Today Jerry Manuel, for the second straight offseason, said he’d consider batting Jose Reyes third.

Matt Cerrone followed with a poll, and his readers are currently split right down the middle on whether it’s a good idea. It’s actually 50-percent yes and 50-percent no after 3540 votes. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that before.

Obviously it’s a bit more complex than a straight yes-or-no, good idea/bad idea thing, which might be the source of the Met fan ambivalance. It’s certainly the source of mine.

I’ve always assumed Reyes would develop a little more power as he aged. I don’t have a ton of evidence to back that up, but he’s impressively broad if you see him up close, and it feels like when he does hit home runs, they’re not ones that just edge over the wall — he knocks the crap out of ’em.

That’s a biased and unscientific assessment, but I’m open to Manuel’s notion that Reyes, if healthy for a full season in 2010, could produce a few more extra-base hits than we’ve come to expect from him.

The thing is, if he’s not going to be batting leadoff, he damn well better be replaced by someone who gets on-base as frequently as he does. I touched on this a little last week: The most important quality for a leadoff hitter is not actually speed, but the ability to get on base.

So if Luis Castillo, David Wright or Jason Bay is manning the leadoff spot, I suppose I’m cool with Jose hitting third. Since no one else is likely to post a higher OBP, no one else should lead off.

I’m looking at you, Angel Pagan.

Since there’s no chance Wright or Bay will lead off, that pretty much leaves Castillo. He’s not a lock to get on base at a higher clip than Reyes, but even on his old knees he’s a decent fit to bat leadoff. He’ll certainly find his way to first base with some frequency, and it’s not like he has any power that would go to waste at the top of the order.

I still like him as a ninth hitter with Reyes leading off, since that’d be a good way to make use of Castillo’s OBP and then, after the first time through the order, Reyes’ power, while maximizing Reyes’ at-bats. But that’s probably not happening.

And I’ll settle on the status quo on this one: Let Reyes do his thing, leading off and stealing bases and making things fun to watch. If he’s going to start hitting for more power, make him force the issue. That’s a good type of problem to have.

So Jerry Manuel said he could see Mike Jacobs serving as a power bat for the bench, like what the Phillies had with Matt Stairs.

But Mike Jacobs is not like Matt Stairs.

Matt Stairs was notable for a several reasons: He looked like a beer-league softball player, got on-base a lot, hit home runs, and couldn’t really play defense. Mike Jacobs only shares two of those qualities.

Matt Stairs finished his career with a .358 on-base percentage. Mike Jacobs is currently rocking a  lifetime .313 on-base percentage.

I tweeted this information a few minutes ago, and several Mets fans responded — perhaps accurately — that the Mets would only be asking Jacobs to be a lefty pinch-hitter off the bench who wouldn’t have to play defense, and so Manuel wasn’t comparing the two as players so much as he was suggesting Jacobs could fill a similar role.

That’s all well and good, and far be it for me to complain about the Mets finally adding a bench bat with a little pop.

But I’m guessing — and I haven’t run the numbers on this — that for a player to be valuable to his team while only being asked to do one thing, he has to be very good at that one thing. And Jacobs is not that good at that one thing.

Yes, he can hit home runs. That’s great.

What he can’t do — at least probably not well enough to earn a roster spot — is get on base. Not like Stairs could, and maybe not like Quad-A Spring Training invite Chris Carter could, either.

Why’s that important? Well, it’s not like all the situations that call for pinch-hitters only call for a home run. Hitting a home run is always the best possible thing a pinch-hitter can do, of course, but in instances where the team is down by more than one run, getting on base, well… you know.

Plus, if the pinch-hitter is being used to replace the pitcher — as he most often is — his getting on base means the top of the order will get to bat with a man on to drive in. And the top part of the order is where the good hitters hit.

It may feel like I’m on some sort of campaign against Mike Jacobs, but that’s really not the case. I have no personal agenda against the man, and I’m sure he’s a really nice dude. I just bristle when people bandy about Matt Stairs’ name haphazardly.

