Oliver Perez threw a bullpen session at Citi Field on Wednesday afternoon. The $36 million man needs at least one more minor league rehab start, but they're already talking about the chance that he'd return to the Mets as a reliever. On Wednesday night, that became more of a notion.
Fernando Nieve sparkled for the third straight start, and the waiver wire pickup shouldn't just be cast over the side of the boat because Perez is making an obscene amount of money. So little has gone right for the Mets this season, that they can't afford to just turn up their noses at anything that's working.
Not in this brave new era of Mets baseball when their hopes and dreams reside in the bats and gloves of men like Alex Cora and Nick Evans. Not when Tim Redding and Pedro Feliciano are as integral to your hopes as David Wright and Johan Santana. Not when your chances of staying the course are reliant on an all hands on deck approach that no one thinks can possibly work.
Perhaps the conventional wisdom is wrong, though. It helps that the Phillies are playing like winning is an incurable disease that causes hair to grow out of your ears and nostrils at a fantastic rate, but the Mets deserve a lot of credit for the way they've shown up for this series with the Cardinals. For a team that looked beaten on Monday, even before Carlos Beltran went on the DL, the Mets have done a remarkable job of bouncing back to life.
Three games is obviously a small sample size, and things could look very different in a week. The Mets are selling optimism these days, though, and 11-0 wins find buyers.
