The Mets hope both Mike Piazza and Todd Pratt will be in good shape before the season starts.

"If you don't have a catcher," Casey said, "you're gonna have a lot of passed balls." The number of passed balls in the Mets' camp hasn't increased lately, but the number of able-bodied catchers has decreased.

Joe DePastino, who would have done some Triple A catching, blew out his knee the first day of camp. Friday, Mike Piazza was put on restricted duty for seven days or so because of a bone bruise in his left knee. And now Todd Pratt is hurting. (And Matt Franco, a catcher for emergencies, is getting nervous.) Pratt developed tendinitis in his right elbow early in camp, and while the condition hasn't worsened, it hasn't improved, either. So the club has, in his words, "decided to shut me down in hopes that it will quiet down." Pratt, Piazza's primary understudy, isn't supposed to play for a few days.

Vance Wilson and Jason Phillips, who shared the catching in the Mets' 7-3 victory against the Cardinals yesterday, will do most of the catching.