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Nice chart action, Edgy. Puts the whole weird season into an interesting perspective. Typo at the very top on the date of Game No. 1, says the otherwise off-duty editor type.

Your case out compells mine and I concede. I was at both games, and while it's always a plus to hear BTO follow BW, you have reminded me that it was pretty darn exciting to see a tie score on the board when Wagner left the mound after his second scoreless and brilliant inning. Perhaps a poll is in order to determine our POTY's BD. One assumes he had several qualifiers.

Edgy DC wrote: A thoroughly dominating performance facing nothing but righthanded hitters up there... Very good choice. I bump my Billy Best Day to Billy Second Best Day (or Billy Best Day With a Stat to Show For It).

Dave Williams made some small but significant contributions to the 2006 division title drive. His absence, necessitated by injury, may have been one of the hidden factors that prevented a repeat for the Mets in 2007. He appeared in two games. Neither of them was remotely good for Dave or the Mets. But let's give him his only start of the season, July 8, a mostly moribund affair in Houston, lost to the Astros 8-3. It was nice that he had a chance after being forgotten. And he did pitch a scoreless inning, the third. Unfortunately, the first and second weren't scoreless and he didn't make it out of the fourth. Sorry Dave. But there's a very unsorry Dave ahead. Can you pinpoint the Best Day for the Best Dave and the best Met of 2007, our Schaefer Player of the Year, the authority-embracing (or -defying) David Wright?

The fort had only recently been secured when Billy Wagner held it expertly. The Mets grabbed a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the eighth against the Reds on July 14 when Billy was brought into save what had been an excellent night of pitching from Tom Glavine, hitting from Lastings Milledge and being from Ralph Kiner. With no margin for error and no way the Mets could afford to lose this kind of low-scoring game (havng lost too many of them in June), Billy went to work: Strikes out David Ross; grounds out Jeff Keppinger; pops out Ryan Freel. A 1-2-3 ninth to truly preserve a 2-1 lead. It's Billy's 19th save of the year and his Best Day. Not nearly as much to choose from where Dave Williams is concerned...

A Red Sox championship would certainly spite the MFY crowd, just another Red Sox ring on the back of those pathetic/obnoxious "got rings?" shirts would make the obnoxious that much more pathetic. But have to go with National League pride and potential history in the making for the 7-0, 21-1 Colorado Rockies. It's time to get off TBS and meet America.

Back when the world was young, when the Rockies were nobody in particular and the Mets were THE METS, Jose Valentin had his Best Day: April 23. Following a Moises Alou walk and a Shawn Green single, Jose Valentin walloped a three-run homer to right off Taylor Buccholz, putting the Mets up 3-0 and powering John Maine to an eventual 6-1 victory. Valentin, who added a fourth RBI on a fourth-inning sac fly, refreshed not terribly dorman memories of the previous September 18 when his two dingers and three ribbies clinched the most recent Eastern Division title. We 32,154 on hand thought it was a continuous ride. Jason Vargas would like to hear all about his Best Day...

For as many Best Days yielded by the Mets-Marlins series of the penultimate weekend, it's hard to believe the Mets didn't march to ultimate victory thereafter. But anyway, Aaron Sele's Best Day had to be Sunday, September 23 when, stripped of all other choices, Willie Randolph inserted the forgotten (and deservedly so) long man to attempt to preserve a one-run lead in the eleventh inning of yet another must game for the desperate New Yorkers. Sele needed one pitch to retire the lethal Hanley Ramirez on grounder to short and two more to get Dan Uggla on a fly ball to center (nice but not impossible catch by Endy Chavez). Sele's save opportunity was cut short when Willie went to the equally improbable Scott Scheoeneweis for a lefty-lefty matchup to retire Jeremy Hermidia and escape Miami with a three-game winning streak...the most tepid three-game winning streak a clingy first-place team had ever managed, but it counted. The Mets led the Phillies by 2-1/2 back with seven games versus sub-.500 competition to go. Somebody find Joe Smith's Best Day, OK?

="Edgy DC"]Another plausible position is that, with Torre twisiting in the wind, the Yankee players were defying authority, supporting him in the face of the only remaining authority that mattered, the one that wrote their checks and pimped them out. And that Wright stood with them. David Wright enjoys intermediate authority figures.

Ollie Perez shares his Best Day with Ramon Castro, the man he threw to on September 22: eight very solid innings (six hits, one earned run, eight strikeouts, zero walks) in a must situation, leading his team to a 7-2 win. It was all the must-ier given the Mets' recent use and abuse of their bullpen (not that the pen didn't abuse them right back). Jose Reyes played 160 games in 2007. Which day among them was his best?

She will no doubt be as effusive in her emotions when Donnie (or whoever) is named manager. And just as defensive about her unprofessional reaction.

Good lord, this Torre thing has gone on longer than his entire managerial tenure.

"It was good to see the players rally behind the manager." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRc4Coj5zz8 Not a state of the union speech, just a quickie interview.

Bingo. Tells them what they want to hear describes it very well.

On Saturday May 12 against the Brewers at Shea, pinch-hitter David Newhan launched an absolute bomb in a losing cause, though when it was struck in the fifth, it pulled the Mets to within 4-3. For just a few minutes, David Newhan seemed like a viable option off the bench for the rest of 2007. At the risk of being presumptuous, Chan Ho Park pitched once, pitched badly and was gone, so let's chalk up his best, worst and only day as April 30 against the Marlins and move on to Mike Pelfrey.

