Michael Baron at MetsBlog suggested the Mets bring back Fernando Tatis next year and, predictably, met a lot of animosity in the site’s comments section.

Tatis became something of a lightning rod for angry Mets fans in 2009 for a number of reasons. For one, he endured a ridiculous stretch from May 31 to June 24 during which he somehow hit into nine double plays in 45 at-bats, or one double play every five at-bats. That’s nuts.

A lot of that had to do, I would guess, with how frequently Tatis was hitting behind David Wright, and how often Wright was getting on first base during that stretch of the season. Either way, Tatis finished up the season with 13 GDPs in 340 at-bats — not the most impressive rate in the world, but one reasonable enough to suggest the rough stretch was mostly due to an unbelievable run of bad luck.

More of the distaste toward Tatis, I think, had to do with how often it seemed he was playing in favor of someone more exciting, whether it was Daniel Murphy at the start of the year or Nick Evans at the end. I get that and I felt the same way; we have little more to learn about Tatis, and it was baffling when, at the end of the clearly lost season, Nick Evans sat on the bench overlooked while Tatis played nearly every day.

But it’s not really fair to pin that on Tatis. It’s not his job to refuse assignments so fans could see more of younger players.

And because Tatis was pressed into so much duty in 2009, it’s easy to forget just how valuable a bench player he is. Tatis actually played average to above average defense at every single position the Mets put him in 2009, including a statistically — albeit in a tiny sample size — better second base than Luis Castillo, Alex Cora and Anderson Hernandez.

Plus, Tatis can hit a little bit. He posted a respectable .777 OPS for the Mets in 2009, and given his career lines, that’s probably a reasonable indication of what he can do at the plate.

Simply put, Tatis is a good player to have on the bench. I kill Omar Minaya pretty frequently in this space for the way he fills out the margins of his roster, but he did a great job identifying Tatis’ ability and rescuing him from the scrap heap before the 2007 season. And Tatis was likely worth well more than the $1.7 million he earned in 2009.

There’s nothing really exciting about Tatis, plus he’ll be 35 on New Year’s Day, so it’s difficult to advocate his return to a team that should be moving toward youth.

There was no good excuse for Jerry Manuel playing Tatis over Evans with so much frequently when the team should have been assessing whether Evans could be a right-handed platoon bat in 2010. But now that it happened — now that the team doesn’t have any real way of knowing whether Evans is ready to hit Major League pitching — the Mets could do a lot worse than bringing back Tatis for 2010, assuming a reasonable price tag. His defensive versatility alone makes him a useful cog, and it’s not at all his fault that he was forced into so much playing time in 2009.

So word is the Mets are bringing back Jeff Francoeur, and that’s no surprise. I have been down on Francoeur since the trade, but it’s fair to argue he earned a shot at a second go-round with the team with his solid half-season in 2009.

Plus, the way a large portion of Mets fans took to the guy, benching him or parting with him before 2010 would be akin to doing the same with Daniel Murphy before 2009. The team is backed into the corner by fan perception. We could argue that there are reasons not to bring Francoeur back, but it’d be pointless. There was really no way the Mets weren’t going to open 2010 with Francoeur in right field.

The more alarming thing about Bart Hubbuch’s tweet linked above, though, is the part that says the Mets “wouldn’t rule out a contract extension.”

OK, that’s where we start pushing into the realm of terrible, horrible, no-good ideas. Handing Jeff Francoeur a multi-year extension based on what he did for the Mets would be like punching common sense in the face.

Jeff Francoeur was pretty good for the Mets over 289 at-bats. Before those 289 at-bats, he had been downright terrible for the Braves for a year and a half and well below average for a right fielder for the two seasons before that.

Sample size. Sample size. Sample size.

If Francoeur’s turnaround is real, the Mets will have plenty of time to sign him to an extension during the 2010 season, after he’s proven he can maintain the necessary level of production. Signing him to an extension anytime before that would indicate a reckless disregard for history.

Mets Hot Stove starts tonight at 7 p.m. on SNY, and there’s a poll up on the Mets Hot Stove web page that you can vote on. It asks which position you think the Mets should focus on this offseason, and starting pitching is thus far winning in a landslide.

