday: Throw to second on a hard-hit grounder or to home plate on a soft one.

When the ball found his glove, Turner did neither of those things. Instead he moved to tag baserunner John Buck between first and second, then froze when Buck froze, then threw the ball in the general direction of but nowhere actually near first base. Turner described it best: Panic mode.

It happens to the best of us. Only when I go into panic mode, I scramble onto the express train when I need the local or order something I’ll regret at a restaurant because the waitress is standing there and I haven’t really thought about what I want but I need to pick something now since who knows when she’ll be back and aw, screw it, “Fajitas,” BUT I DON’T EVEN REALLY LIKE FAJITAS!

The downside to playing baseball professionally is that when you enter panic mode, thousands of people see it, then you have to tell them about it afterward. The upside is just about everything else.

These things happen. Again. Three straight gut-punch last-inning losses. Say what you will about the 2011 Mets, they’re not boring.

Am I the only one that thought last night’s game was kind of awesome?

Yeah, the ending sucked for the Mets. But there’s some sick fun in a 10th-inning Mike Stanton lazer-shot grand slam on a 3-2 pitch that absolutely had to be a strike because there was no open base for Stanton because of a Daniel Murphy mental hiccup. Throw in that the Mets had tied the game in the bottom of the ninth on a moonshot from Lucas Duda, and that Stanton himself had earlier gunned down Jose Reyes at the plate, and it all adds up to an entertaining if ultimately disappointing August game between divisional rivals.

Stanton appears tailor-made to be a great Marlin. As a 21-year-old already crushing the ball in the big leagues, he looks like he’ll be better than most we’ve seen from that (or, hell, any) club. But his massive home runs and mighty whiffs befit the style of hitting we’ve come to associate with that team. Guy makes Dan Uggla look like a contact hitter.

As for the Mets’ recent offensive woes: I wouldn’t get too concerned. The absence of Carlos Beltran leaves the lineup looking quite a bit thinner, but the Mets are still hitting the ball. They’ve managed at least eight hits in each of their last three games, they just haven’t strung them together in any fashion that produces multiple runs. They appeared a bit flummoxed by Jordan Zimmermann, but for the most part they have put the ball in play.

But it doesn’t sound like anyone’s too worried. These things tend to even out, and there’s a lot more evidence showing that the 2011 Mets can hit than that they can’t. They have to try it without Beltran now, but now they’ve got David Wright.

As for Murph: It happens. More often with Murph than most, it seems, but it’ll take a hell of a lot to convince me that his mental mistakes on the basepaths and in the field cost the Mets more runs than his bat provides. It’s all a tradeoff. I’m sure you could dig up some slick-fielding, weak-hitting first baseman without too much trouble, but you’d rather take your chances with Murphy and his 126 OPS+.

As for that: There’ll be plenty more time to discuss Murphy and his future with the club in the offseason. But for all the talk about how his bat will play anywhere, I’d be at least a little concerned about how well his bat will actually play in the future if he’s walking so infrequently. No one should complain about a guy who’s hitting as well as Murphy is, and a .320 batting average seems to imply he’s seeing lots of pitches to hit. But not many guys can sustain this type of production over time with a walk rate as low as Murphy’s 5.8 percent.

Of course, Murphy’s plate-discipline stats don’t make him out to be any type of free swinger, so there’s probably a bit more to it than that. Lots more on this to certainly follow in the future.

It seems like there’s a growing sentiment among Mets fans and media that the team could and/or should non-tender Mike Pelfrey this offseason, cutting him loose instead of paying him the $5 million or so he’d likely earn for 2012.

Pelfrey is enduring a down year in 2011. Most of his peripheral stats are similar to the ones he posted in his last three seasons, but he has allowed more home runs than he usually does and his park- and league-adjusted ERA+ is at 83, well below the league average. Pelfrey yields a lot of contact so fluctuations in his performance shouldn’t surprise anyone, but his groundball rate and average fastball velocity have been on a steady decline since the 2009 season.

That is the case for non-tendering Pelfrey. That and the nagging insistence that Pelfrey’s a head case. This year people — including his pitching coach — seem to have latched on to the notion that Pelfrey withered under the pressure of being named the staff’s ace. But let’s be honest: If it wasn’t that it would’ve been something else. The pressure of being a father. The pressure of being a Scott Boras client with free agency looming a few years away. The pressure of being extremely tall.

I suspect that Pelfrey’s supposed mental issues have been overdiagnosed because a) he is among the rare, brave professional athletes willing to speak candidly about his own mental health and b) he does all sorts of strange things with his mouth and tongue and hand on the mound, which don’t actually indicate much about the man except that he has one particular nervous habit, but provide armchair body-language experts all the fodder they need to start sizing Pelfrey up for a straightjacket.

Anyway, that’s all besides the point. Whether psychology actually affects Pelfrey’s pitching more than that of his peers is immaterial: The problem if it exists doesn’t appear to be more damning or more correctable than Pelfrey’s lack of a swing-and-miss pitch, unless, I guess, Pelfrey has some mental block against learning a swing-and-miss pitch. This can go on forever.

What we know for sure about Pelfrey, on paper, is that the sum total of his last four years of service to the Mets add up a slightly below league-average innings eater. He averaged 196 innings a season from 2007-2010 and will, barring injury, reach something near that total in 2011.

If the case to non-tender him is based on the red flags presented by the declining ground-ball rate and velocity, I guess I understand it, though I’d like to see how the rest of his season plays out. If it’s based on Pelfrey’s underwhelming season or mental weakness or whatever, I don’t buy it at all.

I recognize that the dude is frustrating to watch, but I’m not sure 200 innings — even slightly below league-average ones — are something that can be easily replaced for less than $5 million dollars if there’s no obvious candidate to promote from within. If the Mets had a ton of starting-pitching depth I could understand not wanting to spend that money on Pelfrey, but none of their pitching prospects seems likely to break camp with the 2012 club.

This isn’t a decision for today, naturally, and we’ll have a clearer picture of the offseason in the offseason. But they’re going to need someone to pitch, and Pelfrey’s practically guaranteed to do that — if not particularly well, then at least frequently.