Nice outing, Mike

Getting a full season from Johan Santana is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the Mets to win the NL East. We need at least one guy behind him who's "good" and no more than one guy behind him who's "awful" (Livan Hernandez being the leading candidate for that role).

Mike Pelfrey is supposed to be good. He's our #2, followed by Maine, Perez, and Livan. So when I see that he's given up 8 earned in 4 innings against the Orioles, raising his spring ERA to a nifty 7.71, I'm not inclined to shrug it off. And Baltimore's best hitters weren't even in the lineup. This is the lineup that put a snowman on our No. 2 (respectable major league hitters in bold):

Andino

Turner

Salazar, O.

Scott

Zaun

Moore

Cabrera, J.

Christian

Moeller

Let's just hope Ollie and Maine keep up their end of the bargain.

What Digby said

I'd been getting a little sketched out by Digby recently, owing largely to the fact that her estimation of the injustice done to Hillary Clinton in the primaries was much greater than my own.

But when the need arises to kick The Politico in the teeth, which is often, and one of the highest callings a blogger can answer, she does excellent work.

UPDATE:
While the "What Digby said" concept is of course a registered trademark of the Baby Blue Cherub, I actually beat him to the approving link by 13 minutes, and didn't just steal his post wholesale and flesh it out a little. Apparently everybody and their mother (at least those mothers who are aware of the internet) linked to that Digby post. Got memeorandum on lock.