Depending on what you read, rich guy Steve Cohen is either close to buying, very interested in buying, or not at all buying some share of the New York Mets.

You can’t see me shrugging. But I’m shrugging.

I’ve never brokered a $200 million deal, but I imagine these things are wonderfully complex even when one party isn’t mired in a massive billion-dollar lawsuit. So I figure the sale of the Mets is a pretty complicated thing, there’s little advantage to any party involved to be forthcoming to the press about any of it until it’s done, and there are hundreds of hungry sports and financial journalists desperate to take even the tiniest scrap of information and spin it into misleading or downright false conclusions.

So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t believe a single thing I read about the partial sale of the Mets until the Mets are partially (or, for that matter, wholly) sold.

Just think back to that Reyes injury in LA a few years ago. They didn’t send him back to NY and instead had him see the Dodgers team doctor who said he had a calf injury. He then played and ended up having a torn tendon in his hamstring. After nonsense like that, you’re going to see guys flying back to NY when they have a runny nose.

– ChrisJM, comments section here.

This is a good point. I am pwned.

With doctors in New York determining Ike Davis needs DL time for his injured ankle, Fernando Martinez will join the Major League Mets in Colorado.

(I know this point has been made a number of times before, but I’ll bring it up again: Is there really no way to get Davis an MRI in Colorado in the year 2011? I get that the Mets want him handled by their own doctors, but with their resources, do you mean to tell me there’s no way they could find a Denver-area MRI tube into which to shove Davis’ leg, and no way to get those scans to Dr. David Altchek in some manner more timely than actually physically shipping Ike Davis to New York? What about that Philippon fellow that Carlos Beltran favors? Doesn’t he kinda owe the Mets one at this point?)

At first glance, Lucas Duda seems a more natural fit for the big club than the Fernanchise, since Duda can replace Davis at first base. But Duda has been out since Sunday with a sore back. Nick Evans, who also plays first base, is out of options and no longer on the 40-man roster.

Martinez is on the 40-man and was playing well at Triple-A. He homered in his last two games for Buffalo and has an .838 OPS in 65 at-bats on the season. He hits lefty, meaning the Mets finally gain a lefty bench bat better than Willie Harris.

But therein lies the rub. Martinez, no matter how long we’ve been hearing about him, is still only 22 — more than  a year younger than Kirk Nieuwenhuis, if you’re playing at home. Moreso than the 25-year-old Duda, Martinez needs to be playing regularly, picking up the much-needed Triple-A reps he has lost to injury the past several seasons, working to make good on his now-lost top-prospect status.

He should not be with the big club to ride the pine for long. I don’t think anyone wants Martinez playing center field regularly, and neither Jason Bay nor Carlos Beltran appears apt to relinquish reps in a corner to the unproven outfielder. It’s fine to call Martinez up for a few days in a pinch, but if Duda’s going to be on the shelf for a while, the Mets need to make another move.

Davis’ absence means Daniel Murphy will slide over to play first base on most days without an obvious backup. Josh Thole played first in the Minors and presumably Chin-Lung Hu could handle the position defensively (though that would be a Miguel Cairo type of embarrassment offensively), but in an ideal world you’d like to have a backup for Murphy at first to afford Martinez the opportunity to get regular at-bats in the Minors.

But who’s playing first base in Buffalo?

Oh… oh my.

Do it.

And lest you say the Mets don’t have room on the 40-man roster, remember that Jenrry Mejia can be put on the 60-man Disabled List, creating a space.

Do it. Do it.

It’s just possible the real Jason Bay — the guy who hit all those home runs for the Pirates and Red Sox — is stashed somewhere in Charlie Samuels’ basement.

That is about as good an explanation as any for Bay’s continued invisibility in the Mets lineup as Samuels, the team’s former clubhouse manager, faces charges he swiped $2.3 million worth of trinkets from the club over the years.

– Mike Puma, N.Y. Post.

No it’s not.

Better explanations, off the top of my head: Sample size, injuries, aging, park factor, massively diminished hr/fb rate, diminished strike-zone judgment.