If I were managing a ballclub, I’d want my best reliever in the game in the highest-leverage situation. If that happened to come in the sixth inning, after the starting pitcher grew tired and walked a couple of guys in a tie game, would I be smart to bring in one of the worst pitchers on my staff because I’m reserving a better one for the eighth inning, when he’ll come in with no one on base?

– Me, here, March 8.

Not trying to be snarky. Wait, yes I am. Seriously though, ugh.

To be fair to Jerry Manuel, Raul Valdes had been pretty dominant coming into Friday’s game. Still, he’s been used a ton of late, and he’s Raul Valdes.

And Manuel had stated before the game that Ryota Igarashi — on the strength of his recent performances — would be the “eighth-inning guy” Friday, implying that Manuel believed Igarashi to be the team’s second-best available reliever. If that was the case, Igarashi probably should have been in the game in the seventh, if not after Oliver Perez tired then certainly after Fernando Nieve loaded the bases.

NUMBERS DON’T LIE: If Manuel’s decision Wednesday night to use Fernando Tatis as a pinch-runner and Alex Cora as a pinch-hitter in the 10th inning seemed curious, statistics and history backed him up: Cora is simply a better pinch-hitter.

In 88 pinch-hit at-bats, Cora has 25 hits and one home run, for a .291 average. Tatis is 19-for-79 (.241), with two homers.

– Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.

Yeah, I know the whole “small-sample size” thing is bandied about a whole lot at this point of the season, but I’m going to to ahead and invoke that clause here. Tatis has a lifetime .788 OPS in 3417 plate appearances.

Cora has a lifetime .657 OPS in 3484 plate appearances.

Perhaps Tatis is every bit as unclutch as Mets fans seem to believe he is and he would have locked up in that spot, and maybe Cora can actually will himself to first base in pinch-hitting situations in way he somehow can’t in most other at-bats, but I refuse to accept that Cora is “simply a better pinch-hitter” than Tatis, who is simply a better hitter.

Reader Ryan gives credence to the Chris Carter Movement via simple, elegant t-shirt. You can, and probably should, order one here:

Talking about pitching with actual former Major Leaguers = easily the best part of this job. My only regret is that we don’t tape the way-longer conversations we have to prepare for these bits, which are a bit saltier.

Jon Niese threw 99 pitches, but only 10 were curveballs — supposedly his signature “out” pitch and what many feel is his best weapon. Though, from what we understand, the thin air in Colorado destroys the vertical break of even the best curves. I liked what I saw from Niese’s ability to handle himself in the postgame interviews, and believe he is mentally and emotionally prepared to pitch in New York. Unfortunately, he appears to be extremely vulnerable without the deuce. But, it’s likely the last time in 2010 he pitches at a mile-high altitude, so he should get back to being the MLB-average pitcher the Mets need him to be. I’m not concerned in the least.

– Joe Janish, Mets Today.

That seems about right. I forgot all about that factor while watching Niese pitch last night, though, and I kept wondering what happened to his reliable Uncle Charlie.

Indeed, according to ESPN New York, Niese told reporters after the game, “I really didn’t have a feel for my curveball. I tried to throw it for a first-pitch strike and I just really couldn’t get it there. … It’s tough to get a good curveball going here. I left a lot of curveballs hanging in the bullpen when I really wanted to bounce it. To Barmes, I left that hanging and he hit it.”

Mystery solved, then. And that should, as Janish suggests, quiet immediate concerns about Niese. If you’ve got doubts about the effects of altitude on curveball specialists, check out the late Darryl Kile’s career in Colorado, juxtaposed with his seasons immediately before and after.

Based on some of the comments, I’m guessing I didn’t clearly explain what I meant to say in my post earlier this morning. What I meant to say is this:

I’m as disappointed as any Mets fan about the way the team is run, but it has nothing to do with the first seven games of this season. These games have been indicative of many of the problems that have troubled the Mets over the past several seasons, but they are only seven games, and so getting riled up only on account of them — if you were more optimistic before the season — is probably silly. The Mets are better than their .286 winning percentage. A .286 winning percentage would make them one of the worst teams of all time, and I don’t think anyone thinks they’re that.