In the comments section for my notes on free-agent second basemen yesterday, Tom wrote:

Felipe Lopez is not the answer. There are reasons why he keeps getting moved.

I’m not trying to go after Tom here because I’m certainly not in any position to alienate readers of this site. Plus I’m not entirely certain what Tom was getting at. Perhaps he has specific reasons in mind, though he didn’t elaborate.

I mention because I’m often faced with similar rhetoric from readers when I wonder about a player I perceive to be undervalued or overlooked.

“If Player X is so good,” they write, “then how come nobody wants him?’

Often the e-mails or comments or whatever are tagged with nasty insults about how there are also reasons I’m not a Major League GM or professional baseball player and how I clearly do not know what I’m talking about. I won’t argue those.

As for the other thing, though, well, yeah. In every case, there probably are reasons nobody wants a player. And maybe some of them are good reasons. But maybe some of them are bad, too, and I don’t have nearly enough faith in the system to assume that every decision made by a Major League front office is a good one.

That doesn’t just go for baseball, either. I don’t know that I’ve ever worked in any level at any job and been able to say confidently that the people in charge were consistently making the best decisions. And most of those businesses were run by very, very smart people.

But they’re people, and one of the main things about people is that they screw things up all the time.

I’m not saying I don’t, obviously. I’ve said it before: If my actions and decisions were monitored and documented as closely as those of a Major League player or general manager, I’d be booed on the streets of Manhattan.

And to some extent, I do believe in baseball front offices, because it’s pretty impressive that all 30 clubs, operating with various budgets, can routinely put together teams that win at least 40 percent of their games against big-league opponents. Certainly some front offices are better at compiling winning teams than others, but no team completely embarrasses itself year-in and year-out.

Still, if you blindly believe that every decision made by every Major League club is the correct one, you’ve probably come to the wrong place. I’m not going to discourage you from reading, because I appreciate your time and traffic, but you’re not going to be happy with a lot of what you read here.

So yes, there probably are a lot of reasons teams keep moving Felipe Lopez. But this site is for trying to figure out exactly what those reasons are, and, more importantly, whether they are enough to account for the difference between what Lopez and Orlando Hudson will eventually get paid.

Carlos Beltran will appear on the season premiere of Mets Hot Stove tomorrow at 7 p.m. on SNY.

Kevin Burkhardt will be back as host of the show. He’ll be joined by Newsday’s David Lennon, WFAN’s Ed Coleman, and Jon Heyman.

The series premiere of Mets Yearbook will follow at 7:30, featuring the Mets’ 1971 season in review. The show contains Old Timers’ Day footage of Satchel Paige pitching, which I’m guessing is awesome.

Video from Mets Hot Stove will be available shortly after the show on SNY.tv.

A lot of the offseason hubbub so far has suggested that the Mets will pursue free-agent second basemen, assuming, of course, they can find a taker for Luis Castillo.

That’s fine, I suppose, though I wonder if signing Orlando Hudson to a multi-year deal would be more akin to repeating the Luis Castillo mistake than undoing it.

There’s also talk the Mets could pursue Chone Figgins partly because of his ability to play second base, but though Figgins is a tremendous defensive third baseman, he hasn’t played more than nine games at second in a season since 2005 and even back then, in a small sample, he wasn’t overwhelmingly good at it.

And paying Figgins the rate he deserves as a Gold Glove-caliber third baseman just to move him to a corner outfield position, where his bat would be below-average, would be a blisteringly bad decision. He’s a good player, but a lot of his value is wrapped up in his versatility and strong defense at third. Planting him in left field absorbs most of that value.

The most baffling thing, I think, is that I have yet to see a single journalist link the Mets to Felipe Lopez. Maybe I’m missing something, but Lopez was actually better than Hudson this year and is two and a half years younger.

He’s been inconsistent across his career, which could scare the Mets off, but his only really terrible year at the plate came in 2007, when his BABIP was .036 below his career average. That means he was probably a bit unlucky.

I’m not advocating Lopez for the Mets, I’m just noting how surprising it is that his name hasn’t come up. If they actually can part with Castillo and Lopez’s demands are lower than Hudson’s, he seems — on the surface, at least — like a smarter pickup.

