Among  the bright spots for the Mets in the early part of the season is the play of young first baseman Ike Davis. Because of the amount of turnover on the Mets’ roster, on their bench and in the front office, Davis seems like he’s been in Flushing for a while now. But the 24-year-old has only 170 Major League games under his belt.

It’s silly to read too much into Davis’ hot start this season since it comes across only 95 plate appearances. But his .338/.421/.600 line in 2011 bolsters his career totals, and when trying to evaluate players it is best to use the largest sample of data available.

Davis can now boast a career 124 OPS+, precisely the average for NL first basemen in 2010. By the eye and by the stats, he has been excellent defensively at first base. And of course, Davis is a 24-year-old who entered big-league play last season with only 65 games above A-ball. So it’s reasonable to expect he’s still getting better.

It’s not reasonable to expect him to maintain this pace all season, since that’d place him among the very best hitters in the game and that’s a lot to ask for from anyone. But the hot start provides more evidence that he’s a viable Major League first baseman and can be a valuable piece of the Mets’ next contender, whenever that happens.

Also, his beard is good.

Armed with the giant $105 million contract extension he signed last week, Milwaukee Brewers star Ryan Braun had to figure that he’d see an increase in the already-large number of marriage proposals he gets from female fans.

But who knew one woman would try to separate herself from the posterboard-toting pack at Miller Park by printing her cell phone number above her suggestion? And yet that actually happened on Friday night as the fräulein above made sure to place all 10 of her digits on her very earnest offer.

– ‘Duk, Big League Stew.

Good writeup from Big League Stew of a strange series of events in Milwaukee that ended with Ryan Braun reaching a cellphone with a full voicemail box.

But as a Shea Stadium employee during the 2000 season, I can assure you that Braun is by no means the first handsome bachelor ballplayer to be offered phone numbers via posterboard.

Vendors had to be at games two and a half hours before first pitch to get assignments. That process only took about 20 minutes, so there was a whole lot of sitting-around time. Usually I found a spot in the field level and read while the Mets took batting practice.

As soon as the gates opened, almost without fail, about five to ten women would stream down to the the area behind the Mets’ dugout with signs like, “MARRY ME MIKEY P!” or “The Future Mrs. Piazza” with an arrow pointing down. Often they’d have phone numbers on them.

Whenever Piazza emerged from the dugout for warmups, they’d yell and whoop for him — like everyone did those days, understandably — and he’d often acknowledge the crowd with a tip of the hat.

Thing is, probably anybody in Shea Stadium that summer would’ve happily married Mike Piazza if he asked. He was that type of hero.

Readers — you, for example — seem to like it when I angrily or sarcastically respond to silly columns from elsewhere about the Internet. Whenever I survey people to determine what it is that keeps them (you) coming back to this site, several always mention that type of post. A couple have even compared them to the classic tear-downs from FireJoeMorgan.com — a massive compliment because that site was, in my opinion, the greatest sports blog to ever grace the world wide web.

So pretty frequently I get emails from outraged readers pointing me to similarly silly columns and asking me to write about them. I appreciate it.

Recently, you may have noticed, I have not written any such posts. You have also very likely noticed that there has been no shortage of Mets “analysis” practically begging to be lampooned.

At some point, I will become frustrated enough with some ill-considered and insubstantial column that I’ll be overwhelmed with snarky fury and go to town, for better or worse. Bad columns — or ones we deem bad — can be so thoroughly and obviously bad that they make for easy blog posts, and since I spend a good deal of time coming up with ways to fill space on this site and keep you distracted during your workdays, they are always tempting bait.

Until then, I urge you to consider this: No one forces you to read any of it. The truth is that it’s en vogue to rip the Mets and most coverage of the team is going to be awash with negativity until they start winning more games. And because a large majority of people seem to hate nuance and love talking points, the coverage will most likely reflect that, too.

It’ll never be, “Sandy Alderson should make calculated decisions to better the Mets’ future while considering the ways short-term losses would impact the team’s finances,” or anything along those lines. It’ll always be “FIRE SALE OH MY GOD THEY’RE HAVING A FIRE SALE EVACUATE ALL THE SCHOOLCHILDREN!”

Here’s the uplifting part of it all: Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, we can all watch every game, interpret the stats and monitor the transactions. Heck, we can all write about it too. The main thing distinguishing you and me from whatever sportswriter has pissed you off is the size of his platform (and maybe a couple of anonymous quotes confirming his opinions).