Chris Wilcox Will Davidian did a nice job over at BlueAndOrange.net with something I’ve been meaning to do for a while: Aggregating all of the minor moves seemingly made to improve the Mets’ Triple-A farm club.

Buffalo, as I’ve mentioned before, has one of the most active and dedicated Minor League fanbases, and during last season the Mets promised to do better by the city.

This offseason, they’ve pretty clearly made an effort, as Chris Will details in the link above. But I’ll take it one step further and imagine a hilarious scenario.

All of the following men, in theory, could be on the Mets’ Triple-A club in 2010. This lineup doesn’t include Ike Davis, Ruben Tejada, Josh Thole, Fernando Martinez or Nick Evans and so it’s certainly not one I’m advocating, but the Bisons could have the opportunity to field an entire team of Ken Phelps All-Stars.

Check it out. Here they are, with their career Triple-A slash lines, their total number of Triple-A plate appearances, and their Opening Day ages:

C: Chris Coste: .282/.337/.414 — (Age: 36, AAA PAs: 2142)
1B: Val Pascucci: .278/.397/.509 — (31, 2673)
2B: Andy Green: .300/.381/.486 — (32, 1881)
3B: Mike Cervenak: .299/.337/.457 — (33, 2458)
SS: Russ Adams: .276/.345/.409 — (29, 1927)
LF: Chris Carter: .304/.373/.493 — (27, 2201)
CF: Jesus Feliciano: .310/.357/.391 — (30, 1465)
RF: Mike Hessman: .238/.327/.486 — (32, 3691)

That’s so many Triple-A plate appearances. That’s so much Triple-A mashing.

According to Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Talk, citing a source, Kelvim Escobar may be seriously injured. I’m a little bit skeptical, as I normally am about stories coming from anonymous sources, but since Escobar’s spent the better part of the last two seasons seriously injured, it just would not be that surprising.

Awesome.

If Escobar’s as hurt as Calcaterra’s source suggests, people will look back and slam the Mets for signing him to the one-year, $1.5 million contract they gave him in December.

And then other people will slam those people, and say, “well how come you didn’t criticize them for it at the time?”

But those who did not criticize the Mets for the Escobar deal at the time — and count me among those — probably didn’t realize how limited the Mets’ offseason budget was. Nor would they have realized that the $1.25 million shelled out to a high-risk pickup in Escobar would have theoretically made the difference in acquiring Joel Pineiro, or probably been used to sign Felipe Lopez to play second base.

That’s not going to happen, of course, because the Mets have $8 million committed to that position in Luis Castillo and Alex Cora and appear to hate copping to sunk costs.

Whatever. If Kelvim Escobar’s really seriously hurt, it won’t sink the Mets in 2010. He was slated to be a setup man, a guy who wouldn’t throw more than 70 innings anyway.  I know we keep hearing “eighth inning, eighth inning, eighth inning,” like it’s some elusive and insurmountable hurdle, but A) there’s no rule that says a team should only have one eighth-inning guy and B) it shouldn’t be too hard to find that guy anyway.

It’s just bad news, is all, and a bad way to kick off what should be a beautiful, uplifting time: pitchers and catchers.

Dustin Parkes at Drunk Jays Fans details the continuing saga of Rod Barajas, once a Blue Jay, never a wizard of finance.

This was news to me, but apparently Barajas and his agents have cost the catcher millions over the years by consistently making questionable decisions while attempting to play the free-agent market.

Sound familiar?

So now rumors say Barajas could be heading to the Mets. Or not heading to the Mets.

Or maybe both parties are dancing around in a circle, pens drawn, trying to hammer out a free-agent contract that can somehow make them both come out the loser.

Apparently the first-base competition isn’t the only open one in Mets’ camp this year. According to Brian Costa at the Star-Ledger (with hat-tip to Matt Cerrone), Omar Minaya has deemed the Opening Day catcher’s job up for grabs between Omir Santos and Josh Thole.

Again, I don’t want to read too much into anything, since Spring Training hasn’t even actually started yet. But if I can hope that the first-base stuff isn’t true, I’ll hope that this catcher stuff is.

