My Friday suspicions were confirmed Sunday evening: The Mets called up Jason Isringhausen and Ryota Igarashi, designating Blaine Boyer for assignment and optioning Lucas Duda to Triple-A.

The move came on the heels of a brutal extra-inning loss to the Nationals in which Boyer allowed four runs in the 11th, his second inning of work. Boyer got off to a pretty terrible start, reminding everyone of the value of Spring Training stats. To his credit, though, he pitched in more than half of the Mets’ games — rarely a good recipe.

Actually, D.J. Carrasco, Tim Byrdak, Taylor Buchholz and Boyer have all pitched in five games so far, which, probably more than Boyer’s ineffectiveness, prompted the roster shakeup. Isringhausen and Igarashi provide fresh arms when the team desperately needs them.

Isringhausen we expected, since he was in extended Spring Training waiting on just this occasion. Igarashi might come as a bit of surprise, but Manny Acosta can’t be recalled within 10 days of being designated for assignment, plus he hasn’t pitched in a week. I imagine, unless an injury arises or someone else pitches terribly, Igarashi will be the one to go whenever Jason Bay returns, if not sooner.

As for that: The Mets could use Bay right about now, with Brad Emaus and Angel Pagan struggling a bit and Willie Harris apparently returning to being Willie Harris. But it’s way, way, way too early to be concerned about Pagan, especially since he’s maintaining a .310 on-base percentage despite his .171 batting average.

Bay’s return would move Harris back to a more familiar bench role where the Mets could use him.  Duda, Scott Hairston, Daniel Murphy, Chin-Lung Hu and Mike Nickeas have combined for a putrid .136/.212/.169 line in the team’s first nine games. That’s unlikely to continue, especially once Ronny Paulino replaces Nickeas.

Ah yes, a bad bench and a bad bullpen. It’s like 2008, except it’s still really early in the season and the Mets’ front office appears conscious of the team’s weaknesses.

One other thing: At least one person that is actually paid to analyze baseball criticized Terry Collins for pulling Chris Young after 108 pitches yesterday. That’s silly. I’m plenty skeptical about the value of strict pitch-count limits, but it’s April and Young is coming off three straight seasons shortened by injury. Yes, Young was pitching really well yesterday and perhaps would have continued doing so into the eighth inning and secured a win. But jeopardizing his health means risking wins down the road. You need to have a bullpen you can trust to hold the Nationals off for two innings. That’s the issue here, not the pitch count.

The only thing I really want to remember from this afternoon’s game is Angel Pagan’s running over-the-shoulder catch way out in right center by the 415 mark and his turning, falling throw into the cutoff man to double up the unsuspecting baserunner. Carlos Beltran and David Wright hit doubles that were pretty cool too.

As for the rest of it: Meh.

R.A. Dickey split the nail on the index finger of his pitching hand in the first inning, right before he struck out Ryan Zimmerman. He filed it down between innings and managed to scrap through four more frames, but he lacked control of his knuckleball and walked five batters. The Mets hit a bunch of balls hard but right at defenders. They also struck out in some big spots.

Dickey said he’ll be fine by his next start, so the main concern from this one is the performance of the bullpen. For the fourth straight night, Terry Collins had to use at least three relievers. For the third straight night, some of them struggled. After the game, a reporter asked Collins if he was concerned about the amount of innings his bullpen has thrown recently.

“Yes,” he said. That’s all. There was a long pause before the next question.

It doesn’t seem typical of Collins to admit concern or be so curt, so it’s probably more than paying lip service to the reporter’s question.

Bobby Parnell struggled a bit tonight, but Blaine Boyer and Tim Byrdak have been the main culprits so far. Actually, the main culprit has probably been a starting staff unable to eat up innings. That’s hardly atypical this early in the season, granted, but not one of Mike Pelfrey, John Niese and Dickey managed to pitch into the sixth these past three games.

It seems knee-jerk to make roster moves so early in the season, but with Chris Young and Chris Capuano set to go tomorrow and Sunday, the Mets’ bullpen appears unlikely to enjoy a ton of rest anytime soon. Jason Isringhausen tweaked something in his back last weekend, but he is apparently OK — at least in that he ever can be. I wonder if we’ll be seeing him soon, if only to get the Mets a fresh arm in the ‘pen for a few weeks while the starting pitchers pull it together.

Ugh, whatever. A cold and underwhelming home opener at Citi. Tomorrow brings more baseball, though, and this evening brings me a sandwich.

Thanks to all those who emailed the silly Philly.com article about the Mets.  You’ll have to excuse me; I’m rather exhausted today and I can’t seem to muster up the effort to pen an appropriately snarky response.

