Still, the worst-kept secret in Flushing is the Mets likely will deal Reyes before the trade deadline, ensuring they get something in return before he becomes a free agent at the end of the season. The cash-strapped Mets have no interest in paying Reyes the $100 million contract he’ll demand. Bottom line: Come Opening Day 2012, Tejada will be the Mets’ shortstop.

Why the pretense if that’s the case? Why not start Tejada at shortstop now and move Reyes to second base? Why can’t the future start now?

– George Willis, N.Y. Post

Wait, hold on a sec… First of all — wait, no no no… OK. OK, where to start? Well for one thing, there’s… Oh, screw it.

The Mets won last night in the pouring rain, as you know. Justin Turner had two more doubles and two more RBIs, raising his OPS for the season to a sterling small-sample .885, best among the five men who have played second base this season for the Mets.

It seems fashionable now to come out and say, “Oh, well we knew all along that Turner was probably the Mets’ best option at second base,” but in a MetsBlog poll taken on March 16, only 7.89 percent of readers felt Justin Turner deserved the bulk of playing time. And in an Amazin’ Avenue poll taken the next day, Turner wasn’t even included — probably because he (rightfully) didn’t seem a very likely option at that point. So who was it saying all along that Turner was probably the Mets’ best option at second base?

Me, baby! Me!

But before I celebrate too much, I should note a few things: Most importantly, Turner probably won’t rock the .885 OPS all season. It fact, it’s downright unlikely. You might even say he’s crushing the ball over a tiny 52 plate-appearance sample and that though he looks great right now, lots of players have looked great in their first go ’round in the bigs only to wind up floundering back in the Minors by the end of the season.* There’s reason to believe in Turner based on his history of strong hitting in the Minors, but let’s not anoint him the second coming of Chase Utley just yet.

Second: Despite the best intentions of the Justin Turner Lobby, the Mets’ front office probably played the second-base situation the right way, given the personnel and Brad Emaus’ Rule 5 status. Even though Turner’s Triple-A stats were more impressive than Emaus’ due to park and league factors, the only way the Mets could continue to evaluate Emaus was to keep him on the big-league roster. They did, and after a couple of rough weeks they determined he was not special enough to hold on to for the full season.

It seemed like they pulled the trigger a bit too quickly at the time, and Sandy Alderson admitted that they might not have cut Emaus if the Mets were winning a few more games. But Daniel Murphy’s not-terrible defense at second combined with Emaus’ underwhelming adjustment to Major League pitching obviously made the decision easier. Emaus is back to crushing the ball in the Pacific Coast League now and still has a chance to be a productive Major Leaguer, but it seems unlikely he’ll be so much better than Turner to have merited sticking with him through his struggles.

*- Remember when Luis Hernandez killed it for a couple of weeks last year? Remember when someone unironically reported that Luis Hernandez would be the Mets starting second baseman in 2011? Luis Hernandez has a .518 OPS in Triple-A.

This is going to sound like Scott Templeton stuff but I promise you it’s true.

I got an opportunity to talk to some high-school kids in East Harlem yesterday afternoon. I miss some aspects of working in a school and I forgot how hilarious teenagers can be, so I had a great time.

The school happens to be across the street from the headquarters of Harlem RBI, a community youth baseball program through which Carlos Beltran has done a bunch of charity work. Many of the kids in the class played baseball in the program, and nearly all of those that did had a story about meeting Beltran. One guy, Rob, got to shag flies while Beltran took batting practice during his rehab stint in Brooklyn in 2009.

It was sweet. Back when I worked in a high school, I often had to rely on the television program “The O.C.” to find common ground with students, so it was pretty great to meet 14-year-olds as eager as I was to discuss Carlos Beltran’s awesomeness.

Another kid, Anton — a big Mets fan — said he wears No. 15 every season in honor of Beltran. He said this season the team’s No. 15 jersey is way too big on him, but he wears it anyway. He asked me if I could tell Beltran that.

I probably will.

Of course, the remaining Beltran haters out there will probably argue that he selfishly brainwashed these kids by giving of his time through charitable efforts or something. Nabobs nattering negatively.

That’s the cold-hearted reality of the Mets’ world. They are sitting on a gold mine of a deal and it could blow up in their face. Put the wheels in motion. This season has disaster written all over it.

The Curse of Citi Field struck again as Chris Young (shoulder) and Jenrry Mejia (elbow) underwent surgery and Ike Davis (ankle) was sent to Port St. Lucie to begin his rehab.

– Kevin Kernan, N.Y. Post.

As they watch an ever-evolving lineup shift around them, they can’t help but be struck by the irony that they are finally in a position to make the Mets go, but there aren’t enough parts. It’s like having a Ferrari with four flat tires. This is more evidence that the Mets are truly a cursed team.

– Tim Smith, N.Y. Daily News.

Man, series of great points here about how the Mets are cursed, what with David Wright and Ike Davis and Johan Santana being on the DL and all, and with the two straight losing seasons and — oh my goodness — four straight years without a playoff berth. Except that one nagging issue:

There’s no such thing as curses.

Mumbo-jumbo. Hokum. Nonsense. A curse is not a reasonable way to explain away a team’s struggles, nor, really, is lumping in the 2011 Mets’ problems with those endured under the prior front-office.

For one thing, though the DL stints have been frequent this season, they have yet to prove as crippling as they were in prior years. And — the case of Wright’s injury notably excepted — the current front office’s willingness to move quickly to put a player on the disabled list marks a vast departure from the prior administration, under which players were often pushed to play through injuries (sometimes with disastrous results) and managers forced to operate with short-handed rosters.

