BEAT ME IN ST. LOUIS

I hope the Mets' plane makes it to St. Louis today. Oh, you mean they were there last night? Could have fooled me.

Kyle Lohse, who admittedly has received some Dave Duncan magic, but still, is not the second coming of Bob Gibson, stymied the so-called Mets on five hits over seven innings, and the Cardinals scored on the seemingly absent New Yorkers in each of the first five innings for a 7-1 drubbing. If it wasn't for Rick Ankiel throwing one of his trademarked wild pitches (and heaven knows, the Mets have seen that before), the Mets would have been shut out completely, and had very little to prove their presence at Busch Stadium.

John Maine had an Oliver Perez-like outing, with bad command and bad location, which meshed well with the Mets bad defense. David Wright needs to surrender his Gold Glove to authorities immediately. He caused one of the runs in the 4th by making a ridiculously conceived throw to first on an Aaron Miles grounder that even a post-knee-surgery Tiger Woods could have beaten out. The throw sailed into foul territory behind the bag, where $6 million man Luis Castillo was not backing up, allowing Miles to go to second. Phat Albert Pujols immediately bounced a single up the middle to score Miles to make it 5-0 and end any serious hopes of a Met victory. Prior to that, in the 2nd, The $6MMan, as I like to call him, let an easy two hopper by Skip Schumaker go right through his $6 million legs to allow Yadier Molina to score from second with the third Cardinal run.

The loss put us three back in the loss column behind the Phillies. We're still one behind them in games played, and will be up through the All-Star break. All the good teams are in the NL Central this year, which leaves the East and West up for grabs. If anybody can put together a 2007 Rockies-like streak at any point, the division will be theirs. I'd settle for a two-game winning streak at this point.