Plus, at this point I just don’t care that much. Haters gonna hate. Would you be all that surprised if tomorrow someone somewhere wrote a column about how David Wright stomps puppies and Jose Reyes is the actual son of the Devil, (SPOILER ALERT) Rosemary’s Baby-style?

The only way the Mets can put the negativity behind them is by winning baseball games. And I think the Mets will win baseball games. If in September, by some chance, the Mets are still in contention, we can dig up all these stupid, pointless, unsubstantiated columns and laugh at those responsible. Until then, ignore ’em. Don’t feed the trolls, like they say on the Internet.

Mike Pelfrey got rocked last night. Really no two ways about it. He retired only six batters and allowed eight hits and seven runs — six earned — to an underwhelming Phillies offense. He didn’t help himself with his defense and, though he probably got at least a tiny bit unlucky with how many hits found holes, nearly everything hit off him was scorched. He looked terrible.

The Mets have only lost two games this season: Both of Pelfrey’s starts. Mets fans and media seem about ready to panic. I’m not interested in singling out any reporter or analyst, but the concerned masses seem to offer three potential explanations for Pelfrey’s struggles:

1) He is overwhelmed by the pressure to be the Mets’ “ace” in the absence of Johan Santana.
2) He is reeling from the offseason loss of his sports psychologist, Harvey Dorfman.
3) He is injured and keeping mum about it.

To the first: Remember that “ace” is just a label and that often the pitcher that emerges as a team’s “ace” or “No. 1” is someone entirely different than the one chosen to throw on the first day of the season. Indeed, of the three returning holdovers in the Mets’ rotation from 2010, I could pretty easily make the case that Pelfrey is least likely to pitch as “an ace.”

Pelfrey has three full seasons of being a solid but unspectacular Major League starter under his belt, implying that he’ll probably continue being just that. R.A. Dickey had the eighth-best ERA+ in the National League last season, which seems pretty ace-like to me. Jon Niese is the youngest of the three and has an arsenal more impressive than Pelfrey’s.

Of course, clearly Pelfrey is conscious of the team’s decision to pitch him on Opening Day, and far be it for me to say it hasn’t weighed on him. But starting games in the Major Leagues is a pretty high-pressure thing to begin with, and I’m not sure how the loss of Johan Santana necessarily puts more pressure on Pelfrey, other than in how it puts more pressure on all the Mets’ starters that are not Santana. I would guess that every starter in the Majors wants really badly to pitch like “an ace,” and that if a pitcher allows pressure to get to him, it’s not one specific identifiable item of pressure like the responsibilities of being an Opening Day starter. In other words: If Mike Pelfrey is struggling due to pressure, there are probably plenty of reasons besides just that he started the game on Friday.

Which seems to be a pretty good segue into No. 2 on the list. According to this report, Pelfrey first admitted to consulting with Dorfman to combat the stigma against psychology in sports. So we reward him for that bravery by assuming he is so fragile mentally that he melts down in the face of adversity.

Again: I’m not Pelfrey’s psychologist and I can’t tell you what’s going through his mind, but I can say I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. A good psychologist — and presumably Dorfman was a good psychologist — gives people the tools to overcome mental and emotional challenges whenever they arise. Supposedly Pelfrey called Dorfman after rough starts, but certainly he didn’t call Dorfman after every rough inning or rough pitch.

People seem eager to diagnose Pelfrey as crazy because of his body language on the mound, which seems patently ridiculous. How often have you seen a pitcher getting rocked maintain great body language? It’s a combination, I’d guess, of a pitcher actually looking distressed and confirmation bias on our parts, but I’m pretty sure we’re always going to view a pitcher in the midst of a shelling as a mope on the mound.

As for the injury thing: It’s another possibility I can’t discount. Pelfrey pitched through shoulder pain all last season, and though he says he’s healthy now, really, who knows? If he didn’t say anything about the injury last year, it could be he’s not saying anything about the same injury — or a more taxing one — this year.

But I’ll offer another possible explanation: Randomness. Pelfrey looked pretty bad in his first two starts, but if you go back through his game logs, you can find plenty of other times where he has done the same — they were just relatively masked by a handful of good starts around them, mitigating the concerns. In fact, over a three-start stretch from July 5-19 last season, he yielded a 15.30 ERA, just about as bad as he’s sporting this season.

Pitchers like Pelfrey who pitch to weak contact and lack a swing-and-miss pitch appear prone to huge fluctuations in performance. It could easily be that Pelfrey just happened to have two bad starts in a row that happened to come at the beginning of the season.

This you already know: It’s very early. I’m willing to give Pelfrey a few more starts to get the kinks worked out before I call him a head case and suggest he’s the new Oliver Perez.