Down Lowe-r Than Eddy Curry

We haven't devoted a ton of blink (blog-ink, go with it!) this offseason to the Mets' now-failed pursuit of Derek Lowe. I can't say I was there a month or two ago screaming out that Omar had to make the move.

Now that the opportunity has come and gone, however, I find myself decidedly disappointed. There's something about Derek Lowe that would have lent a ton of credibility to this team. A groundball pitcher, a veteran guy, a number 2 pitcher, a playoff performer -- all of the pieces fit.

Nothing's given in baseball, but a rotation with Johan and Lowe sure would have felt like it had two really good things going for it.

That dream is dead. Now consider our reality.

The rotation now has one extremely good thing going for it, Johan, and then nothing but uncertainty afterward.

Mets brass is heaping an awful lot of responsibility on the shoulders of Mike Pelfrey, he who got shelled early, looked dominant in the middle, and tired at the end. Even if you give the Pelf Man the benefit of the doubt and pencil him in as guy who can win 15 games in a full season, I think I've read about 20 really persuasive articles about why Pelfrey's arm might fall off next year.

Then there's John "20-Game Winner, Dude, It's Gonna Happen" Maine, who looked bad virtually every time out last year before breaking down at the end. I'm a huge John Maine fan, but we can't go into 2009 with the same inflated expectations we had coming into 2008.

Tim Redding is actually a move I support quite a bit. For years it's baffled me why the Mets have refused to sign credible back of the rotation guys for short years and fewer dollars. But let's not kid ourselves, Redding is a complementary piece, a back of the rotation guy that you hope to get 10 wins out of, 12 tops.

Which brings us to our options for the No. 2 spot in the rotation, and our old friend, Oliver Perez.

When I think about it, All-or-Nothing Ollie has epitomized the Mets of the past two seasons. Equally capable of looking dominant or awful, seemingly insistent upon playing up or down to their competition, basically inconsistent as all hell, that was Oliver Perez the past two years, and so too was it the Mets.

But now Perez is our only option. We've been backed into a corner where we need to sign him. We've been backed into a corner where our best hope for a rotation upgrade is, sigh, Tim Redding.

Kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth, doesn't it?

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Quick side note: An amazing thing about this deal is the Mets went head to head with the Braves for a marquee free agent, the Mets lost, and the fact that the Braves got better hardly registers. Man has that rivalry changed.

- A.F.O.M.G.