I keep saying I’ll keep these brief, then writing really long posts. This one I promise I’ll actually keep brief.

The Major League third basemen in April: David Wright, Fernando Tatis.

Overview: David Wright had, for him, a down season in 2009. Just about everyone who has ever seen a baseball game, and seemingly many people who haven’t, has some guess why it happened. It was the ballpark. It was the pressure. It was Tony Bernazard’s opposite-field approach. It was the lineup around him. It was his mechanics.

Who knows? Who cares? Last season was last season. As my colleague Mike Salfino pointed out last month, single-season fluctuations like the one Wright endured in 2009 are not unheard of for superstar players. Check out Mike Schmidt’s 1978, for example.

And the good news is that a bad year for Wright is still an awesome year for a regular Major Leaguer. Wright’s power output dipped and his strikeout total spiked, but he still got on base at a .390 clip.

Whatever leech sucked out Wright’s home-run power apparently also sapped up his ability to defend at third base in 2009, thrilling talk-radio types who’ve been saying for years that he wouldn’t last at the position. After two straight seasons of positive defensive contributions, as measured by both UZR and +/-, Wright fell to last among qualifiers in UZR and 33rd in +/- in 2010.

It was, undoubtedly, a weird year for the Mets’ young star. Here’s the thing, though: Don’t bet on any of it to continue. Superstars don’t become superstars by rolling over in the face of adversity, and I’ll wager David Wright spent his offseason doing everything in his power to correct whatever ailed him in 2009.

The gun show he gave the New York Post early this spring? Part of that, I’m certain.

Wright will bounce back in 2010. Mark that down.

The Major League third basemen in September: Wright, Tatis.

Duh.

How they stack up: Wright is better than Placido Polanco and Jorge Cantu. It’s very hard to bet against Chipper Jones, but Larry had a down year at the plate last year, has a history of injury issues, and will be 38 later this month. There’s some chance he’ll return to his Hall of Fame form, stay healthy and hit well enough to outproduce Wright, but I’m not willing to consider that possibility, because frankly, screw that guy.

Ryan Zimmerman played better than Wright did in 2009 on both sides of the ball, and there’s been some buzz around the Internet that he’s now the better overall third baseman. I’m skeptical. Zimmerman’s certainly a better defender, but I find it hard to believe he’s anywhere near as good a hitter as Wright on the strength of one good year. In 2007 and 2008, after all, Zimmerman was little better than league-average at the plate.

Regardless, both young third baseman are great, and since they’re not actually in competition, it doesn’t matter. If Zimmerman again performs like he did in 2009 or continues improving as young players do, and Wright returns to the form he showed in 2007 and 2008, it will take a lengthy debate to determine the N.L. East’s best. And I promised I’d be brief.

According to the New York Post, “Jerry Manuel doesn’t expect to have his roster finalized until Sunday’s deadline” but Raul Valdes “continues to impress the manager as a possible lefty specialist.”

Man. Normally I’d say there’s no way any Major League team is picking its roster based on gut decisions made off its final couple of Spring Training games. But I’ve been following the Mets for the last few years, and I know that all bets are off when it comes to guessing how this team filling out its roster.

Who is Raul Valdes? I was going to investigate, but in poking around, I found that James Kannengieser used all the same resources I planned to use in a post to Amazin’ Avenue earlier this week. So check that out.

But the most important thing about Raul Valdes is that he’s not Jenrry Mejia, and so his inclusion on the Major League bullpen would, in theory, take up one of the spots Mejia is fighting for. So that’s cool.

According to ESPN New York, Mejia is “60/40” for a spot in the Major League bullpen. Huh. All the comments from Omar Minaya and Manuel sure make it sound a lot more toward the 60 side (and so not 60 at all, then), but I’ll hold out hope for the 40.

Actually, it’s beautiful today, so I’m holding out hope for a 40 regardless.

But only because they discontinued the 64.

So here’s this person, David Wright, adored equally by Broseph and little girls, who for years has come into my living room and suffocating dorm room and accompanied me over the radio on long car rides, and I’m not really sure I know that much about him. He never has a bad word for anyone, not another player, not an umpire. He always says the right thing, which can be horribly dull. He is never one to lose his composure either – maybe he would spike an occasional batting helmet, but that’s it. He reminds me of people encountered in life that are perfectly nice and no one has a bad thing to say about, but you just don’t ever take any interest in them because they are boring, at least to you. Wright comes on my TV and goes 3-5, and then does it again the next night and the next one and on into forever – his greatness is as easy to overlook as a skyscraper passed by daily. He is perpetually great, a droning of awesome. Wright is consistency, and consistency is monotony, and monotony is by definition difficult to notice.

– Patrick Flood, Exile on 126th Street.

This is an awesome, awesome post that says many of the same things I was, or am planning on saying about Wright in the season-in-preview piece later today, only more creatively.

Flood is spot on about Wright being awesome to the point of monotony, and so boring a superstar that he’s frequently overlooked. I fear the media has created this monster.

