I don’t know how to describe (the 7th inning). I’m sick of trying to describe 7th innings.

– Terry Collins.

Another brutal loss for the Mets last night, and Collins sounded about at his wit’s end afterward — promising change but failing to provide specifics.

So here’s an idea, one that likely won’t change much but will at least shake things up a bit and give the club a bit of much-needed lefty power: How about get Lucas Duda on the team?

Duda went 3-for-3 with two home runs, a double and a pair of walks in Buffalo last night, so this might sound a bit reactive. But if you’ve been reading this blog with any regularity you know I’ve been on this for a while. Some might argue Duda should be playing every day somewhere since he’s young and presumably still developing. But Duda is 25 — hardly a baby — and now has 100 games’ worth of absolutely raking Triple-A pitching on his resume.

Collins can find Duda some at-bats at first base and, until someone figures out what has happened to Jason Bay, in left field. And since Duda may never turn out to be a Major League regular, it behooves the Mets to determine how he can succeed in part-time duty in the big leagues anyway.

Willie Harris has been on the team all season because, we assume, he hits left-handed and is a versatile defender. But Harris has a miserable .539 OPS against right-handed pitchers in 2011. Small samples still abound, of course, but it’s not like Harris’ career .688 mark in that split is enough to hang on to him with confidence he’ll start mashing right-handers soon.

Plus, though Harris’ versatility has come in handy these last few days with Jose Reyes out, the Mets have plenty of guys to play every position Harris handles. Justin Turner, Daniel Murphy and Nick Evans can play third. Ruben Tejada, Turner and Murphy can play second. Angel Pagan, Scott Hairston and Jason Pridie can play center.

And Harris is 33 and unlikely to play a meaningful role in the Mets’ future. With this season looking increasingly like one best served for assessing future contributors, the Mets might as well take the opportunity to see how Duda’s mighty Triple-A bat plays when given ample Major League chances. When he is in the lineup, he will provide them some much-needed power. When he’s on the bench, he’ll serve as the credible lefty pinch-hitter they’ve lacked for most of the season.

Du it.

(Sorry.)

The Mets, you may have heard, have gone 10 straight games without a home run, their longest such drought since disco.

It’s mostly randomness. The Mets, a collection of Major League hitters not even hitting poorly, have not suddenly lost the ability to put the ball over the fence. It will happen eventually, and probably pretty soon.

Some factors that don’t help: They’ve played a bunch of games at cold Wrigley and big Citi Field. And their lineup, with David Wright and Ike Davis out, contains a bunch of guys that don’t hit many home runs.

Really the only power hitters the Mets are starting with any regularity are Carlos Beltran and Jason Bay, and it’s pretty much laughable to consider Bay a power hitter right now. And that’s, ahh, that’s worrisome. Man… Jason Bay.

So in other words, I guess, this is all Carlos Beltran’s fault.

When first told that Einhorn is a poker player, Pelfrey, an avid card player himself, said, “Tell him to come to the back of the plane—bring his wallet.”

But a few seconds later, when told Einhorn finished 18th in the 2006 World Series of Poker, Pelfrey had second thoughts, saying, “He can play with [shortstop Jose] Reyes then.”

– Brian Costa, Wall Street Journal.

Turns out Mike Pelfrey’s a pretty funny dude. Of course, next time he gets hit hard someone will find some way to spin this to explain why he’s crazy or something.

More on it eventually I’m sure, but for now, briefly: I’ll believe the Mets are choosing between David Wright and Jose Reyes when I see the Mets choose between David Wright and Jose Reyes.

On to more pressing matters: Brad Emaus is on the N.L. All-Star ballot. For some reason the All-Star ballots are still filled with every team’s projected Opening Day starters every year even though a) we have the Internet now and b) you figure there has to be some efficient enough way for the league to print and distribute All-Star ballots without including Rule 5 picks that were in the Minor Leagues by mid-April. Am I missing something here? Is there some other reason Brad Emaus is on the All-Star ballot that I’m not aware of?

