Per request.

Before the season, many Mets fans — myself included — expected Ike Davis would be one of the Mets’ best players, if not the Mets’ best player. Now, we talk about Ike Davis like he’s the worst kid on a Little League team. We celebrate his few loud outs and commend him for working deep into counts and excuse him when he’s victimized by what looks to be a questionable call by an umpire.

All that stuff has happened, no doubt. On top of everything else, Davis has very likely been unlucky this year. He’s got a .202 batting average on balls in play — well below his career .301 mark — despite an 18.5 percent line-drive percentage that actually betters his career rate. Still, he’s not putting as many balls in play, striking out more than he ever has before. And he’s not walking as much as he has in the past, either.

It’s not good. And the measures taken to fix Davis thus far don’t seem to have worked. Every time he appears to be coming out of his funk, he goes 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.

Early in the season, I was certain it was a bad idea to demote Davis based on a miserable slump over a small sample. As the sample grows larger and Davis continues to struggle, I’m no longer convinced it’s a bad idea. Davis and Terry Collins maintain that the first baseman needs to right himself at the big-league level, but he looks so lost that it seems like it can’t hurt to right him in Triple-A first. One-step-at-a-time type stuff.

With Jason Bay ready to come back and roster shuffling afoot, it’s hard to argue that the Mets’ best lineup right now includes Davis playing in it. I suspect his defense — currently maligned after he booted a ball last night — has prevented some throwing errors by his teammates, but it’s hard to imagine he has saved them anywhere near as many runs in the field as he has cost them at the plate.

If the Mets were already fading in the standings, it’d seem reasonable to stick with Davis until he turns it around. But the longer they stay in contention, the better the likelihood that they’ll be in contention at the end of the season. And if that’s the case, they’re going to want every win they can get. Davis, right now, is costing them wins.

But then regression is a powerful force in baseball, and there’s still more evidence that Davis is a capable Major League hitter than that he isn’t. If 12 more of his batted balls to date had fallen in for singles, his batting average on balls in play would be right near his career mark and he’d have a more palatable (but still bad) batting line around .230/.290/.345. That would, I suspect, be enough to stave off the demotion talk, especially with the Mets comfortably above .500.

Which is to say: I don’t know. People expect (and often provide) firm opinions on things like this, but the complexities and inherent randomness in baseball lend the sport to wishy-washiness. Maybe the Mets send Davis to Triple-A and he turns it around immediately, then comes back in a few weeks and leads them to the playoffs. Maybe they do, it crushes his confidence and he struggles all season. Maybe they stick with him and he goes to town on Yankee Stadium’s short right-field porch next weekend, then enjoys a prolonged hot stretch to match this slump. Maybe they stick with him and he stinks all year.

I am firm in my ambivalence on this one. Sorry. Call it a copout if you want, but I’m not going to argue on behalf of something I don’t fully believe.

No. Go past this, past this part. In fact, never play this again.

– Dark Helmet.

If you missed last night’s Mets-Nationals game, you found a much more satisfying way to spend four hours and fifteen minutes. Holy crap.

If you’re a glutton for punishment, here’s some brain-dumping:

– Not Scott Hairston’s fault.

– The play in the photograph above wasn’t really all that terrible, it was just the image on the AP wire that best embodied the game. Omar Quintanilla came about 10 inches from making what would have been one of the best plays I’ve ever seen. Jordany Valdespin, on the other hand, should not play shortstop. Remember all those times I said how Valdespin made 32 errors in 98 games at the position last year? I guess that’s what it looked like. And it’s not pretty. Kudos to him for crushing the ball twice to keep the Mets in the game, but not for ultimately booting it away.

– Daniel Murphy also did not play well on defense. I’ve defended Murphy’s defense all year as a work-in-progress that seems to be improving, but the errors are bad. Since he’s not likely to be a rangy second baseman ever, he needs to make the plays that are hit at him.

– The injuries definitely caught up with the Mets last night, most notably in the short-handed bullpen. I suspect Jon Rauch would be on the disabled list already if the Mets had an obvious answer on the 40-man roster to call up in his stead. They don’t. The only healthy, eligible pitchers on the 40-man are Jeurys Familia, who has walked 6.4 batters per nine innings in Triple-A this year, Jenrry Mejia, who started on Monday, and Robert Carson, who has been hit hard every time he’s been called on in a Major League game this season. Pedro Beato is eligible to come off the 60-day DL, but the Mets will have to take someone off the 40-man to get him back and he pitched two innings Monday. With Jason Bay expected to come off the disabled list today, there’ll likely be some roster shuffling.

– Chris Young was decent and very Chris Young-ish. At one point in about the 5th inning, when Young and Jordan Zimmermann were cruising, I thought, “I’m really tired and I might get to bed early tonight.” Whoops.

