At SNY.tv today, Mike Salfino weighs in on Fernando Martinez’s ranking on the assorted preseason prospects lists. His big finish:

It’s human nature to be impatient after writing about a guy now for three years. And it’s quite uncommon for a guy to stay atop these lists for that long without demonstrating any Major League ability. However, that’s not Martinez’s fault, as he was just 17 years old when he first came on the scene. He was never expected to debut before this year and he appears to me and many others to be right on schedule with very little left to prove in the high Minors.

I generally try not to get too worked up about rankings on prospects lists, since they’re only lists. As I pointed out two years ago, Albert Pujols was ranked only the 42nd best prospect by Baseball America before his rookie season and Mariano Rivera never even cracked the top 100.

The lists are fun to examine, and they’re useful as quick-and-dirty indicators of a prospect’s reputation, but to me, it’s just not that big a deal if a player is 40th or 75th.

But Mike argues, pretty accurately I think, that Mets fans and certain analysts are close to giving up on Martinez simply because they’ve been hearing about him for so long and he hasn’t produced anything yet. I’ve beaten this drum before: He’s 21. No one should have expected anything out of him yet.

I agree with most of Salfino’s points, as I usually do, and I recommend checking out the column. I’ll quibble with a couple, though:

For one, some of Mike’s argument rests on Martinez’s impressive performance in Triple-A in 2009. But while his .877 OPS was certainly good, it was also only across a 190 plate-appearance sample, far from huge and not even terribly larger than his rough 100 PA stretch in Citi Field.

The other thing — and this is certainly the big thing with Martinez, and the reason he was knocked down all those lists — is the injury thing. Salfino points out that none of Martinez’s numerous injuries have been related, and that not many position players have lost careers due to the injury bug.

I wonder, though, how many position players have never even had careers due to the injury bug. Martinez has always been labeled a great prospect and so will likely be given every opportunity to keep playing, but I wonder how many teams have given up on a Minor League just because he couldn’t stay on the field?

And I wonder, too, if the injuries might be related after all. Are some people not simply prone to injury?

My buddy Charlie is one of the best athletes in my group of friends from high school. He’s a huge guy, easily 6’5″, and he was always among the first chosen in pickup games in every sport. He can dunk a basketball, he’s a dominant force at linebacker in tackle football games, and he’s a three-true outcomes masher in stickball.

But, perhaps as some sort of karmic tradeoff for his size and ability, Charlie gets hurt all the time. There’s no identifiable balky knee or troublesome shoulder, either. It’s all different body parts injured in all different ways.

And I don’t mean he has a low threshold for pain or anything like that — I’ve seen the bruises and the swelling and the x-rays; they’re real injuries. An ankle sprained while pitching. A finger broken by a bounce pass. A collar bone broken when he made the mistake of trying to tackle me.

So with guys like Martinez, or Nick Johnson or Cliff Floyd or or Pete Reiser or whoever, I wonder if they’re kind of like Charlie, and there could be something in their makeup that leads them to get hurt all the time.

Of course, I might have thought the same thing about Jose Reyes at some point in 2004, and he played in nearly every game from 2005-2008.

I’m still bullish on Martinez as a prospect, and I certainly hope the injuries are only a byproduct of a teenager growing into a man as he attempts to compete at an extremely high level.

What Mike points out, after all, is correct: Though few of the stats in Martinez’s history exactly jump off the page, that he’s performed as well as he has at the levels he’s faced at the ages he’s been is remarkable.

That’s not say he should break camp with the big club, of course, nor do I think that’s something being considered.

At the same time, I’m not sure I understand the common Internet idea that Martinez needs to stay healthy for a full year in Triple-A before joins the big club. I don’t see why it would be any more difficult for him to stay healthy in the pros than it would be for him to stay healthy in Triple-A, so if Martinez is performing and the Mets have a need, his injury history shouldn’t prevent a callup.