PHILADELPHIA – Scott Kazmir beat the Yankees yesterday just three hours before Victor Zambrano went to the mound for the Mets.

Strictly coincidence? Ongoing evidence of a parallel universe? You be the judge, knowing the jury of public opinion last season voted for the execution of GM Jim Duquette after just one season.

Certainly, there had to be more behind the call Fred Wilpon made to Omar Minaya, offering him carte blanche and a bigger budget, than the mass hysteria over one trade of a prime left-handed pitching prospect for a righty who showed up with a bum elbow and a history of walking the ballpark.

But with the Mets falling out of the race almost as soon as a deal designed to keep them in it was made, the image of Kazmir-for-Zambrano became almost as negative as the perception of the Wilpons as owners who won’t let GMs do their job.

Thus, a change was made to a Latin American charmer that led to the Mets getting Pedro Martinez, who led to Carlos Beltran. Not a bad thing, obviously, but it turns out neither is Zambrano, who last night lowered his ERA in his last seven starts to 2.80 and still couldn’t win his fourth game of the season, never mind a season ERA more than a half-run better than Kazmir’s 4.62.

Of course, there is such a thing as pitching just well enough for your team to lose. And there also is such a thing as getting out of the sixth 2-2 and being able to turn the game over to a much better bullpen than one with which the Mets are trying to stay in a five-team divisional race.

Royce Ring, Dae-Sung Koo and especially Aaron Heilman, doing nothing to help any claim on Kaz Ishii’s spot in the rotation, detonated a six-run Phils’ seventh that left Zambrano’s high-wire expedition for naught, not to anyone’s surprise.

Zambrano threw ball one to eight of the first nine Phillies he faced, one of which Chase Utley doubled in the second. Utley later scored in the inning when David Wright stupidly assumed a catch on a sinking liner he trapped. Having already struck out Jim Thome twice, once with the bases loaded, Zambrano got behind the slumping slugger 3-0, then grooved a changeup for a homer that put the Phillies up 2-1 in the fifth.

That noted, Zambrano got Pat Burrell to hit into a double play to end the first-inning threat, and was left in the game one batter too long when Cliff Floyd saved the game, at least for another inning, with a based-loaded, shoulder-banging, catch against the wall.

So it can be argued Zambrano deserved a better fate, whether inexorably linked to Kazmir’s or not. In these seven games in which the Met righty has stopped looking like an utterly ridiculous idea, his teammates have scored 12 runs, somehow less support than the Wilpons gave the demoted Duquette.

Time alone won’t tell what kind of a trade this will turn out to be. There are other considerations, all hypothetical. The teams worried about both pitchers’ elbow wear and tear in more ways than one. Had the Mets waited until the offseason to deal Kazmir, more accomplished options, like Tim Hudson, would have been available.

Hindsight is wonderful. But would foresight have enabled Duquette to know the Wilpons, who had cut the player budget by $20 million for 2004, would kick it back up by a similar amount to make splashes with Martinez and Beltran? Zambrano was a 29-year-old with universally acknowledged electric stuff, plus a winning career record for a bad team, making a budget-friendly $2.1 million a year and not eligible for free agency until 2007.

So it seemed right. And still might be in the long run, if the Mets get a better bullpen, offense and other things whose absences have left them three games under .500 for better reasons than Victor Zambrano.