David Wright is a bright guy, but in this case he doesn’t seem to get it. He looks at you quizzically when told that being traded away from the Mets – where the ballpark works against him, ownership and upper management view him as less than a superstar, and the team is facing more losing seasons for the near future – would actually be the best thing to ever happen to him.

– Bill Madden, N.Y. Daily News.

Or maybe — maybe! — David Wright, grown-ass man, has a better sense of what he wants and what’s best for him than some guy who doesn’t really know him at all.

And I appreciate the use of the second-person here, because it makes it sound like David Wright looks at me quizzically when I tell him that being traded away from the Mets would be the best thing to ever happen to him, which is precisely the response I’d expect from Wright if I were to tell him that. I bet he’d think, “who the hell is this guy?” But because he’s super polite he’d just give me a curious look and not really say anything.

Not that it really matters one way or the other, but I was looking over the Mets’ team stats today and got to wondering what people thought:

[poll id=”26″]

I think that the meeting yesterday was great. I liked it. It was different than what we used to have in the past. But that’s him. He has passion, he has energy, he’s going to pick and talk the way he feels about the team, about the players. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I think sometimes you need a meeting like that to wake everyone up.

– Carlos Beltran.

why do you need a meeting like that to wakeup? you should be motovaited by being a big league player.beltran is a joke.

– Glen Volz.

Ah, yes. Sometimes I get so caught up in ironically blaming Carlos Beltran for stuff that I lose sight of the weird and twisted ways in which people unironically blame Carlos Beltran for stuff.

I happened to be standing in the media scrum around Beltran when he said what he did about the team meeting, and I actually did come away from it thinking it sounded like Beltran legitimately likes Terry Collins and his methods and wasn’t just paying lip service to the reporter’s question. But a reporter did ask Beltran what he thought of the team meeting, and Beltran answered the question professionally. Imagine the fallout if Beltran had been curt or suggested the team didn’t need the meeting for motivation.

(On an unrelated note, Beltran addressed the media while wearing one of the most amazing shirts I’ve ever seen in my life. I would have snapped a picture if I were myself less professional. It was an incredibly loud short-sleeved button-down featuring various shades of turquoise, orange, yellow, and I think maybe some pink. From a distance it looked like a Hawaiian pattern, but it was something more complex than that, vaguely, I don’t know, Aztec? There were flowers on there, but also like bones and suns and all sorts of incongruous lines and shapes. It might have been a Magic Eye shirt. Type of thing you need to be Carlos Beltran to pull off.)

Anyway, the Post recently switched to using Facebook comments on its news stories, meaning commenters are no longer shielded by anonymity. So we know that this particular Beltran-blamer is a cabinet maker named Glen Volz who believes that Beltran was not, in fact, motivated on Wednesday when he went 2-for-4 with a double, and presumably also not motivated in the 52 games before that, in which he posted an .875 OPS despite the bone-on-bone condition that everyone thought would sideline him a lot more often than it has.

But I guess kudos to you for your conviction, Glen Volz.

Oh!

Did anyone see that awesome baseball game?

In the first Mike Pelfrey lets up three runs without really even allowing a hard-hit ball, and it’s like, “oh that sucks, but that’s baseball, I guess.” Only then in the second, Pelfrey lets up three more runs on a bunch of hard-hit balls, and now it’s all, “OK, between the Mets’ offense and bullpen this one’s going to get ugly.”

Only the Mets also have Carlos Beltran on their team, and Carlos Beltran is totally sweet. So he hits a three-run home run in the bottom of the third and everyone gets to thinking how maybe at least it won’t be a total blowout if the Mets’ recently crappy bullpen can not suck for once.

Then — then! — in the bottom of the sixth, Beltran doubles off the top of the wall and Jason Bay figures out a way to get to first base, so the Mets wind up with runners on second and third with one out after Ronny Paulino taps out to the pitcher. Now Nick Evans — who always walks up to bat to Tom Petty music — comes up, and he’s taking this laid-back approach at the plate like he doesn’t want to swing at all, just chillin’, mentally listening to some Tom Petty, but Paul Maholm walks him on a full count.

Next Ruben Tejada, who’s 21 but doesn’t look a day older than 12, rips a single to right and two runs score and all of a sudden whoa, too bad the Mets bullpen stinks or else they might really have something here. And then Terry Collins throws strategy to the wind and puts in left-handed Daniel Murphy to pinch-hit against lefty Paul Maholm instead of going with a righty bat like Dillon Gee or Jason Isringhausen, and Murphy rewards his manager’s unconventional thinking by lifting a single to left that scores another run.

Now the Pirates are playing really terribly, and after an error and a passed ball, Tejada scampers home and everyone’s thinking, “man how crazy they tied this thing up, shame about that bullpen thing.”

But oh!

A little bit later, Paulino singles to lead off the eighth and Collins uses Willie Harris to pinch-run for Paulino and Chris Capuano to pinch-hit for Jason Isringhausen. This seems like it might be a pretty crummy thing to do to any position player, even Harris, but Collins says Capuano’s the best bunter on the team and he’s in there to get Harris over to second.

Only he doesn’t need to. In a very confusing sequence of events, Jose Veras balks on what looks like the second strike of the at-bat. So everyone’s all confused as to how and why Harris is suddenly standing on second and Josh Thole’s coming in to pinch-hit with a 1-2 count, and things get even worse when Thole takes a called strike and everyone figures he’s out but he’s still standing there. And by the time everything’s cleared up, Harris is on third on a wild pitch.

Long story short, Veras struggles from there and the Mets score two and now it’s like, “OMG I think they’re really going to pull this one out, what a comeback!” But obviously the first guy up in the ninth hits a triple off Francisco Rodriguez and it’s all, “Oh so this is how it’s going to be K-Rod?”

Only no! That guy scored but no one else did, and the Mets won 9-8. A bunch of other cool stuff happened too.

It was sweet.