Well, today was a day the Mets pretended they were 15 games over instead of 15 games under .500.

With the Mets refusal to put Devin Mesoraco and his injured neck on the disabled list, the team called up Tomas Nido from Double-A to serve as a back-up to Kevin Plawecki.

With Jay Bruce having a bobble head day on Saturday and his finally eligible to come off the disabled list, this meant the Mets needed to either demote or DFA two players.

Naturally, the Mets opted to demote Jack Reinheimer despite his having a batting average nearly 80 points higher than Jose Reyes.

The other player was Dominic Smith, who had gone 2-for-6 with a double, homer, and two RBI in the bizarrely limited playing time he had been given during this all too brief call-up.

To make matters worse, the Mets started Bruce in the outfield with Austin Jackson and Jose Bautista.

Remember Jackson and Bautista are Mets because no one else wanted them. The Mets called these 30+ year old impending free agents from their homes because other teams were paying them not to play for them.

Naturally, the Mets decided to play all three of them over Michael Conforto.

To top it off, Jason Vargas started the game instead of Corey Oswalt because we need to find out about the 35 year old left-hander and not the 24 year old prospect.

This is the squad the Mets opted to go with to face off against the Washington Nationals.

That Nationals team they played just traded away Daniel Murphy and Matt Adams as they admitted to themselves their .500 club was not making the postseason.

Basically, this set the stage for a game between two teams playing out the string, and it showed.

In the first, Amed Rosario hit a leadoff single off Gio Gonzalez, and he would steal second. Jeff McNeil pushed him over to third on a groundout to the right side, and Rosario would score on a Wilmer Flores RBI single.

Sadly, that was all the run support Vargas would need as the Nationals really didn’t show up.

Vargas pitched six shutout innings while allowing three hits, walking none, and striking out eight.

In the entire game, the Nationals would have just four hits with no one reaching third.

Seth Lugo pitched two innings, and Robert Gsellman earned his eight save of the season in the Mets 3-0 victory.

Those other two runs came courtesy of a Bruce two run homer. It was his first homer of the year at Citi Field.

Given how the Mets are dedicated to this 30+ year old veteran movement, we should see Bruce gets more chances to add to that home run total.

Overall, it was just astonishing to see how a Mets-Nationals game has zero juice. Both teams are very disappointing, and when they play games like this, it’s completely pointless.

Game Recap: Before the game, Mickey Callaway said Bruce could be the first baseman for the Mets next year. That would require Bruce getting time there next year, which all but eliminates the chances we see Peter Alonso this year or Smith again (at least in terms of his getting extended playing time).