Pedro Martinez is leaning toward pitching again next season, though it's highly doubtful he will do so with the Mets.

Martinez's four-year, $53 million contract with the Mets expired this season, and the club appears unlikely to invest much in a pitcher one year removed from shoulder surgery who turns 37 next month.

The 2008 Mets will be defined by how they respond to their failure in 2007. The team's principal owner, Fred Wilpon, did not sign off on a projected payroll of more than $140 million, the largest in franchise history, for the Mets not to play deep into October. Anything less than a trip to the World Series would be considered a major disappointment.

Such high expectations stem from the arrival of Johan Santana, the two-time Cy Young award winner acquired in a February trade with Minnesota, who has bolstered a rotation desperate for a bona fide ace and reinvigorated a fan base left disillusioned after the Mets lost a seven-game lead to Philadelphia over the final 17 games of last season to miss the playoffs.

TenuredVulture wrote:I think we need to boycott Citibank. Just because.

Woody wrote:I'm thinking we should make an offer for David Wright(riguez) the moment we're allowed to. What the hell does Minaya care, he's got four years of paychecks coming his way no matter what. And he might just be stupid enough to think Wright is part of the problem.

"We had everything right in front of us and let it go for the second straight year," Jose Reyes said. "Nobody feels good right now, and nobody's going to feel good for a long time."

"This team, it is better than this," said Carlos Beltran, the one member of the Mets' offense who showed up for work yesterday, his sixth-inning home run the lone buffer between what would have been a humiliating final-day shutout. "I believe this is a playoff team

Said Carlos Beltran: "In my heart I believe we could have won the East. I have no doubt. . . . It's disappointing because it happened what happened last year - with the same team."

"It feels like a wasted season," David Wright said after the Mets finished with six losses in their final nine games. "It burns. It's a bad feeling, and this is just the beginning."

Schoeneweis, seemingly destined to be traded despite one season remaining on a three-year, $10.8 million deal, served up the game-deciding homer. He came on to open the eighth with lefty-hitting Mike Jacobs due up. But Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez pinch-hit with righty-swinging Wes Helms. Helms deposited Schoeneweis' third pitch into the bleachers in left. Luis Ayala, who arrived in a trade from the Nationals for Anderson Hernandez in August, gave up a homer to the next batter, Dan Uggla, as the Marlins took a two-run lead.
Asked if this was the worst thing that could happen to a pitcher, Schoeneweis replied: "There's more important things in life sometimes." He then turned to his locker and broke down crying as chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon came to console him. Schoeneweis had been distraught since the premature birth of his fourth child last week.

Afterward, as the Marlins celebrated with a lengthy on-field display that threatened to delay the postgame ceremony, the Shea faithful chanted: "Off our field. Off our field."

So there might be one tangible thing the Mets need to fix: They need to get David Wright … well, right. They need to help him work through his apparent anxiety in high-pressure situations. Big-picture: The Mets didn't make the playoffs because of their bullpen failures, as Jack Curry writes, but over the weekend, they mustered a total of five runs, and Wright had a whole lot to do with that. He cares so deeply that he puts enormous pressure on himself, and this trait seems to wreck him in big spots. He seems to leap at the ball when he's trying to hit with the game on the line. They need to address this.

I don't know how they do it. Maybe they get Wright to start talking to a sports psychologist, someone who might get the kind of help that has aided John Smoltz and Matt Garza and others. Wright is a cornerstone player who will be an MVP candidate in most years of his career, so the notion of trading him is silly. But they have to help him find a way to relax -- and if the team's best player relaxes, this will, in turn, take pressure off the rest of the team.

Warszawa wrote:

Afterward, as the Marlins celebrated with a lengthy on-field display that threatened to delay the postgame ceremony, the Shea faithful chanted: "Off our field. Off our field."

The bullpen failed in the late innings ... again. The heart of the lineup failed to come up with a big hit ... again. David Wright was 0-for-4 in this one. So was Ryan Church. Carlos Delgado came to the plate in the eighth inning with two runners on and a chance to force that one-game playoff, but he could only manage a long fly ball to the warning track.

"We had the talent to dominate the division," Delgado said. "We were a playoff-caliber ballclub that didn't get it done."

The Mets have good players -- that much is true -- but they are not a good team. Good teams find a way to scratch home runs in the clutch. Good teams find a way to protect a lead in the late innings.

But for all the dignity and grace Manuel showed in a hostile public arena, he has to take a hit for Sunday's ghastly demise. Manuel has to be held accountable for putting the season in the palm of a pitcher who had no right touching the ball in a win-or-else game.

Aaron Heilman, Scott Schoeneweis and Luis Castillo were the three Mets who absolutely, positively could not step on the field against the Florida Marlins, and Manuel kept two of them out of play. But the manager gambled that Schoeneweis could get a ground ball off Wes Helms' bat in the eighth inning, only to watch Helms do precisely what 99.99 percent of the final Shea Stadium crowd feared he might.

The ball traveled so high and so far, even Endy Chavez couldn't catch it. For the second straight year, a band of unworthy, low-budget antagonists spent the 162nd game sending a Mets' season tumbling end-over-Endy.