The third basemen in April: David Wright, Justin Turner, Ronny Cedeno.

Overview: Man, your guess is as good as mine.

Do I really need to go through the whole thing about how David Wright used to be unspeakably awesome then had three straight weird years, two of them still very good but clearly something less than awesome, the third hampered by a broken back? Because if you’re a conscious Mets fan — and I assume if you’re reading this you’re a conscious Mets fan — you must know all about what happened with Wright the past few seasons.

Well, let me restate that: There’s almost no way you know what happened with Wright the past few seasons. You know the outcome, but it doesn’t seem like even David Wright knows exactly what happened.

The Mets took a stab at it this winter, moving the fences in. And with that, well… we’ll see. Maybe it was that, and maybe they fixed it. But maybe it’s just time. Maybe it’s pressure. Maybe it’s the Matt Cain fastball. Maybe it’s some weird little thing we’d never even think to consider. Or maybe it’s no one thing, just some odd combination of things that teamed up to take David Wright down from superstar to just pretty good.

Here’s what’s firm: David Wright is 29. After an ab injury in February, he is purportedly healthy now. He will play his home games in a park that has been made more favorable to hitters, especially right-handed hitters with gap power. And he’s got a $16 million club option on his contract looming after the season, and, barring an extension, free agency after that. If Wright’s ever going to be That Dude again, he should probably start doing it soon.

That’s not even to mention Wright’s defense, which has been awful by every stat these last three years though still suspiciously average-seeming to the eye. Defensive metrics were invented to help quantify assessments that have always been subjective, but now I suspect they bias the way I watch and assess defensive players. And still I never see Wright make (or miss) plays at third and think, “this guy’s one of the very worst defensive third basemen in baseball.” But then maybe I just don’t want to see it. The Mets-fan mind is strange.

The third basemen in September: Wright, Cedeno. Maybe Zach Lutz if he stays healthy. It makes no sense for the Mets to trade David Wright this season. He will still come up in trade talk once a month, as he has for the past year. The only way he gets dealt is if some… oh just read this please.

Overview: The NL East is a great division for awesome third basemen coming off injury-plagued down years, assuming you count Hanley Ramirez as a third baseman. I’m going to go optimistic with this and guess that Wright rights himself a bit and outperforms one of Ramirez and Ryan Zimmerman, and they all outperform old-man Larry Jones and Juan Francisco in Atlanta and the punchless Placido Polanco in Philadelphia.