I don’t like pat myself on the back, but — oh, wait, I love patting myself on the back. It feels so nice. Soothing back-pats.

The Internet’s blowing up today with this John Harper column about Tony Bernazard and how he’s to blame — because no one’s ever found anything wrong with the Mets that can’t somehow be blamed on Tony Bernazard — for the Mets’ misguided opposite-field heavy approach to hitting in 2009.

Rob Neyer weighed in on the column, agreeing that all the opposite-field hitting was a bad idea.

But you know what has two thumbs and was on top of this in July? This guy. Check it out:

In 2008, the Mets pulled 26 percent of the balls they hit onto the field of play or over the fence, according to the best Web site ever. They hit 59 percent to the middle and 15 percent to the opposite field.In 2009, they’ve pulled 25 percent, hit 56 percent to the middle and 19 percent to the opposite field.

In 2008, David Wright pulled 29 percent, hit 55 percent up the middle and hit 16 percent to the opposite field.

This season, Wright has pulled 26 percent, hit 48 percent up the middle and hit 26 percent the opposite way….

What I do know is this: The Mets, most notably Wright, are hitting the ball the opposite way more frequently this year. And if that’s intentional, they should probably stop. I’m no hitting coach and I’ll never purport to be, but the Mets have not hit a single home run to the opposite field in 2009 according to baseball-reference (Fernando Tatis‘ blast to right-center in Pittsburgh must count as center field, I guess).

Obviously, there are times and places for going the opposite way and good hitters do it naturally, but forcing it more frequently than it is necessary does not seem like a good idea. Power — power that the Mets have so often lacked this year — comes most easily from pulling the ball.

So in conclusion, I hereby announce my candidacy for Tony Bernazard’s job.

Patrick Flood wrote a great post today about two of my favorite things to think about, Jeff Francoeur and the Internet. I heartily recommend it. He writes:

I find it sad because I know one day the free-swingers like Francoeur will be gone, and one day every part of America will read the same websites I read and will get their news the same way I do, and will probably think just like me, or I’ll think just like them, or we’ll all think just like each other. Newspapers, music stores, crazy people with pamphlets, players regard accepting a free pass as nothing more than a draw – they’re all victims of the information age, and one day they’ll be gone like the monks drawing elaborate letters. It’s so easy to get the correct information from somewhere else now, usually for free. It’s too easy to see why Jeff Francoeur is not the answer to the Mets problems, and why he’s probably going to fall apart again. All you need is a computer and to know what BABIP stands for.

Flood’s piece hinges on the assumption that Francoeur will fall back to earth in a Mets uniform in 2010, something I realize is far from a certainty for a lot of Mets fans and something I am obviously rooting against.

So hard. Despite all the nasty things I’ve said about his acquisition and his utter lack of plate discipline, I do desperately want Francoeur to succeed in New York. I will gladly abide the I-told-you-sos and inevitable overblown media lovefest to have another good young player on the Mets moving forward.

That lovefest — and the blogosphere has figured this out, I gather — stems from the fact that Francoeur is, quite simply, a friendly and candid guy. He’s nice to reporters, so reporters pay it back in writing. I don’t think it’s a strict quid pro quo system or anything — I’m guessing it’s purely subconscious. Francoeur’s a good dude, so people covering the team portray him favorably. And I can attest that it’s refreshing to speak to a baseball player who looks you in the eye and honestly answers your questions.

So that’s what all the recent hubbub surround Francoeur and his attitude and his leadership are about, I’m certain. He makes for a good quote, so he makes for a good story, and since there’s not a whole heck of a lot of hard news coming out of Port St. Lucie, everyone’s focused on good ol’ Jeff Francoeur.

But the nicest guy in the world — heck, Gandhi himself — wouldn’t last so long in the good graces of Major League fans or the Major League media if he didn’t start taking pitches. That’s what eventually went wrong for Francoeur in Atlanta and what Flood’s piece assumes will go wrong for him in New York.

And it’s a reasonable assumption. It’s extremely rare for a player to walk as infrequently as Francoeur did in his time with the Mets in 2009 and maintain his level of production. I got at this in the first days of this blog: If keep hitting that well without taking pitches, pitchers will stop throwing you pitches to hit.

Of course, as difficult as I find it to believe that Francoeur could maintain an on-base percentage slightly above the league average while walking in only 3.6% of his at-bats, I find it nearly as difficult to believe that his apparent turnaround in Flushing could be merely a reversal of fortune and the byproduct of small sample size.

There, I said it.

That sentiment might seem ripped from the front page of Duh! Magazine for some people, but it’s in pretty stern defiance with sabermetric logic. David Golebiewski did a great job at RotoGraphs showing how Francoeur’s BABIP spiked in Queens even though his XBABIP remained more or less static, implying that, indeed, Francoeur just got massively lucky upon switching teams.

And in some way, I hope he’s right, because a whole lot of strange things make a lot more sense, and justifies so many things I write about randomness and sample size and our tendency to assign narratives to arbitrary events.

Still, it seems like a pretty outrageous coincidence that Francoeur’s fortune should change so severely as soon as he changed uniforms.

Stranger things have happened, for sure, but I wonder if there could be some other explanation, something to do with Citi Field that hasn’t been quantified yet, or something to do with the exceptionally atrocious lineup the Mets were trotting out around Francoeur after the trade last year changing the way pitchers approached him, though I realize that stuff is generally discredited.

I have no answers and I probably never will. I’m skeptical that Francoeur will produce anything like the numbers he did for last season’s Mets for this season’s Mets, but I’m hopeful, because I’m a Mets fan.

More than anything, I want the season to start so we can start finding out. I’m growing quite sick of being a wet blanket on all the Francoeur-driven optimism all the time.

No idea if this is legal, but it’s the Internet, it’s sunny in New York and it’s a busy day for me, so here’s this.

This song comes courtesy of reader Tom. I linked it a long while back on Flushing Fussing, but that link broke.

It’s by a calypso singer named the Duke of Iron. It’s about Casey Stengel’s Mets, but some of the lyrics still apply:

When you want to hear how people scream,
Go see New York’s latest baseball team.
Such loyalty, such charity.
Although they’re last, not one of them have no regrets,
They believe in the New York Mets.
They’re cheering,
We want a hit! We want a hit!
From the crack of the bat, there’s noise in the place,
Especially if a Met can get on first base.

“New York Mets” by the Duke of Iron