Between Maine And Perez

Tim Marchman at The New York Sun writes about John Maine and Oliver Perez and how they both deserve a playoff spot:

In the end, this really looks like a choice between Perez and Maine, whatever the merits of the cases. Martinez and Glavine are simply going to start; whatever you might say about where Glavine really is in the pecking order, baseball respects age. El Duque is only slightly less a lock, assuming he's healthy; his bullpen experience will be canceled out by his October pedigree and his consistency this year. And this means that Perez and Maine, both of whom were just brilliant in last year's playoffs, will be competing for a rotation spot down the stretch. The math just won't work any other way, unless someone gets hurt or one of the veterans quietly tells management to do the right thing, seniority be damned.

Is this right? Probably not. Perez and Maine have earned the right to start in the playoffs, by how good they've been this year and how good they were last October, when the Mets turned to them in desperation and were rewarded with the sight of two players they'd picked up off the scrap heap blossoming into quasi-aces. But this is Mets baseball, and it wouldn't be if something bad or obviously wrong weren't happening. The bright side? They usually find their way right in the end. The suffering just comes along the way.