Far as I can tell, there are three guys now at Norfolk who might reasonably help the Mets in the near future. One is a familiar major league face, 33-year-old Brian Daubach (see the Norfolk stats here), who's hitting .358/.628/.429; Baseball Prospectus' forecast (subscription only) for Daubach this season, following a .274/.530/.403 campaign at Pawtucket last year, is .260/.452/.371, which even when adjusting for Daubach's poor defense at first base would be a heck of an improvement over Minky.

The second is Jeff Keppinger, batting .332/.446/.373. I'm not a huge Keppinger fan, but he's someone to consider in the second base mix if things continue to go awry with Matsui. I'm not sure he'd be a real improvement over Cairo.

The third and perhaps most immediately interesting is an ex-Yankee farmhand, reliever Juan Padilla, who posted a staggering 52/6 K/BB ratio and just 1 homer allowed in 58 innings at Columbus in 2004 and has followed up with a 1.01 ERA in 35.2 IP this season, striking out 36, walking 5 and allowing just 1 home run. Numbers like that demand some attention.

(Jae Seo, of course, also continues to pitch well in AAA).