I need to make these shorter or they’re never going to get done. Less talk more rock.

The first basemen in April: Ike Davis, Justin Turner.

Overview: Last year, Davis performed like one of the best players in baseball for a little over a month before he fell victim to David Wright’s hardest hit of the 2011 season. Upon his arrival to Spring Training this year, he pronounced his ankle healthy then was diagnosed with Valley Fever, a lung infection common in the area of Arizona where Davis resides that never presents any symptoms in 60 percent of cases but that sidetracked Conor Jackson’s career and had half the Internet writing tearful requiems for the Mets’ first baseman.

Davis seems to be OK. He has played regularly throughout Spring Training and reported no trouble with his health. But the diagnosis combined with his small-sample supremacy last season mean people will inevitably blame Valley Fever if and when he fails to produce a 155 OPS+ over 550 at-bats in 2012. But then people are people, and I really shouldn’t get too hung up on all the stupid things they blame for stuff.

What matters is this: Davis, provided he is in fact healthy and feeling no effects of either the Valley Fever or last season’s ankle injury, should be at least a very good hitter and an excellent defensive first baseman. Over the first 652 at-bats of his career, he has got a 123 OPS+, a mark that’s undeniably trending upward even if you allow that he’s not quite as good as he looked in the first month of 2011.

Davis just turned 25 and the Mets just brought the fences in. If you’re looking for elements of the 2012 Mets you can dream on, here’s one of them: Maybe Davis blossoms into an excellent player, even a superstar. It’s no guarantee, but not a lot of guys hit as well as he did as young as he did.

Justin Turner will back up Davis, mostly, it seems, because Terry Collins doesn’t want to burden Daniel Murphy or Lucas Duda with the job while they’re learning new positions and maybe a little bit because he wants to have Justin Turner on the team and needs to find some good reason to keep him around.

Turner’s fine as a second righty pinch-hitting option (if you think you need two) and fallback plan in case Murphy doesn’t work out at second, but if he’s starting more than once every two weeks or so at first, that’s not so great. But Collins seems to know that too, since he said the team would move Duda or Murphy to first if Davis were to be out for more than a couple of weeks.

The first basemen in September: Davis, Mike Baxter. Playing a hunch that says Turner gets traded, since it seems like he’d have value to a team that needs a second baseman in a pinch. But then, if you’re playing at home, I’m three positions deep and already assuming two traids, and this isn’t a fantasy team.

Overview: I’m going to say Davis will be the best first baseman in the division in 2012. Freddie Freeman hit well for a 21-year-old in his rookie season in 2011 so there’s a chance he’ll outproduce Davis offensively, but Freeman’s something of a butcher in the field. Ryan Howard’s going to miss the first part of the season returning from Achilles surgery and subsequent infection and has been in reasonably steep decline for a while. Gaby Sanchez is pretty good but not great and unlikely to be getting any better.

And the Nationals have… whoa, WTF, the Nationals still have Adam LaRoche at first? WAIT, the Nationals have only had Adam LaRoche for one year and he only played 43 games for them, and Adam LaRoche has only been playing since 2004? I’m sorry; I don’t buy it. Can’t be true. Adam LaRoche has been on the Nationals since they moved from Montreal in 2005, and he was an old man then. I don’t care what these newfangled websites say. And in any case he’s not likely to be better than Ike Davis.