In the past ten games, dating back to the finale in Miami on August 3, the five Mets starting pitchers have thrown 63 innings and given up 21 earned runs. That's an ERA of exactly 3.00.

That's not bad. That's not bad at all.

I guess we can now officially slide our floating anxiety anvil from above the rotation to above the corner outfielders because the starting pitching has quietly but definitely come around.

Each pitcher has taken two starts since August 3. These are the results.

Pedro Martinez: 13-1/3 IP, 3 ER
Orlando Hernandez: 13 IP, 6 ER
Tom Glavine: 13 IP, 5 ER
John Maine: 11-2/3 IP, 4 ER
Steve Trachsel: 12-1/3 IP, 3 ER

Not eye-poppin', Doc '85 numbers, but not eye-gougin', '06 Lima lines either. Every start in the last ten has given the Mets a genuine chance to win. The three club losses in this span are attributable at least in part to the other guy (Dontrelle Willis, Billy Traber) pitching just a little better twice and our pen pitching a damn sight worse than the other team's once.

We haven't been hitting a whole lot, which is of some nagging concern, but remember that we were getting antsy because our offense was making up for our pitching so often early in the year. Well, guess what — the reverse works sometimes, too. In Steve Trachsel's turns, it works to ridiculous extremes.

After being fed a mountain of runs start in and start out, he marched parched through the D.C. desert today. I'm not kidding about the parched — he wasn't allowed to haul his beloved case of vino with him on the team plane...a rather unjockly carry-on item that is presumably yet another reason we all love Steve Trachsel as we do. But he didn't let down. The Nationals may be a wine cellar-dweller, but do you feel gently buzzed or horribly hung over when the opposing lineup features the likes of Soriano, Johnson and Zimmerman? Stevie Shoelaces is certainly capable of pouring runs by the bottle for anyone, but he didn't for the second start in a row. He kept the Mets in the game long enough to allow the Nationals to take themselves out of it. And they did.

Good starting pitching today and the last ten days. Good, not great. Maybe we'll get enough great to make up for whatever bad is bound to come. But more than at any point this year, even when Alay Soler had me goin', I'm confident about whoever takes the mound on any given date.

As for the outfield corners, tie yourself up in knots at your own discretion. I'm not worried there either. I know it's quickly become de rigueur to fret the cast of Milledge, Chavez, Tucker and Ledee and the TBD availability of Floyd. I also know that there is a strain of Mets fans (otherwise known as "the majority") that isn't happy unless they believe there's a segment of the big picture that's dangerously out of focus. The pen is falling! The mound is falling! Left field is falling!

Poppycock! Or pish-posh! Take your pick, they're both delicious.

Yes, it would be sweet to turn back the clock two weeks and whisper in Duaner Sanchez's ear, "you're sleepy...you're very sleepy...you don't want to go find Dominican food at two in the morning." Then we'd still have Xavier Nady and Xavier Nady would be competent if not spectacular (in itself a crime in some Mets minds during his truncated tenure) and we'd have to stay up nights worrying about Delgado's slump and, perhaps, searching for our own Dominican food given that we're staying up that late. As is, Nady's not here, man. The guys who are, or maybe the guys who will be, will do the job because on the 2006 Mets, somebody usually does.

Can I prove that statement? Not exactly. Speculation is inadmissible as evidence if I remember my L.A. Law, but I can present for the court, your honor, today's Exhibit A, Michael Tucker.

Admit it, Mets fans. You've still got some of that 2004 in you even though we have now won exactly as many games in 2006 as we did during the entirety of two years ago. Maybe you are also unknowingly trudging around the darker portions of 2005, to say nothing of all of 2003 — and any number of the many unsuccessful seasons you've lived through — in your souls. It's OK, I do, too. Those years are hard to shake, but for your own good, at least try to shove them to way in the back, back where you keep your vaguely simmering dismay over George Bamberger or Wes Westrum.

When the Mets brought up Tucker, I don't know how many snarky references to Gerald Ice Williams I read and heard. "Oh no, Tucker! He's Williams! Why do they always do this to us? It sucks to be a Mets fan!" Or words to that effect.

Have you seen Michael Tucker since he came up? He's not Gerald Ice Williams. I don't remember Gerald Ice Williams throwing out a runner like Tucker did Thursday. He might have, but it doesn't stand out, know what I mean? I didn't see Gerald Ice Williams pile on some insurance runs as Tucker did that same day. And I sure as hell know when Gerald Ice Williams was double-switched into games the way Michael Tucker was at RFK Sunday, Gerald Ice Williams didn't wallop the tiebreaking and decisive homer late.

