One of the unfortunate tics that accompanies blogging a baseball season is the daily desire to detect patterns, trends and leading indicators of what a given game means. So what does winning a 12-1 romp portend for the 2008 New York Mets?

Damned if I know, damned if I care.

We just kicked the rear end of a Penny so convincingly that an imprint of the Lincoln Memorial should be on the soles of our shoes. We just slipped a mickey into Joe Torre's green tea. We just won 12-1.

What does it mean for the 2008 Mets? It means that for one day, they rule, they totally rule. Clinically speaking, you can't win 12-1 and not rule. You can't win 12-1 and be subject to any serious questioning of your immediate future. Your immediate future belongs to another day. Relax, you just won 12-1. What does it say about the Mets' future? It says the present is perfect. Tonight, live in the present.

Who contributed? Everybody. Everybody contributed. John Maine contributed, coming within two outs of a complete game, falling three baserunners shy of a shutout. Last I checked, pitching 8-1/3 innings and allowing eleven fewer runs than your team scored counts for a win. So he didn't go the distance and he didn't get the shutout. He won. John Maine's the player of the game.

As is every single New York Met who played. Somebody grab a baseball and slice it eleven ways. Hell, cut it into 25 portions. How do we know somebody who didn't pitch or play didn't say something encouraging that made all or some of the difference? It's a good night to hand out benefits of the doubt as well. You've got nothing but players of the game when you win 12-1.

Which we just did. Feels good to know that, if nothing else.

The Church mostly giveth. The Church, as it turns out, occasionally taketh away.

Ryan Church is this team's OVP, its Only Valuable Player. OK, Wright, too, but David is mostly good this season, not stupendous. Nobody's stupendous on the Mets, not David Wright, not Johan Santana, not nobody. But Ryan Church has been as close as it gets.

Yet he's imperfect. Ain't we all, but he can be glaringly if well-meaningly so, no more than on Tuesday night when his imperfections outweighed his wonderfulness just enough to nudge matters in the wrong direction. Church's goodness was embodied by his first-inning home run and can generally be found in his refusal not so much to lose but to let the game get the best of him. At heart, he's one of those cartoon kittens who runs and runs, unaware that some bigger cat is sticking his paw out, thus halting the kitten's forward progress even as his feet keep moving. That's the indefatigable part of Ryan Church with which we've all become smitten. Church strikes me as someone who's figured out New York, who's figured out that the last thing you can look like here is you're not trying. Ryan Church is always trying.

But sometimes he tries a little too hard. Never mind, for now, the fly ball he didn't catch and didn't know was trickling away still in play while Blake DeWitt's total bases counter clicked uncomfortably from 5 to 6. Go back several hours from the bottom of the fifth to the top of the second, the frame when the Mets were positioned to get their laugher on.

Pagan made it to first when Kuroda couldn't handle his bunt. Schneider...well, it doesn't take a genius to recognize Brian Schneider is all-hit, no field (no jukebox has ever contained as many singles as Brian Schneider's bat). Luis Castillo momentarily freed himself from Jace Purgatory — the dark and humid place where players my partner decides he doesn't like are condemned to linger for years — with a rare base hit that scored Angel. Figgy bunted and was Paganically gifted by Kuroda, loading the bases for Reyes who delivered Schneider with a hit single of his own.

What a setup! Nobody out, everybody on, our hottest hitter up, our best player behind him. A three-run lead about to...

...stay at three.

Churchy (as I've been calling him through the TV) so wanted to make New York happy — or perhaps keep New York off his back — that he couldn't resist lunging at ball three. Perhaps he was thinking Kuroda would throw away yet a third ball hit practically right to him, but no. The easiest 1-2-3 double play you'll ever see ensued. Wright, enduring a night at the plate as bad as the night in the field he was enjoying was good, struck out. The tide had inexorably turned. As in that inning when Jair Jurrjens was walking Mets like crazy yet was never knocked out, the other team was about to survive what little fight the Mets had in them.

We've noticed mostly the good in Ryan Church because he's been mostly good. But he is prone to overanxiousness at the worst times. There was a game early in the season (against Atlanta I want to say, though 2008 is rapidly devolving into a blur of missed opportunities) when Ryan couldn't help himself and swung at an offering that was dirtbound. A Met rally went to its premature reward.

