Patrick Flood investigates Lucas Duda’s decision to bunt with runners on first and second and no out in the bottom of the eighth inning last night and concludes that Duda made the right call. It’s a good read.

Teams should not often be in the business of giving away outs, especially with their cleanup hitters. But there were some mitigating factors, as Patrick notes: Duda does not seem to hit lefties all that well and Josh Spence has been devastating against lefty hitters. Plus Duda has been hitting lots of hard grounders lately, and a double play in that spot would have been a back-breaker.

I’m not sure the Mets should have been playing for one run in that spot, but a team’s chances of scoring with runners on second and third and one out are slightly better than with runners on first and second with none out.

For his part, Duda said he felt confident he could get the bunt down even if he doesn’t often bunt in games. He said he works on bunting a lot and thinks he is a good bunter. To his credit, his bunt was much, much better than most we have seen from Mets pitchers this season.

Of course, if Duda popped it up or fouled it off to go in an 0-1 hole then struck out, we’d be killing him for the decision today and destroying Terry Collins for not overriding him. Or at least I’d be. I’m willing to admit that hindsight is 20/20 here.

Second straight sandwich from Catch of the Day, in right field on the field-level concourse. This review comes with help from my wife, a trusted and distinguishing sandwich source.

The lobster roll costs $17. By my standards that’s a bit steep for any meal, and certainly at a ballpark. But by lobster-roll standards it doesn’t seem that unreasonable. The in-stadium markup on lobster rolls at Citi Field seems pretty small relative to the markups on other food items, most notably hot dogs, soda and pizza.

The lady reports: “It is everything a lobster roll should be; not more or less. You get a good amount of lobster meat and it tastes surprisingly fresh, not fishy. There’s not too much mayonnaise, the celery is crisp, and the bread is soft.

I took a bite of this myself, despite my stomach’s objections. This assessment seems accurate. It’s about an average lobster roll, and an average lobster roll is very good.

And I should note that my wife and I have pretty high standards for lobster rolls, as we both grew up near (and I once worked at) Jordan Lobster Farm, a wholesale/retail lobster market locally renowned for its version of the sandwich.

Talking about things related to the Mets, tangentially associated with the Mets, and not at all involving the Mets with Toby Hyde and Patrick Flood. Streaming below and on iTunes here.

Feedback is welcome at MostlyMetsPodcast@gmail.com and in the comments section below. A full rundown follows the dealie-who.

Also: I make the point about how chicken is the only meat we call by the name of the animal, but I fail to note that we do the same with goat even after the long discussion about eating goat.

Opening: Monday Night was Fun
3:00 Bye-bye Murph
7:00 Is this random?
10:00 Where’s the SNY softball team?
16:00 Ted Buys a Glove
18:00 Why We Watch
28:00 Who Remembers Jeff Duncan?
30:00 Josh Satin…
38:00 What about Zobrist?
45:00 Savannah Sand Gnats Kid Promotion/Who’s roasting a Goat?
58:00 The price of being an early adopter
58:00 Picking Guys
1:00:00 Pagan Discussion
1:08:00 Can the Mets build a better bullpen?
1:10:00 What does Pedro Martinez do all day?
1:24:00 Patrick says smart things about the Mets’ path to today through 2011
1:29:00 Oliver Perez!

Before last night’s game, Terry Collins told reporters that the Mets “have to be open-minded enough to think the outfield may be a spot” for Daniel Murphy.

Presumably neither Collins nor Sandy Alderson saw much of Murph’s first go-around in the outfield in late 2008 and early 2009, when Shea Stadium’s left field seemed to expand to a hundred times its normal size: a sprawling grassland stamped flat by Murphy hustling in every direction in dogged pursuit of balls hit past him, over him and sometimes right at him.

But then maybe it’s better Alderson and Collins missed that. If Murphy can hit anything like the way he did for the Mets in 2011, his bat plays in an outfield corner — way better than it does at first base. Murphy’s .320/.362/.448 line this season and .292/.343/.441 career mark are better than the league averages in both corner outfield spots this year, and notably better than the (perhaps flukishly low) .256/.322/.404 line posted by Major League left fielders in 2011.

Gone are the days when the average left fielder had an .820 OPS. Barry Bonds, as they say, ain’t walking through that door.

And for as bad as Murphy looked in left field, it was 59 games at a brand-new position for young player in his first days in the big leagues. If the Mets find a spot for Murphy in the outfield, his first handful of games there shouldn’t deter them from trying it again.

That’s the thing, though: Where exactly does Murphy fit in the outfield? Last I checked, the Mets are committed to paying Jason Bay at least $35 million through 2013 with a vesting option for 2014. So Murphy plays right, then?

I guess the idea is that trying Murphy in the outfield again offers the club flexibility. A good left-handed bat that could play five different positions would be a pretty damn valuable thing to have, it would just mean the team would have to continue suffering some of the mistakes that come from Murphy’s defensive inexperience and expect that he’ll repay them on offense.

Since I broached the topic of Bay: Earlier in the season, when his OPS floundered below the Ordonez Line, Bay looked like one of the game’s most untradeable players. His recent torrid stretch pushed his OPS up over .700 Monday night, and those two years, $35 million and vesting option now look… well, still pretty hard to deal.

Just thinking out loud here, but is there any way Bay finishes the season hot enough to allow the Mets to get out from under his contract this offseason?

He has raised his OPS 82 points in his last 10 games. He won’t maintain this pace, but if he can even match that gain over the course of the rest of the season, he’ll finish with a well better line than this year’s awful average left fielder. If that happens, could the Mets find a taker for Bay in return for, I don’t know, a low-level prospect and some salary relief? (Depends on how much salary relief.) Would they? How much of Bay’s deal should they be willing to eat to unbury themselves from the rest of it?

These are offseason questions, and perhaps unnecessary ones; Bay has teased us before.

But neither Murphy nor Lucas Duda seem to have the arm strength typically associated with right fielders, and moving Bay would allow the Mets to employ one of their less-expensive, homegrown (and likely more productive) bats in the outfield while using whatever part of Bay’s salary they save to upgrade elsewhere. That is, if it’s at all possible.