Before you kill me, I realize that John Franco never pitched 100 innings in relief. I realized that when I asked, too. You know what I was getting at if you read here regularly, I suppose:

And so, I started watching Jacobs a bit more closely. And suddenly, involuntarily, I found myself rooting for him. Like I said up top, I don’t know exactly why. But I think it’s because of this: There’s a certain thrill in watching a Mike Jacobs at-bat. He seems — and I have to say “seems” because I have never asked him about this — he seems to understand exactly what’s happening around him. There’s something in his body language, in the joy he seems to get out of baseball, in the way he holds his bat … he seems to be saying to the pitcher:

“You know, I know, everyone here knows that I have some holes in my swing. And you know, I know, everyone here knows where those holes are located. I’m not going to hit the good fastball up and in. I’m not going to hit the sharp breaking ball. I’ll probably chase a pitch when behind in the count — let’s face it, I can’t really help myself, those pitches really look good. So, yeah, let’s be perfectly honest here: If you throw good pitches, you’re probably going to strike me out. And if you’re left-handed, you don’t even need to throw especially good pitches, you’re probably going to get me.

“But …

“Actually, BUT — it’s a big BUT …

“But if you make a mistake, I’m going to freaking hit the ball 700 miles.”

– Joe Posnanski, JoePosnanski.com.

I find Mike Jacobs’ at bats significantly less thrilling than Posnanski does, mostly because so far this season, they’ve all been tucked in between David Wright’s at-bats and Jason Bay’s at-bats.

There’s a reasonable case to be made the Jacobs shouldn’t even be on the Mets’ roster, no less starting at first base in Daniel Murphy’s stead, and it seems downright absurd that he should be hitting between the two best hitters in the Mets’ lineup.

(One note on the upcoming: People always misuse sandwich terminology in metaphors. They’d say, here, that it’s a good-hitter sandwich with Mike Jacobs in the middle. That’s not how you name sandwiches, though. You never say you want a whole-wheat sandwich with turkey in it.)

Jerry Manuel is serving an out-machine sandwich on good-hitter bread.

Jacobs is coming off two straight seasons with a sub-.300 on-base percentage, and he’s hitting among the three Mets in the lineup — Bay, Wright and Luis Castillo — who have proved they can reliably get on base at an above-average clip.

And for what purpose? Platoon splits, so the Mets aren’t susceptible to a tough righty reliever? Bay and Wright are undoubtedly better hitters than Jacobs against any pitcher, regardless of handedness. (So, most likely, is Fernando Tatis, for what it’s worth.)

Interestingly enough, Joe Janish pointed out last week that Jacobs has, in his career, hit far better when batting elsewhere in the lineup than while batting cleanup. The data is intriguing, but I’m unwilling — and I’d guess Joe is too — to say Jacobs could be expected to post an .867 OPS simply by hitting anywhere but the four-hole in the lineup. From a quick glance at gamelogs, it appears Jacobs has hit fourth mostly later in his stint with the Marlins and in the second half of 2009 with the Royals. Maybe his struggles there are less about a psychological block against the cleanup spot and more about coincidentally moving into it only after his league has figured him out.

Regardless, the Marlins pretty clearly have the book on Jacobs. He sure crushed a few foul balls last night, which were pretty awesome, but, you know, don’t count for much besides strikes.

I don’t really know why I’m beating this drum. I can’t imagine there are a lot of people out there still holding the candle for Jacobs to be hitting fourth for the Mets after seeing what he did in the team’s first two games. So I’ll stop now. I’m just frustrated, is all.

Until the Mets get serious about a No. 2 starter, they will have their troubles. They didn’t spend the money for John Lackey, who pitched six shutout innings in a loss to the Yankees, but somehow they have to find a No. 2 to fall in behind Santana.

Right now, it’s too much to ask Maine to be that pitcher. Based on spring training, the right-hander should be the No. 4 or No. 5. Manuel moved him up to the two spot, dropping Mike Pelfrey to No. 4 and Oliver Perez to five.

– Kevin Kernan, N.Y. Post.

It’s almost unfathomable how much ink has been spilled analyzing the order of the Mets’ pitching rotation the first time through. Kernan’s main point — that the Mets could have massively benefited from signing a starting pitcher this offseason — is reasonable. Pointing to the order in which they’ll pitch their starters is not.

Again: It just doesn’t matter. Mike Pelfrey is not the Mets’ No. 4 starter. He is the starter pitching the fourth game of the season. If he stays healthy and effective, he will start 33 games. If he’s the second- or third-best of the guys who finish the season in the Mets’ rotation, people will label him the No. 2 or the No. 3, and that’s fine. But it will have nothing to do with when in the week he pitches.

