Always larger than life, Pedro Martinez will be facing his former team for the first time this afternoon at 1:10p. I, like most Mets fans, absolutely loved him while he was here. His performance on the field though was lacking. He was never really there when the team needed him the most down the stretch.

In the clubhouse he brought the swagger back to Queens when he was signed. His signing opened the doors for Carlos Beltran to come here and it resurrected the somewhat dead franchise. I was having a discussion with Pessimet contributing authors, Schepfest, Brendan Schepis and Negative Ned the other day. We all felt like we would still like to see Pedro succeed, just as long as the Phillies don’t win another championship and as long as he gets rocked when facing the Mets. Here’s today’s lineup vs. the future Hall of Famer:

Pagan, cf
Castillo, 2b
Murphy, 1b
Francoeur, rf
Sullivan, lf
Tatis, 3b
Schneider, c
Hernandez, ss
Perez, lhp

Photo: AP