By the way, at what point is it not early…

– Matt Cerrone, MetsBlog.com.

I hate to defer to Mike and the Mad Dog on anything, but I always go with Memorial Day as the benchmark for when to start looking at baseball records and stats as things that might be actually happening and not just merely the whims of small sample size.

And yeah, two months of baseball isn’t really a very big sample size in the grand scheme of things either, especially when you’re talking about a player’s stats. But by then everyone’s so sick of qualifying everything that we all have to sort of agree to just talk about stuff as if it might be really happening and not as if there’s no way it lasts.

Anyway, the Mets still have 23 games to play before it stops being early.

When news broke yesterday that Pedro Beato was bound for the disabled list, many Mets fans and members of the media came out with woe-is-mes, here-we-go-agains and talk that the team is irrevocably cursed.

Here’s the thing though: The Mets have actually been (knock wood) reasonably healthy this season. After the events of 2009, we’re so jaded by injuries that we seem to assume the Mets are the only team that has them. But every team has them.

By this list, in fact, there are eight other teams with four players on the Disabled List and ten teams with more than four players on (or bound for) the Disabled List.

It seems like the team’s new front office has a quick trigger for placing players on the shelf, which should be welcome after the Omar Minaya Era. Both Beato and Angel Pagan said they didn’t think they needed the full 15 days and suggested that at a different point in the season they might have remained with the club. Sandy Alderson likely does not want to saddle Terry Collins with a short roster, although… well, I’ll get to that in another post soon.

Well that sucks. Again, probably better than trying to force him to pitch through it or giving him a couple of days off and rushing him back. Beato told SNY’s Matt Dunn that he was examined today and Dr. David Altcheck said he should be good in a week but that they’re taking 15 days as a precaution.

The bright side, I suppose, is we get to see if Mike O’Connor might make for a better lefty option than Tim Byrdak.

Can we all finally agree that “clutch” is a made up thing like ghosts and dinosaurs? #whithercarleverett?

– @ajdelb, via Twitter.

This Tweet came in response to something I wrote about David Wright the Unclutch doubling to lead off the bottom of the ninth with the game tied yesterday.

What the Tweeter in question is referring to, you may know, is that all the evidence we can gather so far discredits the idea that certain baseball players are inherently more “clutch” than others.

Because of a few particular moments, Derek Jeter is labeled clutch, and since he has that label we confirmation-bias the hell out of every hit he gets in a big spot. David Wright is labeled, by some, to be unclutch, and so many choose to overlook hits like the last night’s ninth-inning double.

I am preaching to the choir on this one, I think. But some quick info for those for whom this is new: The amazing website baseball-reference.com charts players’ stats in low-, medium- and high-leverage situations. They define leverage index as such:

Within a game, there are plays that are more pivotal than others. We attempt to quantify these plays with a stat called leverage index (LI). LI looks at the possible changes in win probability in a give situation and situations where dramatic swings in win probability are possible (runner on second late in a tie game) have higher LI’s than situations where there can be no large change in win probability (late innings of a 12-run blowout).

Across his career, David Wright can boast a stellar .303/.382/.514 batting line. In 954 plate appearances in high-leverage situations — the ones most important to the outcome of the game — he has a very similar .316/.388/.523 line.

Derek Jeter’s career line is .313/.384/.450. In high-leverage situations, it’s .315/.396/.428.

Click around baseball-reference.com and you’ll find that most players, with enough exposure to all situations, turn out to hit pretty much the same in clutch situations as they do in all others. It makes sense, too: If a player could willfully become better in certain spots, why would he not opt to be better in all spots? If the pressure in late-game situations compels him to focus harder and succeed more often, why is the pressure of playing televised professional baseball in front of thousands of screaming fans insufficient at all other times?

And that’s kind of the thing. A lot of people use this evidence to say that no player is clutch, but I think actually all players are clutch. To make the Major Leagues, you need to shoulder an enormous amount of pressure because baseball is, at its core, a game that demands individual success in the center of attention.

Plenty of people come up to bat with the game on the line in Little League, can’t handle the gravity of the situation, panic, strike out and cry. But they don’t make the bigs.

Certainly, players likely endure stretches when the game does get to their head, when they do “press” in big spots, when they do fail. But one of the mental requirements of Major League play is the ability to move past failure, since in baseball, as you know, that is inevitable.

So players wind up hitting about as well in clutch situations as they do in all others.

I keep making snarky references to the Alderson-only-cares-about-OBP meme on Twitter and people keep taking them seriously, so I’m going to be as straightforward as I possibly can:

Sandy Alderson, like every Major League GM, has more than one tool at his disposal with which to assess baseball players.

You may have heard about or even read the book Moneyball, which details the way the Oakland A’s front office identified a market inefficiency that existed in baseball in the late 80s and early 90s — namely that most teams did not properly value the ability to get on-base, the most important offensive skill.

And so, even though — in part because of the book Moneyball — that inefficiency no longer really exists, you apparently assume Alderson only looks at on-base percentage when evaluating players.

That is certainly not the case. When I suggest it is on Twitter, I am being sarcastic.

It is true that Jose Reyes’ on-base percentage has historically not been outstanding compared to those of other leadoff hitters.

But Reyes plays shortstop and very few shortstops hit as well as he does. In fact, dating back to 2006, really only three shortstops have hit better than Reyes: Troy Tulowitzki, Hanley Ramirez and Derek Jeter. All three are locked up to long-term contracts, and Jeter appears to be tanking rather rapidly.

Alderson, I assume, knows all this and will use the information to inform the Mets’ decision on how to approach Reyes’ future with the club.

Giants ninth. F.Rodriguez pitching. Burriss hit an infield single to shortstop. Burriss stole second. Ford hit an infield single to third, Burriss to third. Rowand fouled out to first baseman I.Davis, Ford to second. Tejada popped out to second baseman Dan.Murphy. Fontenot was intentionally walked. Posey flied out to center fielder Pridie.

– STATS Gameview

It’s tough to completely kill Francisco Rodriguez for loading the bases in the top of the ninth last night. Neither of the two hits left the infield. Darren Ford might have been out at first on his bunt if Daniel Murphy didn’t drop David Wright’s throw. Stuff like that.

Still, by loading the bases and escaping without allowing a run — as our man Catsmeat pointed out last night — Rodriguez managed to both raise his already massive WHIP and lower his puny earned-run average. If you’re playing at home, he now can boast a miserable 1.833 mark in the first metric — a rate to make Oliver Perez blush — and a 1.50 ERA.

This is why we know the sample sizes are still too small to make any judgments. Stuff like this can’t last.

Just for fun, I used the baseball-reference Play Index to look up how many guys have thrown at least 20 innings in a season with an ERA below 2.00 and a WHIP above 1.50. This is for a full season, so it’s not a fair assessment of the rarity of K-Rod’s stretch. Presumably many more players have gone 12-inning stretches with absurdly high WHIPs and low ERAs, the stats just got buried in the larger samples.

Anyway, it’s not a long list. And it turns out there was a pitcher named Crazy Schmit:

Check it out: Starting at 5 p.m., we’re live from McFadden’s at Citi Field.