The Mets, I’m nearly certain, pitched Maine the day after Santana and Perez the day after Pelfrey for a reason, and it had nothing to do with thinking Maine was their second-best starter. Maine and Perez, based on last year’s results, are the starters least likely to go deep in games and so most likely to tax the bullpen. Santana and, for better or worse, Pelfrey, can generally be counted on for innings.

Pitching Maine and Perez on back-to-back nights could have been damning for a bullpen already full of uncertainty.

I don’t imagine Jerry Manuel or anyone else would go on record saying as much, because doing so would be a slight to Perez and Maine. But ordering the rotation like the Mets did is actually, given the way the organization has handled minor decisions lately, a pretty clever one.

As for Lackey, he looked great last night. But I’m going to wait until at least the conclusion of Year 3 of his five-year, $81 million contract before I start saying for sure that the Mets made a mistake in not signing him. And if we’re going off samples this small, the Mets have a pretty solid case for choosing Jason Bay instead: He’s got a 1.413 OPS so far.

So Nelson Figueroa is now a Phillie. Good for him, first of all.

Rob Neyer’s got a good post weighing in on Joe Janish’s post weighing in on the Mets’ failure to keep Figueroa in the first place, though — while Joe hints at it — neither really drives the issue home from the Mets’ perspective. Here’s that:

The Mets cut Figueroa — a known and decent, if unspectacular, commodity that likely represented their best rotation insurance policy for a rotation that desperately needs insurance — so they could carry three relievers who have never thrown a Major League pitch, all of whom had options on their contract, and one of whom could not reliably get the ball over the plate in Spring Training, and one of whom should almost certainly be in Double-A working to become a frontline Major League starter.

They cut Figueroa so they could carry Fernando Nieve, whom they were — perhaps justifiably — apparently more worried about losing through waivers.

They cut Figueroa so they could carry Sean Green, who also had options remaining on his contract, and who also could not reliably throw strikes in Spring Training while adjusting to a new arm angle.

No one expects Figueroa, who has been waived a billion times before this without being claimed, to go to Philadelphia and turn into Cy Young, or anything like it. They expect him to go to Philadelphia and continue pitching like Nelson Figueroa.

The gamble the Mets took — and the one I contend with — is that Green, Hisanori Takahashi, Ryota Igarashi and Jenrry Mejia, with a bunch of question marks attached to them, will pitch better than that, and better enough right out of the gate that it will have been worth parting ways with Figueroa despite all the uncertainty on their starting staff.

Color me skeptical.

With players from Venezuela, Japan, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico, as well as a 20-year-old rookie Panamanian shortstop, the Mets are the center of baseball’s melting pot….

According to baseball, 27.7 percent of the 833 major league players on opening day (a total of 231, including 83 on the disabled list) were born outside the 50 states, representing 14 countries and Puerto Rico. The Dominican Republic has the most, with 86; followed by Venezuela (58), Puerto Rico (21) and Japan (14).

There are more Mexicans (12) than Cubans (7), and more Australians (4) than Koreans (2).

– David Waldstein, the New York Times.

The cited MLB study is noted in just about all the papers today, so I look prescient for mentioning the 7 Nation Army scenario again yesterday. Massive ups to Joaquin for reminding me about that.

Just off first impressions, it’s interesting to see that so few Puerto Ricans are on Major League rosters. I guess my perspective is skewed by following the Mets, who have four guys from Puerto Rico.

I’m going to try to get my hands on a copy of the study, or at least some more information from it. I wonder if it compares year-to-year data of MLB players by birth, as I’m interested to see if and how there’s a way to demonstrate that the game is spreading out around the world.

Also, apropos of nothing, the phrase, “According to baseball,” makes me laugh.

At 5 p.m. Monday, a little over a half hour after the Mets beat the Marlins and a few minutes after Jerry Manuel and Johan Santana addressed members of the press in Citi Field’s media room, 23 members of the media huddled around David Wright’s locker in the Mets’ clubhouse.

Wright was not there. Veteran columnists stood closest to his locker, looking entitled. They had been there the longest, like fans camped out for tickets to a rock show.

As the group grew, it grew restless.

“I’m closer to you than I ever get to my husband,” quipped one female reporter to the stranger she was pressed up against.

By 5:10 p.m, the crowd had at least doubled. Reporters jockeyed for position, subtly boxing one another out for prime placement in the scrum. A cameraman pulled over a step-stool for a clean shot of a guy who wasn’t even there yet.

And they waited.

“What is this, Paul O’Neill?” someone asked. No one has ever accused the New York media of patience.