You watch Wright speak to the press, it’s like he goes into a zone — so focused it’s almost like he’s at bat or something. Like Flood, I don’t know David Wright, but it sure feels like he’s been exceptionally well-trained to handle the media. And perhaps the best way to handle the media is to never say anything interesting at all. That’s a shame, of course, but that’s probably the reality of it.

I’ve got to shorten these up or I’m never going to finish them. So here goes this:

The Major League second basemen in April: Luis Castillo, Alex Cora

Overview: Luis Castillo is my favorite player in the Major Leagues. I just decided that this morning, on my train ride into work, when I was thinking about writing this preview and thinking about Luis Castillo.

At one point, Castillo was a good defender. That’s no longer the case. At one point, he stole lots of bases. He doesn’t do that a ton anymore, either.

But Luis Castillo perseveres, because Luis Castillo is really really good at what he does. And what Luis Castillo does is get on base without any discernible batting power, no small feat.

Check it out: In this decade, a player has posted an isolated slugging (slugging average – batting average) of less than .100 with an on-base percentage over .350 in over 500 plate appearances 48 times.

That seems like a lot, I realize, but over 10 years, that means it only happens 4.8 times a season. And Castillo is responsible for eight of the 48 instances. No other player has done it more than four times.

For fun, keep the other qualifiers the same and knock the ISO down to .060, and it’s only happened 12 times in the aughts. No one but Castillo has done it more than once, and Castillo has done it five times.

Poke around the Fangraphs.com plate discipline leaders for the past few years. Every season he qualifies, Castillo swings at fewer pitches outside of the zone than nearly every other batter in the Majors, and makes contact with more of the pitches he swings at than nearly anyone else.

This, I’m certain, is all tied up with the lack of power, and it’s not something you need any fancy stats to identify. Dude has quick wrists and a good eye, and usually chops or slaps at the ball.

Because of his abject refusal to swing at bad pitches and his tendency to put good ones in play, Castillo has maintained a good on-base percentage even as the rest of his skills have eroded. And because the ability to get on-base is the most important offensive skill, Castillo is still a worthwhile Major League hitter, no matter how frustrating it is to know he’ll almost never put one past an outfielder, especially from the left side of the plate.

Castillo is a weird outlier among Major League hitters, and I love weird outliers in general. That’s why he’s my new favorite player.

That shouldn’t be misconstrued to mean I think he’s good, though. His near-hilarious lack of range in the field will hurt the Mets this year, as will his big contract the team is unwilling to see as sunk cost. But those are just two more parts of the Castillo mystique.

It’s a safe bet that as long as Castillo is “healthy” — a relative term, in his case — and on the Mets, they’ll be trotting him out to second base, where he’ll take a couple of steps and fall and flail in the general direction of ground balls hit his way. And at the plate, he’ll keep doing his thing, slapping at balls thrown over the plate, taking balls that are inches off of it.

The Major League second basemen in September: Castillo, Cora

There’s certainly a non-zero chance Castillo gets hurt and Ruben Tejada gets a look, but while I really like Tejada and think he’s an underrated prospect, he’s quite young and will probably be given plenty of time to develop as long as Castillo’s healthy. Plus, there’s that whole contract thing.

Reese Havens is a solid bet to be a quick-mover, too. But he’ll be playing his first full season at second base. Shouldn’t be a terrible transition from shortstop, but he’ll have to work on turning the double-play from that spot, hurdling over oncoming runners and Luis Castillo’s big contract.

How they stack up: Chase Utley is better than Luis Castillo in every conceivable way. Martin Prado probably is too. Dan Uggla might be the only second baseman in the Majors who’s worse than Castillo, but it’s pretty close, and he’s a better hitter. Adam Kennedy is a better defender and had a nice year at the plate for Oakland in 2009, but I’m not guessing that will continue.

So even with his impressive on-base percentage, it’s hard to call Castillo anything more than the second-worst second baseman in the division. And if the OBP slips, the defense gets worse or Kennedy maintains his 2009 offensive output, Castillo will be the worst.

According to Mack’s Mets, Val Pascucci has been released.

If I worked really hard, I could probably drum up a post about how he’d be a better fit at first base for the big-league club than Mike Jacobs, but I don’t actually think that’s true, so I won’t. It might be closer than you think, though.

If I were a betting man — which I am, but I don’t know of an outlet that takes bets on stuff like this — I’d say he returns to Japan, where he was a hero, to make some good guaranteed money and enjoy the sweet sounds of the familiar Hey Pascucci chant, embedded below.

But here’s hoping he stays stateside and lands with some team that isn’t already loaded up with Minor League mashers like the Mets are, and that team ends up with a need for some big-league bench power, and Pascucci produces. Oh, and that team is not the Phillies. I want to root for the guy, after all.

It’s funny that, by the circumstances presented by the 2008 season, I’ve wound up following Val Pascucci’s career so closely. I imagine some Yankees fans are now doing the same for Jon Weber. The pursuit of Major League dreams is a strange thing. Here’s to those guys for keeping on.