I had a chance to talk to Wally Backman for a while at Mets Fantasy Camp. There’ll be more from that here sometime soon. We talked a bit about some of the prospects he had in Brooklyn this year. Here’s what he had to say:

Ted Berg: Obviously Cory Vaughn and Darrell Ceciliani had big years.

Wally Backman: To me they’re both Major League prospects. I think Darrell Ceciliani is going to be a guy that hits for average. Cory Vaughn’s got some power. He’s going to have to worry about his strikeouts — he has got to work on keeping his bat through the hitting zone longer. Ceciliani is real good at that.

They’re both pretty much complete packages. Darrell doesn’t have the power that Cory shows, but he’s a line-drive type hitter. He does have some power — he’s got some pop in his bat. Darrell’s going to be a kid that hits for a high average, and I think he’s going to eventually turn into a left fielder. He’s got great speed but he’s left-handed. Cory will probably stay in right field because of his arm strength.

They have a chance, as long as they stay healthy. I would like to see [the Mets] push those guys hard. I don’t know that they’ll do that, but I’d like to see both those guys go to St. Lucie this year and then possibly end up in Binghamton if they have a good half-year. And then they’re right there.

I think the other guy that has a chance is Ryan Fraser, the pitcher we drafted this last year. He sits at 94 mph with a 60 breaking ball, so if his command continues to improve, I’d put him on a fast track as well. The other kids we had in Brooklyn I think are more level-to-level players.

TB: Anyone else that should be on the Mets fan’s radar?

WB: Yohan Almonte, the young starting pitcher. He reminds me of a small Pedro Martinez, he–

TB: Smaller than Pedro?

WB: He’s smaller than Pedro. He did a great job for us this year. He’s only at 91 or 92 mph but he has got a great changeup and throws his breaking ball for strikes. So he throws all three pitches for strikes, and in the Penn league last year that made him pretty successful.

I just want him to be David Wright. I want him to be a good hitter. I know one thing, with our new hitting coach, who I think is gonna do a great job, I think he’ll be a little more selective at the plate, because of our philosophy, and so he’ll get more pitches to hit and I think he’ll do damage with those pitches.

– Terry Collins.

I’d love to see it in practice first, of course, but this is excellent to hear. People love to blame Howard Johnson for Wright’s struggles, and I have no idea if that’s legit criticism or just baseless speculation. Wright always praises HoJo, but then Wright’s not really the type to rip any of his coaches in public.

What’s obvious is that Wright was not as good in 2009 and 2010 that he was from 2006 to 2008. In consecutive seasons, he struck out more and walked less. He’s still great, but the trend is bad. Learning to be more selective — even for a patient hitter like Wright — could help reverse it. Or maybe just having input from a different voice.

And Collins’ point emphasizes one I have tried to make several times: For a hitter to produce runs, he must be selective. It’s not an either/or. To sustain yourself as a power hitter in the Major Leagues, you must know how to wait for your pitch. Not all power hitters walk as often as Wright, but they all walk sometimes. You have to know what you can and can’t hit (inside or outside the strike zone) and be able to somewhat regularly lay off the latter.

I don’t really see what about that is complicated, but an interminable Twitter argument I suffered through on Friday reminded me that it’s not something all fans are willing to grasp.

There will be blips, of course — Jeff Francoeur and Mike Jacobs have both enjoyed them. But eventually, well, you know.

I may have complained about being busy over the past couple of weeks, and one small part of that is because I’ve been planning and arranging a Spring Training trip.

This will be my first in a professional capacity. I went to Port St. Lucie for a long weekend in March with my dad and grandfather when I was 10, and then, in college, took a whirlwind tour of the Grapefruit League on the nerdiest Spring Break ever with a couple of my roommates.

I should be down there starting on Feb. 23, when the Mets are still in workouts, staying through the first week and a half of games.

Anyway, now the challenge is to come up with what to do when I’m there. I’m certainly going to have video responsibilities and I’m hoping that should produce some reasonably entertaining stuff. And obviously I’m going to be writing stuff.

But what stuff!? Some of it will probably come up on the fly, but I’d love your input. Plus I figured out how to use this contact-form thing Cerrone sometimes trots out.