Though the club is currently stretched paper-thin, it has to date found at least vaguely viable Major Leaguers to fill in for its injured regulars. All teams deal with injuries practically all the time. Occasionally the injuries are insurmountable. Other times, with a deep enough roster and Major League-ready fill-ins in Triple-A, a team can overcome a rash of misfortune.

The Mets are 19-22. It’s not great. They face at least another week without their starting first baseman, and a couple weeks without their best player. But they haven’t tanked yet. And it’s May 18.

If you want to investigate a real, rational explanation — beyond a “curse” — for the Mets’ injury troubles over the past few years, go to town. Trainer Ray Ramirez and his staff are holdovers from last season, but it’s hard to hold them accountable for the injuries to Wright and Davis — both of which occurred in on-field collisions.

Remember when the Red Sox were cursed?

Briefly: I feel like every article I read about Carlos Beltran these days starts with a lengthy introduction about how many or most Mets fans will never appreciate Carlos Beltran, then goes on to explain that Beltran is actually awesome.

If you’re reading this site, you’re familiar with those general themes.

But I wonder if at this point most Mets fans actually do appreciate Beltran’s contributions to the Mets. It sure seems like I read a lot more articles praising Beltran than blaming Beltran, though I’ll amount that the blogosphere is probably not the best barometer of the larger Mets fanbase.

I know there are at least a few stubborn Beltran-blamers out there, some so steadfast in their moronic dedication to confirmation bias that it borders on performance art, but it feels like the Mets fans I interact with on the Internet at least have mostly come around to thinking that Beltran has done way more good than harm for the club in his tenure in Flushing.

A lot of it is certainly nostalgia, and the knowledge that Beltran’s certainly a goner at some point in the near future. A lot of it has to do with his hot start.

But whatever it is, good. People need to recognize.

I had a crappy day yesterday. It was certainly nothing tragic and nothing, in truth, that will even negatively impact today. I just suffered a steady stream of minor annoyances, starting with getting caught in a cloudburst at 9:15 a.m., ending with missing my train at 9:54 p.m. — first-world problems all, but in such a relentless onslaught that if the events of my day were condensed into the opening montage of a movie, you’d probably say, “this movie sucks, no one has days like that.” It was like a coin coming up tails 12 times in a row or something.

As a byproduct of some of that I missed a good portion of the Mets game, including what I understand were some pretty frustrating bunts. I tuned back in right after one of them, so I did see — in thrilling high definition — the part where Justin Turner ripped a ball that somehow redirected off Hanley Ramirez to Omar Infante to perfectly set up a double play. I also caught the part where Ryota Igarashi went to a full count on to Marlins reliever Burke Badenhop then yielded a go-ahead base hit to Marlins reliever Burke Badenhop.

And then, of course, I watched pinch-hitter Jon Niese smack a triple over Emilio Bonifacio’s head in center field, only to have Jose Reyes strike out to end the game with the mighty Chin-Lung Hu looming on deck.

Apparently Hu came in to pinch-hit — which should never happen — in part of the game I missed earlier. He was sent to Triple-A while I was asleep later. Hu grounded into a fielder’s choice in his lone at-bat, sparing himself the indignity of going to Buffalo with strikeouts in more than half of his plate appearances.

But he’s gone now, as is Igarashi, the Mets’ Far East contingent banished to Western New York. They are replaced on the roster by Ruben Tejada and Pedro Beato, with Nick Evans likely to join the team whenever David Wright goes kicking and screaming to the disabled list.

So really the only thing we’re left with to complain about in last night’s game is the bunting, and that’s nothing new. That’s bunting. Managers love bunting.

You have enough days, you’re bound to have some bad ones. Sometimes Burke Badenhop’ll beat you. You can’t win ’em all, like they say.

According to Sandy Alderson, doctors at the Hospital for Special Surgery diagnosed David Wright with a stress fracture in his lower back today. Wright is out of the lineup tonight while the Mets seek a second opinion, and Alderson stressed that the injury — if the diagnosis is accurate — would require no more than a couple of weeks of rest.

So that sucks.

But then the bright side, I suppose, is that the Mets have been hitting without getting much from Wright and that — if Alderson is correct that the injury is not one that will linger — they will benefit from the addition of a healthy Wright to the lineup in a few weeks. Obviously it doesn’t help that they’re already without Ike Davis, though.

You really don’t want Willie Harris playing third base — or anywhere — on an everyday basis. So someone has gotta figure something out. Is this how the suddenly Nick Evans winds up back in Flushing, out of options though he may be?

David Wright is not playing today, which seems like pretty bad news. Wright sat out Thursday’s game against the Rockies to rest his aching upper back, and if David Wright is missing two games within the course of a week that means something’s up. Apparently Sandy Alderson is addressing the press momentarily, so I’m sure we’ll find out what’s up via Twitter barrage soon.

Bob Ojeda is chatting live during the third inning of tonight’s game, which is better news. The chat is already open so you can start asking him stuff now.

I am, as if often the case, the moderator of said live chat — the one that will inevitably be accused of carrying out some grand Wilpon conspiracy when I don’t put through the question about why the Mets aren’t signing Manny. This means I’ll be at the studio pretty late tonight, which means I’m cutting out of the office pretty early today. You don’t care about any of that except in that in relates to you, of course, which is to say it’ll be pretty quiet here the rest of the day.