Anyway, the important thing is that Emaus be elected to the All-Star team. It’s fun to make a mockery of stuff, for one thing. For another, it’d be really interesting to see how the league played that one here in the This Time It Counts era of All-Star pageantry. Does Emaus get called up from Colorado Springs to play? What hat does he wear?

The Emaus for All-Star movement was suggested to me on Twitter by @whywhywhy50, who also plans to write-in Justin Turner for third base. That’s fine, but I don’t advocate taking votes away from David Wright — injury and shaky start or not — and if I’m going to support a write-in campaign for the All-Star Game, it’s going to be Tom Brady Waterslide Photo for American League shortstop.

Anyway, rock the vote. And tell your friends.

Remember when people were only half-ironically predicting the Mets to challenge the 1962 club’s worst-record-ever record? That happened. Remember that?

It was silly. With the meats of our Memorial Day barbecues in digestion, we know now that the Mets were never nearly that bad a club. They played pitifully over a pitifully small sample, and some of the club’s fans, beat reporters and owners let their imaginations run wild. These things happen.

So what have we got, for real?

Well, we still don’t really know because it’s baseball, and Memorial Day is not in fact some magical date that clears up all small-sample size murkiness and reveals the true postseason contenders.

The Mets appear to be pretty close to the club we — by we I mean me, I should say — expected before the season: They can hit a bit, thanks to a deep lineup capable of sustaining rallies. Their pitching isn’t very good, but it is often good enough to keep the team in games.

Some players are overachieving, of course: Justin Turner probably won’t drive in 3000 runs this year and Dillon Gee probably won’t finish the season undefeated. But David Wright, Josh Thole and Angel Pagan have not played as well as they are capable of playing. Wright, Ike Davis and Angel Pagan have missed big stretches of the season with injuries, but Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran (knocking wood right now) have remained healthy.

I think I started out with some sort of larger point in mind and now that I’m here I’m not sure I have one. I kept saying I’d take stock of the team come Memorial Day, and now, well, here we are. The Mets are 25-28. They’re not great but they’re not that bad.

But you knew that. Carry on.

The Mets took a Pyrrhic victory last night. They won the game, improving their record to 25-28, but Francisco Rodriguez finished it, his 20th finished game on the season. He is well on his way to finishing 55 games, the benchmark at which the $17.5-million option on his contract becomes guaranteed for 2012.

Of course, you know all this. You know because The Great Games Finished Scourge is the most compelling reason to tune into the Mets every night. Every night, scores of Mets fans tune in with bated breath to see if Terry Collins will have the gall to turn to his best reliever in the last inning, knowing what he does about that reliever’s contract situation and the way it could financially hamstring his already financially hamstrung club next season. And once Rodriguez enters the game, we sit on the edge of our seats, fingers crossed, hoping — of course — he will allow the opposition to tie the game so he can exit without it ending.

I kid, obviously. And the vesting option does matter. Hell, if the $14 million difference between paying Rodriguez for 2012 and paying the buyout on his contract somehow means the Mets can’t keep Jose Reyes, it matters a hell of a lot. And sometimes it seems like Terry Collins is straight-up trolling the Mets’ front office, bringing in his closer to finish games like the six-run loss on Thursday in Chicago.

In the grand scheme of closers-with-awful-vesting-options-misuse, though, Collins should get a pass for Rodriguez’s appearance in last night’s game. The Mets’ bullpen has been overworked and shaky lately, and Jason Isringhausen was already lifted for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the eighth when the Mets scored their sixth and seventh runs — giving them a three- and then four-run cushion.

So those robbling on Twitter over using Rodriguez in a non-save situation would have presumably sat the closer down — dry-humped him, in bullpen parlance — to turn the game over to some other, not-yet-warmed-up reliever in a recently overworked bullpen that very well might be needed tonight with an ailing R.A. Dickey set to start.

And really, that argument assumes managers should be managing to the reasonably arbitrary save stat, pitching guys labeled closers with three-run leads but not four-run leads and everything. Silly.