On August 3 at Wrigley Field, Guillermo Mota pitched a scoreless eighth, preserving a 2-2 tie. The Mets scored four in the ninth giving him his first win of the season. The less said about him in the context of "best" anything, the better. Anybody got cream for Carlos Muniz's coffee?

Wrapped up in USF-Rutgers last night, I didn't take more than passing notice of David Wright's presence on the RU sideline (only my alma mater's fleeting No. 2 ranking could obscure such an otherwise welcome offseason sight). He was standing with Michael Strahan and was eventually interviewed by ESPN's Erin Andrews. Of course the second question (after Wright said he loves Rutgers when Virginia Tech isn't playing) was about Torre, and Wright gave an answer that indicates how much he cherishes authority: that it's great that the Yankee players spoke up for Joe, just like it's great we spoke up for Willie or wanted him back or something. I know his dad is in law-enforcement and David's a good kid and all, but there was something chilling about his kneejerk invocation of sticking up for familiar authority figures that was slightly chilling. It could also be read as loyalty, but quite frankly I don't care what David Wright thinks about Joe Torre. He should have said "Erin, I'm a Met, y'know? We got our own problems." He'll never say that.

For someone whose active contributions to the Mets season totaled only five days, Pedro Martinez has plenty from which to choose. His return on September 3 in Cincinnati was memorable. His final turn on September 27 against St. Louis (7 IP) was baseball-heroic. But it was his homecoming to Shea against the Astros on September 9 that deserves to go down as Pedro Martinez's best day of 2007. It wasn't just for the five shutout innings that led to a neat 4-1 win. It wasn't just for the way Pedro left the bases loaded in the fifth and stranded nine Houston runners. It wasn't even for the leadoff double he lined in the third. It was for his being Pedro Martinez at Shea Stadium. The electricity between the crowd and the pitcher was palpable, and the results proved it was not misplaced. We gave him a curtain call for five innings of work. We could have given him one after every pitch and it would have felt right. Good to have Pedro back. Lastings Milledge, anyone?

As was the case on October 18, 2006, John Maine pitched the second-to-last game of the Mets' season and came up huge. In 2007, the date was September 29, the situation just as dire as it was in Game Six of the previous year's NLCS: Win or forget about it. John Maine won: 7-2/3 innings of 14-strikeout, NO-HIT BALL against the Florida Marlins, with the Mets' first brawl in eleven years and potential elimination as backdrops. Throwing high, hard strikes all day, Maine kept those of us fortunate enough to be at Shea on the edge of our seats by flirting with history and embracing excellence. It would take a swinging bunt that trickled maybe 40 feet off the bat of somebody named Paul Hoover to wreck the "A" story, but not unimportantly, Maine led the Mets to a scintillating 13-0 victory. Paired with a Phillies loss to the Nats, the Mets moved back into a first-place tie. As was the case directly after October 18, 2006, the Mets wouldn't win another game. But boy did Maine do his part to keep the end at bay. From John Maine's best day, we now seek Pedro Martinez's...

Brian Lawrence put in one very representative start, on August 10 versus the Marlins at Shea: 6 innings pitched, 2 runs allowed. He left as the pitcher of record on the winning side, 3-2. Billy Wagner recorded only his second blown save of the season in the ninth to take the win away from Lawrence, who would have moved his record to 2-0. Ricky Ledee is being called out of retirement...

Philip Humber made his first Major League start on September 26 against the Washington Natonals at Shea in the heat of a pennant race. For three innings, it was an affair to remember, as the Mets raced to a 5-0 lead and Humber showed the stuff that made him a first-round draft pick three years earlier. Unfortunately, all that sitting around and waiting to make his first Major League start began to show in the fourth as Philip gave up a two-run dinger to Ryan Church. In the fifth, a walk, a single and a double drove Humber from his first Major League start. He still held the lead, but Joe Smith and Pedro Feliciano would relinquish it in short order as the Mets would bow to the Nationals 9-6 at the worst possible juncture of the season. But for three innings, it was quite a day. Somebody want one at least as good for Ben Johnson?

Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez was El Magnifico on June 23 at Shea against the Oakland Athletics: seven shutout innings, six hits, one walk, seven strikeouts. It was the elan that separated this outing from several other good Duque deeds in 2007, particularly the way he wriggled out of trouble again and again (119 pitches) with the entirety of the arsenal. Eric Chavez, for example, went down on Duque's storied Bugs Bunny fastball. It's still heading for the plate. The Mets won in the bottom of the ninth when David Wright placed a double just beyond the reach of rightfielder Travis Buck to score Ramon Castro from second. He's also still heading for the plate. What's that, Philip Humber? You have a best day, too? We'll see if we can't find it for you.

You read it here first.

Shawn Green's greatest day left him out of the picture altogether: http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/ The most iconic of Welcome Home Walkoff Homer Committee meetings in 2007 was called by Shawn on Monday night, June 25 when Greenie ended a pitchers' duel that was begun by Jorge Sosa and Mike Maroth and endured until the bottom of the eleventh when Shawn reached back several years into his career and reached the scoreboard off Russ Springer. Mets win 2-1 on all of three hits. Shawn came up short as a rule in '07, but not that night. Not that night at all. Warming up in the bullpen, Aaron Heilman...

Carlos Gomez chose an ideal venue for his Best Day of 2007: The 1970s municipal parking garage known as renovated Yankee Stadium where he went 2-for-3, scored a run and made an Endy Jr. catch to rob Miguel Cairo of a potential home run and then doubled Hideki Matsui off second. Of the many things that went wrong in 2007, CarGo's injury was one of the overlooked ones. He has the tools, he'll know how to use them. I hear Ruben Gotay has a day all his own coming up...