Adam Rubin wrote today that the Mets hope to re-sign Alex Cora, a player who probably inspires five times as much debate around this office as anyone else.

This debate, I should mention, almost always features me.

So much was made about what Alex Cora brought to the Mets’ clubhouse this year, and I’m not going to argue otherwise. By all accounts, he’s a nice guy and a smart player and will make a great coach someday.

The problem is he’s not very good at baseball anymore.

Cora played much of 2009 with torn ligaments in his thumbs, which might excuse the .630 OPS he posted in over 300 plate appearances. The problem is, that line is not really that far off Cora’s career .658 mark, and unsurprising given the expected decline of a 33-year-old player.

Moreover, depending on which metric you prefer, Cora played somewhere between average and below-average defense at second base and shortstop. To the eye, he demonstrated a lack of range that likely affected the Mets’ groundball pitchers like Mike Pelfrey and Sean Green.

The co-worker with whom I usually engage in this debate argues that Cora’s deficiencies on the field are more than made up for by his additions to the clubhouse, and claims that to build a winning team, the Mets need more character guys like Alex Cora.

Far be it for me to say a team doesn’t need character guys, but if it does, it should be able to acquire ones who are above replacement-level. And Cora isn’t.

I like to believe that, on a good and successful ballclub, character guys will surface and in nearly any group dynamic, leaders will emerge. In other words, I don’t think a team should be in the business of acquiring leaders or clubhouse guys. I think the team should focus on acquiring the 25 best players it can to fill out its roster rather than building a team on what Theo Epstein might call “psychobabble.”

If Alex Cora could be had at the league minimum, then sure, why not? He could be a helpful guy to have around during Spring Training and if he could prove he merited a spot on the roster, great.

But Alex Cora will not be had at the league minimum, and that’s the problem. Cora cost the Mets $2 million last season, and the Mets — as Rubin points out — are operating with a finite budget.

Every time I post this criticism, someone jumps down my throat and argues that $2 million is a drop in the Mets’ payroll bucket and should not be the difference between signing a bigger-name free agent or not.

Maybe that’s so, but consistently dropping $2 million on players of Cora’s caliber, ones that could by definition be replaced by someone earning the league minimum, adds up. It does. I know we all want the Mets to be able to spend like the Yankees, but until they do, we need to root for them to spend more efficiently.

Finally, with Jose Reyes still something of a question mark moving forward, the Mets should have a backup plan in place that’s better than Alex Cora.

Certainly the best-case scenario for the club would have Reyes playing 150 games at shortstop like he did every year from 2005 to 2008. But though Reyes is supposedly on the mend, his injuries have beguiled the Mets before, and it would behoove the team to have a backup in house who could at least defend the position well, if not also hit a little bit.

If the Mets are so gung-ho on Cora returning to their clubhouse, there’s a bench coach position still waiting to be filled.

I’m really not trying to be snarky about this, but I can’t help myself. If the Mets should target a single free agent this offseason, it should be this one:

Thinking, “we should pursue Randy Wolf now that his value is high because we missed out on him when his value is low,” is akin to saying, “well, I really missed the boat on buying Microsoft stock when I thought about it in 1986, so I better recoup that by purchasing a lot of it now.”

It’s not that difficult a concept to grasp, and I’m certain it’s covered in Mankiw’s introduction to microeconomic principles.

Also included, I’m sure, is an explanation of sunk-cost economics, which would help them understand why they might move on from Omar Minaya instead of keeping him around because they owe him $3.5 million dollars.

But hey, if the Mets’ front office is too busy to do that much reading this offseason, I understand. In that case, they can simply hire my old roommate and namesake, Ted Burke.

Ted works down in Virginia now and hosts a Colorado Rockies podcast, but I’m certain he’d be happy to relocate for a job in a Major League front office.

I know he’s qualified because he was a total stud economics student in college. I know that because every time I introduced myself to some other econ student, they would curse me out for always ruining the curve, and I would have to explain that they meant to curse out my similarly named roommate, who probably wasn’t showing up for too many classes but managed to get the highest score on most of the econ tests.