I know the conventional wisdom says Thole needs at least a half season more to learn the job in Triple-A. But I wonder why, if Thole is going to learn how to catch somewhere in 2010, he can’t do it at the big-league level.

After all, Cerrone has been reporting all offseason how he hears that Mets pitchers don’t much care for pitching to Extra-Base Omir. And while I don’t love getting into the buzz game nor put too much stock in the nebulous “game-calling abilities” so often credited to veteran catchers,  I’ve heard the same thing (quite likely from the same people).

So if they’ve got one guy the pitchers don’t like throwing to after a full season behind the plate with little offensive upside, and another guy the pitchers haven’t yet thrown to with a little bit of offensive upside, why not opt for the latter and hope he can learn on the job?

A midseason call-up for Thole, while it would provide him with some time for Minor League seasoning, would also mean he’d have to get accustomed to the whims of all the Major League pitchers on the fly. And the Mets’ pitchers have a whole lot of whims.

Obviously that’s not all there is to catching, of course. Santos actually scored pretty well in Driveline Mechanics’ attempt to rate catcher defense earlier this offseason. In a small sample, Thole wasn’t as great, though he didn’t entirely embarrass himself either.

Joe Janish — a guy who knows a whole lot more about the position than I ever will — has maintained all offseason that Thole is nowhere near ready for prime time.

Still, I imagine Joe was holding Thole up in comparison to potential free-agent options and not just to Omir Santos. And since luminaries like Bengie Molina, Yorvit Torrealba and Rod Barajas are not walking through that door, it strikes me that Thole might now appear the Mets’ best option to start the season.

Moreover, Thole hits left-handed — something Jerry Manuel himself identified as important earlier this offseason. The addition of Jason Bay to a lineup that already included David Wright and Jeff Francoeur made the team’s batting order pretty heavily right-handed, especially if it will include Santos. Thole gives Manuel another option to break up the righties in the lineup, and, more importantly, another hitter who might not represent an automatic out.

That’s no guarantee, of course. Thole hit well in his brief audition with the big club in 2009 and can boast a .379 Minor League on-base percentage, but his 59 plate appearances in the Majors were his first above Double-A.

Still, it probably won’t be hard for Thole to offensively outperform Santos. Not only did the latter post a brutal .260/.296/.391 line last year, but since he actually bettered his career Minor League OPS, there’s reason to believe he was playing a bit over his head.

So it boils down to whether Thole will be able to hit enough to make up for the defensive difference with Santos. I don’t know that he can, but I’m sure it’s worth considering.

We shall see, I suppose.

[poll id=”4″]

Josh Alper calls Omar Minaya “the Optimism Killer” at NBC New York today because of Minaya’s recent suggestion that Daniel Murphy and Mike Jacobs are in an “open competition” for the first-base job, something I’ve weighed in on here already. Alper writes:

If you’re willing to put a scrub like Jacobs into an open competition with a player that you already know, why wouldn’t you go after a halfway decent player? Or, getting really crazy here, signing a righty bat to platoon with Murphy so that you limit Murphy’s downside and make the Mets a better team? We won’t even bother wondering why there’s no such challenge provided for Luis Castillo at second base.

Alper’s post is a good read and he makes some good points. And I’ve seen similar around the blogosphere today — a general sense of worry that Mike Jacobs, Mike .297 on-base percentage Jacobs, could beat out Daniel Murphy, Daniel means-business Murphy, and end up the Mets’ starting first baseman.

I know Adam Rubin’s excellent blog post today sparked some of the talk, too. And Jacobs is appearing on Mets Hot Stove on Thursday, so that should fire up Twitter once more.

Still, I’m guessing it’s nothing. I’ve never met Jacobs, but I’m betting he’s a nice guy and a good quote, and so writers and show producers without much other material to work with are lining him up for conversations. So we’re hearing his name a lot.

And Rubin’s story is a great one. The bit about Pedro throwing a fit when the Mets tried to send Jacobs down after a pinch-hit home run, with Dae-Sung Koo as the villain? It’s a must read. Of course Rubin wants to recount that story. He’s a writer — he is paid to tell stories.

