I’ve seen some Mets fans overreacting on Twitter — hard as that may be to believe — to Spring Training results the last few days, so I wanted to lay down the annual reminder that Grapefruit League stats mean almost nothing. Guys are working on things, guys are ironing out kinks, and guys are operating in small enough samples that they might luck into 50-some at-bats against mostly Minor League competition.

I went back through MLB.com’s Spring Training archive and cherry-picked some examples of Spring Training stats that look silly now. These are just for the Mets:

– In 2006, 36-year-old Jose Valentin posted a .143/.273/.250 line that looked a hell of a lot like the one from his woeful 2005 campaign. He wound up the Mets’ starting second baseman that year and hit .271/.330/.490.

– The next year, 37-year-old Valentin hit .321/.410/.642 in the Grapefruit League, then .241/.302/.373. David Newhan and Scott Schoeneweis both had great springs.

– In 2008, Mike Pelfrey allowed 19 earned runs in 21 Grapefruit League innings. He went on to have arguably the best season of his Major League career. Jorge Sosa, Aaron Heilman, Pedro Feliciano, Bobby Parnell and Scott Schoeneweis combined to throw 46 2/3 innings with a 0.76 ERA, then later became members of the 2008 Mets’ bullpen (though only briefly for Parnell).

Do I really need to keep going with this? I’m already bored with it and I strongly suspect if you’re reading this site you know better than to put much stock in Spring Training stats.

I don’t want to say they mean nothing at all, since guys are vying to make the club and one of the ways the coaches assess them is by comparing their performance in Grapefruit League games. But Mike Pelfrey’s on the team. If you want to worry about his ERA, worry about his career rate, not the one he’s got in six Spring Training innings.