Hard to get on Church for stuff like that, even as it lurks beneath the surface of a .314 batting average and an .887 OPS. He has been the human rally by his own self for more than a month. He has been the offense on too many nights. And he doesn't let walls get in the way of his instincts even if his sense of where he and the ball were simultaneously didn't work out in Dodger Stadium. Only a collapse-scarred curmudgeon would note that if we are going to give a few underperforming Mets the benefit of the doubt that they won't be .219 or .216 hitters the whole summer long, it's quite possible that Ryan Church won't be all-world all year.

But while he is, he makes watching the Mets...what's that thing that provides a sensation that isn't painful or disturbing?...a joy.

Did you enjoy tonight's game, Jace?
No, I did not.

Why not?
Where to start? How about because the Mets sucked again and because they took forever to suck this time?

The Dodgers didn't look that great either, though.
No, they didn't. But as Greg likes to note, style points don't matter. They won. Jeff Kent and Joe Torre and Juan Pierre and Hong-Chih Kuo and Brad Penny and Nomar Garciaparra and the whole vaguely disagreeable lot of them.

The Mets took an early lead, did some hitting, showed some daring baserunning. That was good.
Yeah. An early lead that they blew.

But David Wright turned in some nifty plays at third.
He did. He saved Nelson Figueroa's bacon a couple of times. On the other hand, a good first baseman would have speared Blake DeWitt's two-run single in the third. Carlos Delgado is not a good first baseman. Fielding giveth, fielding taketh away.

OK, but you've got to like Nelson's guts and guile. He's pitching his heart out there every time.
Yeah, he's a journeyman with brains and toughness, and every romantic baseball fan is a sucker for those guys -- the Rick Reeds and Brian Bohanons and late-model Frank Tananas of the baseball world. It's a bit of a myth, though -- you think Johan Santana doesn't work his butt off to outthink hitters too? He does, he just has better stuff. Your cliched find-catcher-and-chuck-it guys -- the Nuke LaLooshes of this world -- aren't really all that common. Well, there's Oliver Perez. He sure as hell does get woolly, doesn't he? Sure, I like Figueroa. I also would have liked to see him get past those second outs a little more easily, and last more than five innings. On the other hand, this game took so frigging long, he was in danger of dying of old age out there.

That fatal play wasn't his fault, though. Wasn't that something?
It was something all right. The next time I see a hitter get an inside-the-park home run because the right fielder is sitting on the warning track thinking the ball was a home run of the regulation variety will be the second time. The next time something like that is the difference that beats the Mets? I'll be happy never to see that again.

But c'mon, Ryan Church has been great this year.
Hey, no argument there. You want to know the funny thing? It's that every night I thank God for Church, because he isn't Shawn Green. Nothing against Green as a person, just against him as a right fielder. Remember all those balls last year that would drop five or 10 feet in front of him, because he never seemed to get a good read on balls and his first step was so slow? Ryan Church doesn't do that -- he's got good range, a great arm and fine instincts out there. That said, here's the thing: Didn't Blake DeWitt's drive remind you at least a little of Scott Spiezio's triple off Guillermo Mota, the one that hit Green in the wrist? Ugh. Just ugh. Stupid Guillermo Mota.

But Moises Alou stole home! How cool was that?
Very cool. If we'd won, I'm sure I'd be waxing rhapsodic about it. The title of this post would be something like "Holy Moises!" (Though I bet we've used that before.) But we didn't win.

I don't get you, Jace. Last night you tried to get all misty-eyed and profound about a 5-1 Met loss. Tonight the Mets lose by one run on a freak play and you're lousy company. Why? Because what?
Because we're coming up on the calendar anniversary of the day my team started to play far below its talent, and I'm sick of it. Because I can't see any indication that anybody who makes decisions about my team is as sick of it as I am, and intends to step in and change things before it's too late. Because two years ago this team looked like it couldn't wait to get to the park and play baseball, and now they look like they can't wait to stop. Because this could be their best chance to forge the kind of cohesive team that's a contender year-in and year-out, and that chance is slipping away because those who do lead this team can't and those who could lead this team don't. Because I'm fucking tired, OK? Just plain tired, because it's two in the morning, and tired of dead-ass baseball no matter what time it's played. Is that enough for you? Cause it sure as hell is enough for me.