Maybe I’m in denial, of course. Maybe this is really some sort of nefarious plot by the Mets’ uber-savvy media-relations department to implant Mike Jacobs into our unsuspecting minds, forcing us to fall in love with him in spite of his offensive and defensive shortcomings.

Color me skeptical. Smart money says Murphy’s still the guy and Minaya used the term “open competition” out of some combination of wanting to light a fire under Murphy, not wanting to denigrate Jacobs — who has been a Major League regular for most of his career — and not knowing what else to say.

That’s what I’m hoping, at least.

Of course, if you believe the “Mets are foisting Mike Jacobs upon us” conspiracy, you also recognize that I work at SNY and thus am part of the machine. And in that case, clearly this post is just misdirection meant to distract you from the Mets’ actual genius master plan to load up their lineup with guys with tiny on-base percentages and no range.

My wife and I drove to Mohegan Sun on Saturday night out of curiosity and boredom. We blew five dollars, ate delicious burgers, and passed time walking around the endless rows of slot machines, mesmerized by the flashing lights and digital clanking and all the people gambling away their money.

They sit, in earnest, pumping cash into the same machine over and over, hitting the same button again and again, hoping they’ll finally hit the jackpot. A precious few actually do. Way more don’t.

But they keep trying because, presumably, they’ve already committed so much money to the damned bandit and believe the only way they’ll recoup their losses is to keep feeding the thing bills until their luck turns around.

And because just about everything makes me think about the Mets, it made me think about the Mets.

It’s not a perfect metaphor, of course, because the outcomes of baseball games — unlike slot machines — are not entirely random. They’re largely affected by randomness, but not wholly dictated by it.

But with the Mets’ pitchers and catchers set to report to Port St. Lucie on Thursday, and the deluge of newspaper stories previewing the team’s season already streaming in, I’m struck by how much the team’s fate is wrapped up in fortune.

This is nothing new, and not even anything atypical. All successful baseball teams benefit from some measure of luck. Look at what the 2009 Yankees got from so many older players, and what the 2008 Phillies got from their bullpen arms. Those squads shouldn’t be faulted for it, either; they were good teams, and good fortune catapulted them to greatness.

These Mets, though, appear to be shooting for something more like slot-machine luck. To win in 2010, they will need healthy performances from several players who were injured last year, rebound performances from several players who underachieved last year, and breakout performances from several players who stunk last year.

The odds are long. And if luck, as Branch Rickey suggested, is the residue of design, then it’s hard to argue there was much in the Mets’ offseason blueprint that significantly improved the Mets’ fortunes for 2010. Jason Bay will add power to the lineup. Beyond that, the Mets, paradoxically, refused to take many gambles while heading into a season that amounts to a massive gamble.

That’s it, really. That’s the official TedQuarters Spring Training-is-starting piece right there. I wish I could offer more, or something different than what I’ve been saying all winter. I can’t, though: For the Mets to compete and win in 2010, they’re going to need a whole lot of things to fall their way.

And it could happen. Jose Reyes could hit 30 triples this year and steal 80 bases and win the MVP, and Oliver Perez could stay in the best shape of his life long enough to be Good Ollie all season long and recapture his 2004 form.

Or maybe Hisanori Takahashi’s screwball will be so baffling that he’ll go all Fernando Valenzuela on the National League and carry the team on his able 35-year-old shoulders.

Or heck, maybe the Mets can just benefit from a whole lot of bad luck to the Phillies and Braves and slip into the playoffs with 83 wins like the Cardinals did in 2006, only to then slip by the far-superior Cardinals in the NLCS when Albert Pujols doesn’t swing at a 3-2 curveball.

It’s all possible now, with Spring Training just getting underway and a full season’s worth of highlights and lowlights yet to be determined. We can project and object like we have all offseason long, but in truth, we have no idea what happens next.

Sure, like all Mets fans, I wish the team I root for seemed more like the guy in the sunglasses behind the big stack of chips at the poker table, or even more like the seedy dude with the cigar scribbling furiously on his pad at the race book, and less like one of the hordes feeding dollars into the slots. That would be cool.