So yes, I have seen this article you sent me and I, too, disagree with many of the sentiments expressed therein and several of the foundations upon which they are based. And by all means keep sending them, because at some point, like I said, I’ll get angry or lazy enough to write something about one.

Until I get there, remember that the negativity is inevitable. A cursory look at the Mets reveals a losing team coming off two losing seasons with owners mired in a scandal-tinged financial mess. Much of sports media, it seems, is more focused on reflecting public opinion than shaping it.

Can you give us any insight into how optimistic we should get about the Mets’ minor league pitching prospects? Familia, Holt, Carson, Mejia, Cohoon, and Harvey are looking anywhere between decent and drool-worthy (Harvey), but I don’t want to get my hopes up unnecessarily.

Also, is it a good idea to move Harvey up from St. Lucie to AA at this point? Conventional wisdom seems divided between not wanting to rush the guy through the system and trying to make sure he’s competing at the level he deserves.

– NeverSeenThemWinOne, via email.

There’s a saying, “There’s no such thing as a pitching prospect.” In a 2003 column for Baseball Prospectus, Joe Sheehan explains:

The principles behind TNSTAAPP are pretty simple. Pitchers are unpredictable. They’re asked to perform an unnatural act–throw baseballs overhand–under great stress, thousands of times a year. They get hurt with stunning frequency, sometimes enough to cost them a career, more often just enough to hinder their effectiveness. (Modern medicine has dramatically changed what a pitcher can do to his arm and still have a career.) Even the better ones–Andy Pettitte, for instance–have wide year-to-year variations in their performance. It’s only the very top 0.1% of pitchers who are consistently good year-in and year-out over substantial careers.

That’s major-league pitchers, who have proven themselves to be the best in the world at what they do, and are physically mature. Minor-league pitchers have all of the inconsistencies of the class, and are still developing in significant ways: physically, mentally and emotionally. If you can’t predict where most major-league pitchers will be two years out, it’s quite a conceit to think you can predict where any minor-league pitcher will be even one year out.

That.

It’s understandable to be pretty excited about the results coming out of the Mets’ crop of young pitchers this season — and you can throw Jeurys Familia into the group of guys NeverSeenThemWinOne listed. But pitchers being pitchers, Mets fans should be satisfied if the entire group produces two solid rotation pieces and a couple of good bullpen arms.

Of course, aces have to come from somewhere and it’s certainly better to develop one from within than to look for one in free agency, when he’s likely to be extremely expensive and on the cusp of decline. Mejia, Harvey and Familia seem to garner the most hype for their upsides, so it’s fun for fans to cross our fingers, follow closely and hope everything falls into place for one of them.

But it’s best to be reasonable. Mejia has yet to throw 100 innings in a season, in part because of the silly bullpen experiment from last season. Familia walked 5.5 batters per nine last year. Harvey is still only four starts deep in his professional career.

As for that, a bit of perspective: Mike Pelfrey, another first-round pick, was nearly as dominant as Harvey in his first four starts in High-A ball at 22. Big Pelf struck out 26 batters while walking only two in his first 22 innings, posting a 1.64 ERA.

Harvey supposedly throws a good breaking pitch, so the Pelfrey comparison is hardly a great one. But let it serve as an example of what top-flight college pitchers with mid-90s fastballs can do to A-ball hitters. And to be fair, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Harvey winds up a league-average innings-eater like Pelfrey is. Sure, he wouldn’t be matching our massive expectations for first-round picks, but he’d be a valuable Major League commodity, something many, many top picks — especially pitchers — never become.

As for a promotion, this is far from my area of expertise but I’d guess the weather plays a role. Obviously pitchers have to learn to deal with crappy weather eventually, but since it does seem like the cold and rain increase the likelihood of injuries and since the Mets’ upper-level farm teams both play in upstate New York, there’s probably no sense pushing Harvey to a higher level until it warms up a bit around these parts. If he keeps pitching anything like this, I’d guess it’ll happen by June. I mean, he has a 0 ERA.

One other thing: Cohoon rarely gets any love on top prospects lists because he doesn’t have overpowering stuff, but he is a smart guy who throws strikes and has gotten results at every level. I’d love to see a study of how those guys end up compared to the Matt Anderson types (ie the exact opposite), but then I guess there’d be no scientific way of doing that since at some point you’d need to rely on subjective judgments.