Weekend Buzz: Mets hope Figueroa provides emotional lift in rotation

The Weekend Buzz while you're shining your car lights toward the local multiplex to check out Martin Scorcese's Rolling Stones flick:

The Mets' rotation suffered a blow with the loss of veteran Pedro Martinez. (AP)

1. Mets and boos, both four-letter words: While Brian Bannister was moving to 3-0 in Kansas City on Sunday, throwing a complete game against Minnesota and lowering his ERA to 0.86, his former employers continued their search for pitchers who can simply string together a couple of scoreless innings.

Willie Randolph's New York Mets are 5-6, and even Johan Santana's presence alone can't compensate for a rotation that is minus Pedro Martinez (strained hamstring, out until at least mid-May) and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez (bum foot, out indefinitely).

Desperate, the Mets already have added Nelson Figueroa, who debuted Friday night and beat Milwaukee for his first major league victory since 2003, and Claudio Vargas, who signed a minor league deal last week.

Can Pat Zachary be far behind? Pete Falcone?

The Bannister trade, in which general manager Omar Minaya sent the right-hander to the Royals for reliever Ambiorix Burgos after the 2006 season, is looking pretty awful right now. And Mets fans are still bitching about the club dealing Scott Kazmir to Tampa Bay in 2004 (though then-GM Jim Duquette, not Minaya, was the point man on that).

And the decision to tack a fourth year onto its offer to Martinez following the 2004 season to lure him away from Boston, while mostly universally viewed at the time as a short-term boon for New York with potential long-term consequences, now is hamstringing the club (so to speak). The Mets got only 28 innings from Pedro last year and might be lucky to squeeze much more out of him in 2008.

Though the Mets have been plagued by injuries and spotty pitching (Oliver Perez hadn't allowed a run in 11 2/3 innings until the Brewers crushed him for six in only 4 1/3 innings Sunday), perhaps Figueroa's emotional night Friday was an indication that Minaya already is at work reversing the club's trend of many poor pitching decisions (c'mon Mets fans, throwing you a bone here).

See, Figueroa, 33, was the Mets' 30th-round pick in the 1995 draft, and the club wound up dealing him to Arizona for pitcher Willie Blair and catcher Jorge Fabregas. That tag-team didn't exactly amount to Tom Seaver and Gary Carter, or anything close.

Of course, Figueroa didn't win a game for the Diamondbacks, either, and by 2004 was off on a baseball odyssey that eventually would take him to Taiwan (He was the Taiwan Series Most Valuable Player last September while pitching in the Chinese Professional League) and Mexico (Caribbean World Series Most Valuable Player in February).

The Mets don't need Figueroa to be Dwight Gooden, they simply need guys like him and Mike Pelfrey to stabilize things behind Santana, Perez and John Maine until either Pedro or El Duque return or Minaya can pull a rabbit out of his hat and produce suitable alternatives (Jeff Weaver, Freddy Garcia, Russ Ortiz and Eric Milton are among those still out there on the at-your-own-risk scrap heap).

A Brooklyn native who followed everything about the classic 1986 Mets club as a kid, Figueroa was inspirational in Friday's 4-2 win, holding a good Brewers lineup to two runs in six innings. Backed by a snappy curve, he retired the first 14 hitters he faced.

"I've died and went to heaven," Figueroa's father, Nelson Sr., said during a touching moment on the Mets' television broadcast as his son worked. "This is fantastic. Fantastic. I'm very, very proud of him."