– Not Bobby Parnell’s fault either. Parnell threw a wild pitch that eluded Josh Thole and ultimately allowed the Nats to tie the game, but he also had three groundballs booted behind him.

– Also probably not Elvin Ramirez’s fault. Ramirez, perhaps having seen what his infield defense looked like, walked a batter and struck out the side in his first inning of work. In his second he appeared spent, but the Mets were playing two men short in the bullpen and with a limited starter.

– After his two shutout innings last night, Miguel Batista now has a 101 ERA+ with woeful peripherals. For his career, Miguel Batista has a 101 ERA+ with woeful peripherals. Miguel Batista appears to be Miguel Batistaing.

– Keith Hernandez lost his patience in extra innings and it was hilarious. He called Ross Detwiler a “rockhead,” which he probably could have used to describe nearly everyone who played in or watched the game. Besides Scott Hairston, of course.

– It’s only one game. Thankfully.

But there’s a niggling question that no one can bring themselves to verbalize—could it have been even better if someone other than Johan Santana was the one to break the streak? Does an individual effort mean more if it comes from someone more closely identified with the team?

Santana’s not beloved. He came to Queens a mercenary, and has anchored some of the more disappointing seasons in Mets history. He’s missed more than a full year, making it impossible to view his massive contract as anything but a disappointment so far. He’s not, for lack of a less disgusting crosstown term, a “True Met.” No one’s going to be wearing his throwback Mets jersey in 30 years. Maybe all that is forgiven and forgotten now, as he’s the central figure in what’s sure to be one of the franchise’s immortal moments, and maybe he’ll lead these likable Mets to an unlikely playoff run. Still, can a Mets fan look him or herself in the mirror and say they wouldn’t rather have had burgeoning folk hero R.A. Dickey be the one to finally break the curse? Or even a homegrown product like Niese or Gee?

– Barry Petchesky, Deadspin.

Wait… really? Maybe I’m out of touch with Mets fans, but is this something anyone — like anyone in the world — actually considered? That’s not a rhetorical question. Please, if you can produce any evidence that there’s a Mets fan anywhere besides members of Dillon Gee’s family who would have preferred Dillon Gee throw the Mets’ no-hitter, link it or describe it in the comments section below. And that’s nothing against Gee; he’s just not Johan Santana.

If it were Ollie Perez or Chris Young or Miguel Batista, maybe. But really, Johan Santana was not beloved? The guy who’s the best pitcher the Mets have had since Dwight Gooden?

I’m trying not to get too worked up over silly things I read these days, and the joke is probably on me for linking to it. But this one just seemed too far out there to let go. Unless, again, I’m way off-base. So help me out:

[poll id=”108″]

The Mets drafted high-school shortstop Gavin Cecchini and Purdue catcher Kevin Plawecki last night. Based on my extensive research, I can confirm that they are indeed human beings who play baseball. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. Toby Hyde has more at MetsMinorLeagueBlog.com, as does Alex Nelson at Amazin’ Avenue.

Generally, I never feel too strongly about the players the Mets choose in the draft, since I’m not a scout and I certainly haven’t spent nearly as much time researching amateur players as the Mets’ scouting department. To boot: They have a veritable army of trained scouts tracking amateur players across the country, and I am one guy who never pays any attention to the draft until a couple of days before it happens.

Since drafting is sort of a crapshoot in all sports — and especially baseball — the process seems more important than the specifics. And this year, thanks to new rules about slot compensation in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it’s hard to figure what makes for the best draft process. So I’ve got nothing.

Maybe Cecchini and Plawecki develop into superstars, maybe they suck. Most likely they’ll fall somewhere in the middle. The general consensus among people who know about this type of stuff seems to be that the Mets drafted a couple of high-floor, lower-ceiling players, but then, really, who knows? It’s almost cliched to mention this now, but Albert Pujols was drafted in the 13th round in 1999, when he was less than two years away from being a Hall of Fame-caliber hitter. No one drafted Brandon Beachy in 2008, and he’s leading the NL in ERA. Et cetera, et cetera. I’ll let you know how the Mets’ 2012 draft was in, like, six years.

If we take away Santana’s no hitter, or even qualify it, we’d have to similarly invalidate or downgrade pretty much everything that has ever happened in the history of baseball. The record books would contain nothing but asterisks.

– Matthew Callan, Amazin’ Avenue.com.

This. Qualifications of Santana’s no-hitter are so blisteringly stupid that they probably don’t deserve a response as thorough and considered as Callan’s. It happened. Johan Santana pitched a full nine-inning game and allowed zero hits. That’s a no-hitter. OK bye.