I don’t really have anything I want to write about Osama Bin Laden, and I am especially not interested in vaguely conflating his death with the Mets’ victory last night, even if the news was big enough to have affected the crowd at Citizens Bank Park and the players and manager in post-game interviews.

Baseball: The Mets won a 14-inning thriller last night, with strong pitching compensating for a series of offensive failures and missed opportunities. Cliff Lee appeared human — a nice reminder to Mets fans that great pitchers do occasionally falter — and Chris Young managed to flummox the Phillies for seven efficient innings.

Jason Isringhausen struggled and Tim Byrdak failed to get Ryan Howard out, which is pretty much the main thing Byrdak is supposed to be doing on the Mets. But the rest of the bullpen was excellent. With three solid frames, Pedro Beato extended to 17 innings his career-opening stretch of innings without an earned run. Taylor Buchholz, who has been quietly dominant all year, earned the win with two perfect innings to end the game.

Francisco Rodriguez, I should note, has a 1.727 WHIP with a 1.64 ERA. He has always allowed a lot of baserunners, but not like this. He’s going to have to start getting hitters out more often or he can expect a swift and violent regression.

As for the offense: Terry Collins seems married to the idea that lefties must only pinch-hit against righties and vice versa. Last night, with two on and two out in the eighth inning of a tie game, Collins called on Chin-Lung Hu to pinch-hit against Phillies left-hander Antonio Bastardo.

Hu bats right-handed. He also entered the game 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts on the season, including 1-for-9 with six K’s against southpaws. It’s a miniscule sample, sure, but… man. He strikes out more often than he puts the ball in play. How is it possible he’s a better option in that spot than lefty-hitting Daniel Murphy, who can actually hit?

I guess part of the thing about running platoons at two or three spots in the lineup is it’s going to leave your bench heavily right- or left-handed, depending on the day. But that doesn’t seem like a great excuse to use Chin-Lung Hu in important pinch-hitting spots.

Luckily, whenever Ronny Paulino isn’t playing he should be available for pinch hitting against lefties. If first impressions mean anything, Paulino should run for mayor. That was awesome. He had one fewer hit last night than Scott Hairston has all season. Bear hugs for Ronny Paulino:

The Mets activated Ronny Paulino today, quieting speculation that there was some sort of karmic Lost scheme to keep him off the big-league roster all year, perhaps because Jacob needed him for some task that would not at all be adequately explained by the end of the series WHY? I INVESTED SO MUCH TIME IN THIS PLEASE GIVE ME SOMETHING BETTER THAN A CORK!

You may recall that Paulino mashes lefties. Specifically, he can boast a career .338/.390/.491 line against southpaws, better than everyone on the club who isn’t regularly in the middle of the batting order. That means Paulino, on days when he doesn’t start, trumps Scott Hairston as a pinch-hitting option against lefties late in games.

Some managers, we’ve seen, are reluctant to ever use backup catchers in pinch-hitting situations out of fear that something will happen to the starting catcher and then they’ll be left with, say, Chin-Lung Hu in the tools of ignorance. But — knock wood and everything — how often does that really happen? Here’s hoping Terry Collins proves willing to turn to Paulino when he needs a big hit against a southpaw, especially because (and I know it’s a small sample and he’s really not anything like this bad) I’m getting awful sick of watching Scott Hairston flail at every pitch.

Anyway, that doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do with the conclusion of this post — the one stated in the headline — except that we’re talking platoon splits and pinch hitters, and we watched pinch-hitter Willie Harris whiff (on a really nasty looking pitch, to his credit) to end last night’s game.

There are a lot more right-handed relievers than left-handed ones, and the Mets’ bench is ill-equipped to handle them whenever Daniel Murphy is in the starting lineup. Jason Pridie bats lefty, but he has never hit much at any level.

Harris has a career .245/.333/.360 split against righties, so it’s actually possible Justin Turner is a better option.  But since as we know, managers totally <3 lefty-righty matchups, the Mets might want to look for a lefty bench bat better than Harris.

Problem is, the best lefty hitters the Mets have in Triple-A are Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Lucas Duda and Fernando Martinez, young players that the organization certainly wants playing regularly. The others are Jesus Feliciano and Russ Adams, neither of whom seems likely to outperform Harris.

I recognize I’m quibbling about the last spot on the roster, and ideally the Mets will find ways to win games that don’t involve relying on pinch hitters. Plus I have no idea what type of lefty-hitting talent is available from outside the organization. But if Angel Pagan is going to play almost every day when he returns — as he should — and Hairston can back up center field in a pinch, and if the Mets have Murphy, Turner and Hu to play second base, then Harris’ primary role is as the team’s top lefty bat off the bench. And it strikes me that you can probably find someone better fit for that job.

The Mets lost last night, as you probably know. This means, obviously, that the Nats somehow snuffed out the competitive fire ignited in the Amazins when Jose Reyes got mistakenly called out at third on Wednesday night. Jason Bay’s measured leadership failed to sustain the club through a series sweep, and the players all forgot R.A. Dickey’s motivational postgame interview from last week.

Or Livan Hernandez benefited from wide-seeming strike zone, Chris Capuano didn’t pitch all that well, Carlos Beltran misjudged a fly ball and the Nats took the game, one of 162 both teams will play this season.

Willie Harris struck out with the game on the line in the ninth. He now looks like a shell of the clutch offensive sparkplug that carried the Mets through the first week of the season. Actually, he now looks a hell of a lot like Willie Harris.

Oh and down in St. Lucie, Matt Harvey allowed the first four earned runs of his professional career. If they keep playing baseball long enough there’ll eventually be a pitcher that never allows a run, the whole monkeys-at-typewriters thing. But Matt Harvey is not that pitcher. He too is subject to the sport’s whims.

Everything in baseball returns to order eventually. Except Livan Hernandez; he’s magical.

Here are photos of airborne Mets in last night’s game, courtesy of the Associated Press:

And here’s Murph, just because:

About Murph: Plenty of people were killing him last night for the run the Nationals scored in the 8th inning. Jason Bay attempted a sliding catch on an Adam LaRoche pop-up but it bounced off the heel of his glove, then Murphy wasn’t quick to cover second and LaRoche advanced.

First off, let’s not forget that Bay is hardly a rangy left fielder and that many Major Leaguers would have made the play pretty easily and without sliding. I suppose it’s easier to blame Murphy for a mental error than Bay for lacking the physical ability to make the play, but it’s not as if it was guaranteed that LaRoche would have been out at second even if Murphy were hugging the bag from the beginning. Also, Murphy was not responsible for the passed ball that moved LaRoche to third, allowing pinch runner Brian Bixler to score on a sacrifice fly.

Anyway, point is Murph is crushing the ball. All players make errors and we’re going to pick out and pick on Murphy’s because we have it in our heads that he’s a bad defender and we know he’s playing a new position. But when he’s hitting like this, you have to tolerate the mishaps knowing that he’s still producing more runs at the plate than he’s costing the team in the field.

Six in a row, huh? Probably shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, but at least this will quiet the 120-loss set.