I know it's more fun, on some perverse level, to wallow in woe-is-Mets rooting; there nothing like claiming "I'm a long-suffering Mets fan!" for defeat cred. But that time has passed. If Michael Tucker were a 2003, 2004, even 2005 Met, it likely would have been dispiriting. Michael Tucker as a 2006 Met is at worst an experiment that won't come to fruition and at best a revelation. So far, it's the latter. This is what happens on good teams. It's the difference between depending on Michael Tucker and taking a flyer on Michael Tucker. On the 2006 Mets, Michael Tucker sits way down the depth chart. You get something out of him as you have twice in four games, then life is good. You don't? You find somebody else.

Who? I dunno, but he's out there and Omar knows where to find him. Put another way, who made more brilliant, game-saving plays at second today: you or Jose Valentin?

As for Michael Tucker's lousy, illegal slide into the person of Mike Piazza at Turner Field on July 5, 1998, that was more than eight years ago. He's on our side now. That pardons most crimes. If we were able to forgive Jay Payton for being stupid in Atlanta, we can dislodge the Scarlet A from Michael Tucker's cap if he's going to function effectively with an NY up there. Should he barrel home the same way as a Met that he once did as a Brave, we'll call him exceedingly competitive and exchange high-fives.

Shoot, if Angel Hernandez could catch day games after night games and get a hit or two in the process for us, he'd be dispensated so fast it would make Frank Robinson's head spin. And his doesn't appear to be a particularly spinnable head.

Friday night, the whole division gained ground on the Mets. Saturday night, the Mets snatched that ground right back from under them. With a New York win over Washington and losses by Philadelphia, Florida and Atlanta, the Mets' magic number was reduced to increasingly inevitable.

John Maine's pet gopher, out to lunch since his doubleheader start against the Marlins more than a month ago, came back to nibble on him a bit. I wish it hadn't. And I wish we could have scored a couple more TDs from the red zone...I mean runners from third (damn football). But those are not problems.

Problems are Iraq when it refuses to receive the memo that things are getting better all the time; Israel and Lebanon in the heat of a ceasefire; anybody who was just getting comfortable with the notion of flying again; anybody whose car runs on petrol.

There are problems in this world. As has become custom during baseball season, I focus on the limited-perspective quandaries I'm under the illusion of having some control over, like begging Delgado to hit to left or urging Willie to bring in Bradford already yet. My impact on these situations is every bit as negligible as anything I could do about peace in the Middle East, but it sure is more fun worrying about the Mets.

Alas, every now and then I force myself at twenty minutes before or after the hour to turn to WINS instead of WFAN and I am reminded that our 14-game lead isn't saving a single life or foiling a single terrorist plot or dropping the price of gas nine-tenths of a single cent. Then it's back down the dial to the FAN to join Joe Benigno in stressing about who our third starter will be in the NLDS.

Am I disturbingly shallow in my information-gathering priorities or par for the course? If history is any guide, I'm merely one of a long line of Mets fans for whom the back page trumps the front page as often as the severity of bad news will allow.

The following passage is from Jerry Mitchell's The Amazing Mets, a seminal team history first published in 1964. It pretty much explains that when the world teeters on the edge of extinction, we are the one group that can be counted on to keep its concerns on an even keel.

It was the morning of October 23, 1962. President John F. Kennedy had the night before declared an embargo on Cuba, taking a step which could have meant the beginning of thermonuclear war. There was a sense of crisis all over the United States and all over the world.

In the quiet little village of Cooperstown, N.Y., far from the centers of anxiety but feeling the impact nevertheless, Lee Allen, historian of the Baseball Hall of Fame, sat at his desk. He was thinking that if the Russians picked up the challenge it might very well mean the end of life as we know it. Brooding over the future, Lee attacked his mail. He turned over a postcard from New York's Bronx, and read:

"Dear Sir:
What was the record of the New York Mets this year on Thursdays? I would appreciate a game-by-game total. Thank you."

The preposterous postcard pulled him right out of his depression. He suddenly realized that, to the Met fan anyway, crises were commonplace. Somehow the card made him feel a lot better.

"My first impulse was to toss it into the wastebasket," related Allen. "But it occurred to me that the writer must have had a purpose in asking the question, as unusual a one as I ever received. I checked the records and found that the work of the Mets on Thursdays showed no victories and 15 defeats."

After replying to the fan, Allen forwarded the postcard to the Mets with the observation, "With the world on the verge of ruin, I thought you might be interested in what the Mets' fans are worried about."

The Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved. And the Mets improved to 6-12 on Thursdays in 1963.

We're 10-5 on that day this year...in case you were wondering.

I was.