Roy Oswalt, the Mets and Alex Rodriguez

The Astros and Phillies have reportedly agreed on a Roy Oswalt trade, so now it's in the right-hander's well, hands. Will he waive his no-trade clause even if the Phillies refuse to exercise his $16 million team option for 2012? As noted here yesterday, Oswalt has been telling friends he would do just that. Now it's time for him to act upon it.

If Oswalt indeed agrees to become a Phillie, that further buries the Mets in 2010. I don't think that's a big deal, as the Mets are on the fringe, anyway. Right now, they should be playing for their own future - to move them further away from last year's debacle, and to play toward a 2011 in which both Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes (assuming his 2011 team option for $11 million is exercised) will be in their walk years.

In losing a crazy game to St. Louis, the Mets fell back to a game over .500, at 51-50. They stand seven and a half games behind first-place Atlanta in the NL East, and six and a half games behind San Francisco in the race for the NL wild-card.

They wouldn't be insane to give up prospects for, say, a Ted Lilly or Brett Myers. But it would be ill-advised. Shoot, I'd even say they should not even take a money dump (Jake Westbrook, for instance, or Arizona reliever Chad Qualls) and would be better off reallocating money toward next year's amateur draft. They always can reassess the situation in August, once players clear waivers.

In any case, just two games remain on the Mets' schedule before Saturday afternoon's non-waivers trading deadline. It's hard to see why the Mets' stance on acquisitions would change dramatically in such a short time span.

--You can't turn away from the Mets, Jim Baumbach writes.

--Jason Bay seems headed for the disabled list, and last night, essentially in Bay's place, Jeff Francoeur looked more like, well, Francoeur. No repeat of Tuesday night's heroics.

--Mike Hessman had a promising first start for the Mets.

.--The Yankees won, even though Alex Rodriguez went homerless once again, and the team is now 4-2 in A-Rod's six full games at 599 career homers. They're actually 5-2, if you include the game A-Rod hit number 599. So no one will be saying that this is providing any sort of distraction. In 28 plate appearances since tallying number 599, A-Rod has a .321 on-base percentage and .346 slugging percentage. That's not good by any measure, yet in such a small sample, it's not catastrophic.

--Mark Herrmann wonders what would've happened if A-Rod had signed with the Mets after the 2000 season.

--Jorge Posada returned to the Yankees' lineup.

--I'm off to Citi Field, and I'll check in throughout the day.