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Not good. And I might be doing a disservice to Agbayani by even drawing the comparison. As brutal as Benny could be in the outfield, I can't remember a single instance of him falling down on the job. With these Mets, it happens all the time. It's bizarre. I've never seen a collection of professional athletes that has so much trouble staying upright, and that includes hockey players, who play on ice.

Usually when the Mets are in the midst of a streak, I play contrarian. When the team is winning, I look for the dark side. When they're losing -- like they have been -- I find reason for optimism.

In this column, that won't be the case. It's impossible to call the glass half-full when the glass is nearly empty. To many, the solution seems simple: Add a bat and wait for the reinforcements to return from the disabled list. But at this point, can we really be certain that any of Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado and Beltran will return anytime soon? And even if the Mets' medical staff said definitively that one of them would be back in two weeks, would anyone believe it?

And what bat, exactly, is going to make the difference for these Mets until those guys get back? I love Adam Dunn as much as the next guy, but his home runs won't mean much if no one is ever on base in front of him.

Also, what do the Mets have to give up for the elusive single bat that will launch them to contention? Josh Thole? Jenrry Mejia? Fernando Martinez? They're all hurt, too. That can't help their stock.

So maybe instead of rumormongering we can play the blame game. Many have suggested that the Mets on the field don't want to win, but that's not the case. I guarantee that every last guy the Mets are trotting out wants desperately to win. We've been through this countless times: You don't make it to the Major Leagues without an unbelievable will to succeed.

It's not a lack of desire; it's a lack of talent. As I told Mike Rudner on the NYMetscast on Sunday, I'm sure Argenis Reyes wants very badly to get a hit when he's called on to pinch-hit against CC Sabathia. It's not his fault he is overmatched.

People are eager to pin the trouble on Omar Minaya, and maybe that's a good thing even if it's not entirely fair. If Minaya got a pass too frequently for prior indiscretions, perhaps, due to some sort of karmic balancing of the scales, he will take some blame now for an absurd run of bad luck.

That's what all the concurrent injuries are, of course. If Minaya deserved criticism this offseason for building a top-heavy team, he now gets to admire a team divorced from its heavy top. And lo, it is not good. But as many have pointed out, if you pull three of the four best hitters out of any team's lineup, that team is in trouble. Maybe not this much trouble, but trouble nonetheless.

Of course, Minaya is not doing himself any favors by giving Oliver Perez a start on Wednesday after a five-inning, three-run, four-walk rehab effort in Triple-A Buffalo last week. Not when the Mets need all the wins they can get and Jonathon Niese is pitching exceptionally well.

It's immaterial now because Niese threw a 126-pitch (!) shutout on Sunday night and continued to look as if he no longer has much business pitching at the Triple-A level for a club with needs in the rotation. In his last six starts, Niese has a 1.04 ERA with 39 strikeouts and 10 walks in 43 1/3 innings.

If the Mets are still interested in winning as many games as they possibly can this year, Niese should have gotten the call instead of Perez for Wednesday's game. Granted, Perez might go out and throw seven scoreless innings, walking five and whiffing 10 and shutting me up, because for Ollie, more than most, recent outcomes can't really be used to predict anything. So maybe the Mets are holding out hope that the Good Ollie miraculously arrives in Citi Field and quiets the skeptics.

But if Perez is getting the start because he's signed to a three-year deal and team is looking to get him right for the future, then, well, great. But if they're conceding wins now in the name of future success, they might as well go for it.

That means giving Niese another shot at the rotation and committing regular playing time to young players like Daniel Murphy, Nick Evans and Martinez if he returns to health. I am not certain that any of them will play a huge role for the Mets in 2010 or beyond, but it would behoove the team to find out. This is, after all, the same team that has been way too eager to make (or not make) roster moves based on tiny sample sizes in the recent past. Is it too much to ask that the Mets learn from those mistakes and try to adequately evaluate players on the Major League level before granting them starting roles or trading them away?

Because frankly, it's not like the Mets would be choosing to kick the tires on the young guys instead of winning games. Right now, they're not doing a very good job of either. It can't hurt them too much to try the unproven over those proven lousy.