But still, there’s something very entertaining about playing the slot machines. Indeed, the 20 minutes my wife and I spent pushing the button and watching the wheels spin round were well worth the five dollars it cost us.

I guess the thrill is in all the possibilities, and in knowing that, with just the push of that button, and so little skill or foresight or planning on your part, the wheels could all land on sevens and make you much, much richer.

The Mets’ front office spent this offseason in front of the same slot machine it has been playing for a long time now. The cash has been entered and the button pushed, and finally, after four months of winter, the wheels are spinning.

Now, we wait to see where they land.

If you ask me, the Westchester in White Plains might be the world’s most obnoxious shopping mall. Its anchor stores are Nieman Marcus and Nordstrom, and its architects have pretty clearly taken measures to hide its food court from the rest of the shopping areas, so upscale consumers can shop undeterred by the smells of delicious Master Wok or the sight of disgusting plebes chowing down on chicken-in-goo, the specialty of every mall food court.

But, as a native Long Islander — as I’ve discussed before — I’m drawn to malls for reasons I don’t fully understand. Plus, it’s got an Anthropologie, a store that apparently understands my wife’s tastes far better than I do, and tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

Anyway, that’s a lengthy setup for this picture of a t-shirt I spotted hanging in the window of The Athlete’s Foot on the third floor of The Westchester today:

Bold.

I suppose I should add, for those who don’t know the area, that Westchester is decidedly Yankee territory. In fact, this was the only Mets shirt selling in the store in question.

I went inside to check the front of the shirt to see if maybe it said something clever like, “It’s Opposite Day!”, but no. Just a plain white front, with this on the back.

There was no logo anywhere to be found, so I’m guessing there’s a very real possibility that one gung-ho and disgruntled Mets fan who works at The Athlete’s Foot in the Westchester got fed up spending so much time in a store that only sold Yankees gear, printed a bunch of these up and put them on the racks himself, throwing caution and grammar to the wind.

I really have to stress the juxtaposition here, again. This isn’t at some random shop on that weird stretch of storefronts on Broadway in the 20s or anything, this is in the fanciest mall imaginable, right next to a Teavana and a L’Occitane. And it’s proudly displayed in the window:

“I Predict, The METS Will Win The 2010 World Series !”

I can’t say who’s responsible, but I respect his optimism.

Of course, if you’re that bullish about the Mets’ chances this year, you could pretty much say the same thing with this gem, available for $19.97 from Mets.com:

According to Matt Cerrone’s spidey sense, the Mets might incorporate a New York-centric on-field race at Citi Field next season, like the Presidents Race in Washington or the much-lauded Sausage Race in Milwaukee.

Cerrone’s looking for suggestions for what the Mets should have race. Here are some:

The last four mayors of New York: Is it me, or do Gotham’s mayors really lend themselves to caricature? If the Mets are going to borrow the on-field race idea from other teams, they might as well go all the way and use politicians, as the Nats do. And what better than blown-up foam likenesses of Ed Koch, David Dinkins, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg? It’d be worth it to hear Koch constantly get booed, just like he used to whenever he showed up at Shea Stadium while he was still mayor.

(Incidentally, Ed Koch sat behind me at a showing of Synechdoche, New York a couple years ago. He appeared to be in really good shape for a man of his age, so maybe he could hold his own in the Citi Field Mayoral Race. Afterwards, Ed Koch looked like he needed some more time to process the movie, just like I did.)

Big apples: New York is the Big Apple, so why not? Milwaukee uses its local delicacy — the sausage — but New York has too many local delicacies to settle on any one for an on-field race. They could have Granny Smith as an old-lady apple, Macintosh as a Scotsman, Fuji as a Japanese person, and Gala as a fop.

And finally:

Copy machines: Think of the sponsorship opportunity for Xerox: Anthropomorphic copiers racing around the warning track. It’d be a great way for the company to promote its fastest models, plus, could anything be more meta? What better way to celebrate a copied idea than with, you know, copiers? Besides, New York has always been a commercial and marketing hub, and one that probably uses a whole ton of copy machines. It’s perfect. Do it.