You can make suggestions in the comments section if you want to discuss them publicly, or send ’em straight to me by filling them in below. Do you want to know who is the best shape of his life? Which pitcher is tinkering with a new pitch? Do you have a hot tip on a good sandwich on Florida’s Treasure Coast?

Also, I’m kidding about the spam thing. If you want an email back you should use your real address, but if you want to remain anonymous feel free to make one up.

Citi Field is a damn joke.

– Jeff Francoeur.

OK, Jeff Francoeur, I don’t want to come off as mean-spirited here or anything so please, don’t take this the wrong way. But here’s the thing, bro: You’re a terrible hitter.

Not terrible by regular human being standards. You’re definitely a better hitter than I am; I could never drive a 95-mph fastball 370 feet, something you’ve accomplished on numerous occasions. But by Major League standards, and the standards generally set for Major League corner outfielders, you’re just straight-up bad, dude.

Like, awful. Out of 26 qualifying right fielders in 2010, your wRC+ — probably the best offensive stat we have, even if it’s not on the scoreboard — was dead last. And by a lot. Actually, if we tally up all the stats from 2006 when you came into the league, you’re still at the very bottom of the list. Way below Kosuke Fukudome, way below Randy Winn, way below the pathetic shell of Shawn Green that the Mets trotted out in 2006 and 2007. You are baseball’s worst-hitting right fielder, by far.

That stat, I should add, is adjusted for the park in which you play your home games. Your struggles had nothing to do with Citi Field, and everything to do with you. You swing too much, and every pitcher in the league knows it. You’re doing it wrong, sir.

You can blame your struggles on any exterior source you want. And indeed, the Mets’ home park appears to be a difficult one in which to succeed offensively. But if the stadium’s dimensions were the source of your offensive inadequacy, why, I wonder, were nearly all of your teammates much better than you at hitting?

You can say anything you want about Citi Field, but — and again, I’m not trying to be mean because I understand you’re a really nice guy — you are the joke.

Honestly. At this site and many others, we laugh at your expense because you’re so bad at hitting and so good at somehow staying in the Major Leagues. Start thinking of factors you can blame in Kansas City — I don’t know, too much barbecue, maybe — because you’ll almost certainly need to explain why you don’t hit in 2011 either.

Excuse me for not caring much one way or the other that Terry Collins named Mike Pelfrey his Opening Day starter, something that sparked at least a little bit of bluster in the blog- and Twitter-sphere yesterday.

I suppose, yes, it’s early to do so, but then pitchers are creatures of schedule and they’ll need to start mapping out the Spring Training rotation to line up with the regular season soon enough.

And Pelfrey is at the very least the most proven of the starters likely to be in the Mets’ rotation, since R.A. Dickey and Jon Niese have only a year apiece of Major League success and Chris Capuano and Chris Young are coming off injury. I don’t think anyone’s expecting to pitch like Johan Santana just because he’s technically the No. 1 guy in the Mets’ rotation.

Again, like so many annoying arguments in baseball analysis, it comes down to silly and meaningless labels. Pelfrey shouldn’t be handed the Opening Day starter’s job because that’s for True No. 1s and Pelfrey is not a True No. 1. What is that? As long as he’s healthy coming out of Spring Training, he’s going to be in the rotation, right? So what difference does it make if he starts Friday, April 1 or Sunday, April 3?

Jerry Manuel would say — and did a bunch of times last year — that because of schedules the No. 1 pitcher will often match up with the opponent’s best. Problem is, that’s not really true.

The Mets’ Opening Day starter last year, Johan Santana, matched up with opponents’ Opening Day starters eight times in 29 starts in 2010. Take out Opening Day — when it is inevitable — and it happened once in every four of his starts. And one of them was Vicente Padilla and another was Zach Duke.

You’re hardly condemning Pelfrey to run a gauntlet of Hall of Famers by starting him on Opening Day. And it’s not like they have any pitcher that’s obviously better suited than Pelfrey to run a gauntlet of Hall of Famers anyway.

If the Mets are going to compete in 2011, it’s very likely they’ll have to do so with depth in the rotation but without a brand-name capital-letter True Ace Starter, at least not before Johan Santana returns from surgery. And since Pelfrey has proven himself durable and capable of pitching deep into games, he’s as good a choice as any to pitch the opener.