The Mets can’t bring back Nelson Figueroa from the Phillies now, but they can still work to unbury themselves from the mire by revisiting several of the decisions they likely mishandled near the end of Spring Training and in the early parts of this season.

A couple, real quick:

– Start Angel Pagan in center field every day: It sounds as if this is already starting to happen, and based on the overwhelming response to yesterday’s poll, I’m not sure I need bother explaining why it should (also: thanks for reading, Gary Matthews Jr.!).  But to put it simply, Pagan is most likely a better defender than Matthews and almost certainly a better hitter, and the team as currently constructed needs all the offense it can get.

Yes, Pagan makes mistakes in the field and on the basepaths, but no matter how frustrating they can be, they are not enough to mitigate what he offers to the club over Matthews.

– Call up Chris Carter to replace Mike Jacobs: This one’s a lot less likely to happen, but I’m sticking with my position on the matter from before the season. Carter’s not off to the best of starts at Triple-A Buffalo, but he’s more likely to get on base than Mike Jacobs and more likely to knock one out than Frank Catalonotto, even if he lacks that elusive Major League experience.

I understand the calls for Ike Davis given Davis’ impressive Spring Training performance and hot start to the year. And I recognize that it seems somewhere between odd and hypocritical for the Mets to be patient with Davis while throwing Jenrry Mejia to the wolves, but the first-base prospect — as impressive as he is — did strike out in more than 25 percent of his plate appearances in Double-A last season while struggling with left-handers. Davis’ time will come, but until he proves he can hit Triple-A pitching (across more than 26 plate appearances), Fernando Tatis and Carter can hold down the fort more aptly than Jacobs until Daniel Murphy returns.

As for the rest? Calls for the heads of Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel, while understandable, are unrealistic. Those cases should have been made — and in many cases, were made — long before the season started. If the the powers-that-be felt confident enough in their general manager and manager to endure the offseason and start the year with them, changing their minds now would indicate a near-horrifying lack of confidence in their decision-making ability. I’m not entirely sure how or why that matters outside of the inevitable bad press, but it certainly wouldn’t send the best message to the replacement hires.

As for John Maine? In the absence of Figueroa, Maine should probably get at least a few more opportunities to work out his kinks before he’s dispatched to Triple-A or the bullpen. Yes, he looked shaky all Spring and awful in his first two starts, but two starts are two starts, and among all the legitimate concerns about Maine’s velocity and control, it’s easy to forget that he did pitch effectively in a small sample after returning from injury last season. Sure, he beat himself after last night’s game, but Maine beats himself up after every bad start — resist the urge to resort to armchair psychology.

Brrrrump bum ba bum, bum bum bum bum ba bum!

Hear that? An angry mob of restless Mets fans, torches lit, are beating their drums. The drums are getting louder now as their crowd swells, and with the pulsing rhythm comes a cacophonous chorus of chants:

FIRE JERRY! CALL UP IKE! CAN MINAYA! F@#$ JOHN MAINE!

Brrrrump bum ba bum, bum bum bum bum ba bum!

The once-Shea Faithful appear no longer that, and perhaps rightfully so. Their team mustered only two wins in its first seven games of a season in which they were promised results, coming off a season in which they got none of them.

And the patient contrarians who cry “sample size,” point to a long season and call for calm are drowned out by the drumbeat, hushed by angry villagers yelling, “sample size? I’ll show you sample size! We’re going on four years worth of sample size.”

Still, though the Mets are not very good, their fans should take solace in the fact that they’re almost certainly not this bad. Despite their 2-5 record, they’ve only been outscored 33-30, and they managed that without Jose Reyes for four of their games.

Things will get better. Perhaps not much, but better for certain. They can’t get much worse than they were in last night’s loss to the Rockies.

What’s most puzzling about the drumming is how much of it appears fueled by shock, as if anything happening in front of us is surprising. The 2010 Mets feature several excellent players who have not been good enough to carry too much dead weight in the lineup and on the pitching staff; a top-heavy roster poorly constructed and too frequently mismanaged.

This is a new thing?

I was working on a post on this subject but I feared it would amount to preaching to the choir. So answer me this, so I know if I should go on:

[poll id=”7″]