Posted by Bill Baer on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 7:26 pm

I promise this will be the last article in which I berate the Mets… at least until the regular season starts. Actually, I can’t promise that — not if their players continue running their mouths. Full disclosure, if it wasn’t obvious enough: I’m a Phillies fan. So there’s probably a bit of a bias here but I try my best to remain objective. I think I’d say the same things if it was the Athletics yapping to the Angels, for instance.

Last Saturday, I ripped into Francisco Rodriguez for using the phrase “the team to beat” for the third straight year in a row (Jimmy Rollins and Carlos Beltran used it in ‘07 and ‘08, respectively). Massive point loss for unoriginality. The Mets weren’t done, though.

Per Scott Lauber:

Oh, and about Cole Hamels calling the Mets “choke artists” back in December, Beltran said, “The only thing I know is that he will be watched every time he faces us. Hopefully, we kill him, and then he’ll have to deal with the situation.”

Obviously, Carlos Beltran used “kill” metaphorically. That’s fine to want to score 15 runs off of your rival’s best starting pitcher, but why are the Mets spending so much time worrying about the Phillies? Further, what wasn’t factual about Hamels calling the Mets “choke artists”? The Mets exemplified exactly what the colloquialism means during the past two Septembers.

The Mets still aren’t done talking. Here’s Jose Reyes:

“We don’t worry about Philly. I don’t know why they worry so much about the New York Mets. They can talk about whatever they want to, because we worry about us. They are the one to win the World Series, not us, and we don’t say nothing about them. We just say congratulations to the Phillies. We focus on them when we play them, but they always seem like they’re talking something about us, and I don’t know why.

“We worry about the New York Mets, not other teams. They have to be happy because they won the World Series — why do they focus on us? What did I do to them? If we win the World Series, everybody is going to be happy and not worry about other teams.”

The first sentence right off the bat is a flat-out lie. If the Mets didn’t worry about the Phillies…

• They wouldn’t have choked in each of the last two Septembers.
• They wouldn’t plagiarize Jimmy Rollins’ “team to beat” phrase two years running.
• They wouldn’t care if Cole Hamels called them “choke artists.”

There have only been two instances in which the Phillies have blatantly mocked the Mets: Hamels’ comments about the Mets choking, and Shane Victorino and Jayson Werth rounding the bases with their index finger pointed in the air, mocking Reyes. Of course, “worrying” about the Mets didn’t affect their play in the least bit.

Reyes goes on to say, “We don’t say nothing about them.” Which might seem true if you live under a rock.

The rest of his diatribe is a rehashing of “them, not us” denial that seems awfully persistent for a team that “don’t worry.”

It’s official: the New York Mets have a Napoleon complex. In a span of a week, we have a hodge-podge of cognitive dissonance — bleating from the New York blue and orange that is comically weak.

I’m all for a rivalry, but know your place. The claims — usually made by junior high students — are akin to chest-puffing, or a guy buying a big house, a fancy car, and an expensive watch to make up for some… uh… certain shortcomings. The Mets are bordering on pitiful and, if they blow it for a third straight season, risk becoming squelched and irrelevant — hard to do in that media market.

The Mets had better go out there in ‘09 and put up a heck of a season. If not, they will ruin it for the rest of the rivalries that are actually done right. Trash talking is a great part of a rivalry. Someone should teach the Mets how to do it.