Soon, Wright emerged from somewhere in Citi Field’s bowels. He walked the length of the clubhouse, negotiated his way through the crush of reporters, stood facing his locker for just a moment, and turned around.

Wherever Wright had been while the crowd waited, he wasn’t showering. His face was still marked with smudged eye black and he was still wearing his sweat-soaked undershirt. Maybe he was eating, or, who knows, lifting weights or watching film or whatever it is David Wright does when he’s not playing baseball.

Maybe he was preparing. Maybe he was conjuring up the words he’d use to downplay the home run he’d hit in his first at-bat of the year, at the park everyone said was in his head, after the toughest season of his big-league career. Maybe he was riding out the excitement from that moment, waiting until he could put on a brave face and go out and tell all the reporters it wasn’t too big a deal and pretend like he didn’t feel super f@#$ing awesome about it.

Because that’s just what he did. Soon after the cameras’ lights went on and he turned around to face them, Wright began repeatedly reminding everyone that Josh Johnson is good and hitting home runs is fun but the most important thing is that the Mets won the game, and that it’s only one game and they’ve got a long way to go.

It continued like that, some bizarre tango, reporters coming up with new and creative ways to ask Wright if there was anything special about the home run or the win, and Wright coming up with polite and respectful ways to tell them there wasn’t.

And maybe he believes that. Maybe Wright’s is not a guarded performance aimed at protecting himself from media spin, but a reasonable attempt to drop perspective on a horde that appeared to want none of it.

Wright’s right, after all. It was one home run, and it was one win, and Opening Day means no more in the standings than any of the other 161 games the Mets will play this season. It’s not farfetched to assume David Wright understands a thing or two about baseball.

Or maybe he was hiding something, not giving in, carefully avoiding anything that might make him seem boastful or unfocused or, heaven forbid, emotional.

In time, one by one, the cameras turned down and the journalists ducked away as they got what they needed, if maybe not quite all they hoped for, from the Mets’ young star.

All part of a day’s work, for everyone involved. They’ll dance again on Wednesday.

Ted, after all the time you devoted to the concept, to have the roster miraculously shake out the way it has, I am surprised to see that you haven’t gone back to the concept of the 7 Nation Army.

Plus, I am not sure if you noticed, but during Dan Warthen’s visit to the mound in the 4th inning the organist actually played 7 Nation army (I immediately thought of your post and remembered that Tejada actually did make the team), and still no mention?

– Joaquin, via email.

That is an excellent point, and my bad. The Mets currently have players from seven sovereignties: the U.S., Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Japan, Canada, Mexico and Panama.

Until, presumably, Jose Reyes returns from the Disabled List and Ruben Tejada heads to the Minors, the Mets will battle as a 7 Nation Army. And if by some chance Cuban lefty Raul Valdes ends up with the big club, recently claimed Panamanian reliever Manny Acosta finds his way to Queens, or German-born Tobi Stoner winds up back with the Mets, they’ll again represent seven nations.

So here’s this. Sorry I didn’t bring it up sooner:

The 2010 Mets are undefeated. Alex Cora grittily took one for the team in the bottom of the first, then Luis Castillo avoided being doubled off at first base on a ground ball, then David Wright smacked a home run just inside the right-field foul pole to give the Mets a lead they would never relinquish in their 7-1 Opening Day win over the Marlins.

Johan Santana held the powerful Florida lineup to four hits and one run over six innings, striking out five. Fernando Nieve tossed two shutout innings in relief, and the Mets tacked on a slew of late runs thanks in part to a Marlins club clearly working as a unit to make Dan Uggla feel better about his defensive inadequacy.

In the press box after the game, reporters — no kidding — compared the 2010 Mets to the 2009 Mets, and stressed how last year’s version never would have blown the game open in the sixth. They would’ve missed those opportunities. Apparently the 2009 Mets never played in strong wind.

Jerry Manuel was more realistic about the win.

“We’re out of the gate,” he said. “But we haven’t gone anywhere.”

Not technically true. The Mets are one percent of the way toward 100 wins and a sure ticket to the NLDS.

“We have to continue playing the game the right way,” said Santana. “Pitching, playing defense, and having the guys hit the ball.”

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Pitching, playing defense, and hitting the ball are important elements of winning baseball. This is another important distinction between the 2010 Mets, to date, and last year’s squad. The 2009 Mets didn’t often pitch, play defense, or hit the ball.

Today — and at least until Wednesday — the Mets stand unblemished. A team that pitches, defends and hits.

And though someone — me, for example — could probably lament their bizarre batting order or flawed roster or warped set of organizational priorities, it seems like bad business as long as their record remains perfect.