"Mets roll into town for three games against a division rival. Time to get good, or time to get buried. Big series. And Jason Bay is not hitting well enough to play.

No problem, at least for Tuesday night's 4-3 win over the Braves that hoisted the Mets over Florida and into third place in the National League East. The Willie Harris experiment worked, and Jose Reyes - oh my goodness, once again.

Three hits, two stolen bases, an RBI, two runs scored. Zipping and zapping around like the Road Runner, bringing a taste of NBA athleticism to a lazy Southern night. Leads the majors with 34 multi-hit games. Money, money, money.

Would Harris pay Reyes "Carl Crawford money" this offseason, as Fred Wilpon famously called a contract of $140-ish million? "Hell yeah," he said. "That's a no-brainer."

He continued to gush. This is what Reyes does to people lately. Words are inadequate to capture the visual, so we try, and fail to convey it.

"It's unreal, man," Harris said. "He doesn't have any flaws... I told him the other day, 'If I wasn't playing baseball, I'd buy a ticket to watch you play.'"

It also helped that for the second time on this Odyssean road trip, Jon Niese (6-5) excelled, although on this night he left a seventh-inning rally to the relievers. The bullpen made it work. It almost did not, when Jason Isringhausen allowed a Dan Uggla solo homer in the eighth, but Francisco Rodriguez breezed through a perfect ninth for his 19th save."