(New York’s Carlos Beltran helpfully points out that with Citi Field’s new, improved sightlines, it’ll be easier than ever to watch him play in pain).

Trying to account for the Mets’ current skid (“they lost four games in a row by three or fewer runs, three of which were closed out by six-fingered closer Antonio Alfonseca of Philadelphia, as menacing a reliever as Lefty Grove, who is dead.”), the New York Sun’s Tim Marchman has plenty of blame to go around (“Delgado, for instance, has retained the ability to hit 400-foot line drives perfectly squarely; he’s just unable to keep them on the right side of the foul pole. Gomez’s inclination to bunt every other pitch he sees up the first base line, initially charming, has quickly grown irritating. Lo Duca, meanwhile, has yet this month to see a ball six inches off the plate that he doesn’t think he can pull,”), but saves his most harsh critique for the club’s All-Star center fielder.

Since sitting out the first few games of the month with a nasty injury to his left knee, Carlos Beltran has hit a putrid .154 BA/.175 OBA/.231 SLG. This is only part of it. In the field he’s clearly been slowed by the effects of the injury, and with a rotating cast of characters out there and defensive specialist Endy Chavez on the disabled list, the outfield defense, which relies heavily on Beltran, has gone from a strength to a liability. When I think of Beltran in the field, I think of a ball slicing or tailing into one of the gaps, and Beltran elegantly cutting it off from some unexpected angle, snatching it on the run. He hasn’t been doing that much lately.

This shows up in the box scores. In April, the Mets allowed a .266 batting average on balls in play, and in May a .238 average. This was ridiculous and unsustainable, the equivalent of the team hitting .375 or so over the first two months of the season. This month, though, balls in play are going for hits against the Mets at a .317 rate, well below the league average of .296. Of course not all of this is Beltran’s fault, but his hobbled play is probably the biggest single cause. It isn’t just that Beltran is an excellent defensive player when healthy, it’s that he has exceptional lateral range, which allows the players flanking him to shade toward the lines and cut off balls they wouldn’t otherwise reach. Outright bad defenders like Shawn Green and Cliff Floyd have been shockingly adequate, even good, when playing alongside Beltran for this reason. When he’s playing without his normal range, though, balls fall in and the Mets give up crucial runs that they’re not going to make up with their best player looking gimpy at the plate as well as in the field.

The really awful thing about this is that Beltran’s attitude is exemplary. Everyone wants a franchise player to take the field if he’s physically capable, and in his time in New York Beltran has certainly proved that if he’s able to play, he’s going to do so. Still, even as short handed as the Mets are, and given that Beltran insists that he’s fine, it’s hard to see a magnificent player looking like he needs crutches. It’s hurting the team’s play.

Just wondering — and maybe there’s a Pittsburgh fan who can assist with this — if the Pirates are planning on trading Jack Wilson (their highest paid player), isn’t a very public benching/rebuke for his nightmarish game against the Yankees last weekend a rather surefire way to lower his market value?

Though it is tempting to say Jose Castillo has the last laugh in all of this, it might be a bit early for a self published autobiograpy ala Alan Partridge’s “Bouncing Back.”