Basically, they could just sit him at a desk somewhere, and whenever they were thinking about making a move, they could explain their reasoning and say, “Hey, Ted, does that makes sense?” and he could tell them if it did or didn’t.

Also, he’s doing some groundbreaking work in the field of facial hair.

If you’re familiar with my work at SNY.tv, you know that I don’t believe anything I read in the offseason with regards to player movement.

But I do like weighing in on potential moves, which launched the Wireless Calling series last offseason. So this is that, I suppose, updated for the blog format.

Wireless Calling: Randy Wolf

Tim Dierkes at MLBTradeRumors.com sees the Mets signing Wolf to a three-year deal in excess of $30 million dollars. Tim admits he’s guessing, of course, but there have been reports linking the Mets to Wolf.

Most of those reports focus on the fact that the Mets feel they “missed out” on Wolf last offseason.

That, my friends, is a terrible reason to sign Randy Wolf.

Wolf had a great year for the Dodgers. He threw over 200 innings for the first time since 2003 and posted a career-best 129 ERA+ and 1.101 WHIP.

He turned out to a terrific signing for Los Angeles, who took advantage of the market and inked him to a one-year, incentive-laden deal that ended up costing them around $8 million.

That’s not the situation now. Now, Randy Wolf is as valuable a commodity as he has been in a long, long time, and Dierkes is right to expect him to land a deal similar to the one Oliver Perez got last year.

But before 2008, Wolf hadn’t stayed healthy for a full season since 2003 and before 2009, he hadn’t been appreciably better than average since 2002.

So to sign him, at age 33, to a three-year deal befitting the second-best free agent pitcher would be foolishness of the highest order.

The chances of Wolf repeating his 2009 success are slim. This season, he yielded a .254 BABIP (batting average on balls in play), well below his career .294 mark. That means he probably got a bit lucky and benefited from good defense behind him, neither of which is likely to repeat itself with the Mets in 2010.

If Wolf’s stock drops and it appears likely he’ll sign for far less than the deal Tim suggested, then sure, the Mets should be a player. He’s not a bad pitcher, and he’s coming off two straight healthy years.

But signing him to a longterm deal coming off a career year could be an epic buy-high mistake. And if the Mets did that just because they felt they missed out on him last year, it’s an inexcusable example of operating in hindsight rather than foresight.

This year is not last year. Randy Wolf is no longer a good bargain-bin pickup. Signing Wolf to a three-year deal because he’s coming off a couple of good seasons would not undo their mistake. More likely, they’d be signing him instead of someone better and less expensive, and so they’d just be making the same mistake again.

Baseball’s offseason is upon us, and with it various outlines for how the Mets should revamp their roster.

This is an annual tradition, of course, and a fun way to kill time between the end of one season and the start of another. Sam Page turned in a particularly good plan for Amazin’ Avenue last week, but as Matt Cerrone points out — and Sam admits in the post itself — it’s entirely unlikely to happen.

But that’s not really my issue.

My concern about “plans” is that they might be a drop too similar to what Omar Minaya himself scripts out at the beginning of each offseason, and it’s a habit that often gets him into a lot of trouble.

Take last offseason, for example. On Jan. 13, Minaya said: “Right now, we’re not in the position player market. We’re in the pitcher market.”

I responded with this article, one of my all-time favorites, and one that got me thoroughly trashed around the Internet. Minaya’s metaphor, I maintained — and still do — was a faulty one. The position-player market and pitcher market are the same market.

The market is all available baseball players. The general manager enters the market with a certain amount of resources — in money and players — and must work to get the most value he can in return for what he spends. Obviously a team’s needs are an important factor in determining that value; a good third baseman is worthless to a team that already has a great one.

Last year, when the Mets had a decided need in the starting rotation but also some big-time question marks in the lineup, Minaya determined that he wanted a starting pitcher and went out and spent big on the “best” one available — a certain Oliver Perez.

So to extend this metaphor, think about it this way: I’m really in the mood for steak. When I get to the store, though, I find that there has been a run on steak, and the last remaining piece of steak has been marked up, plus isn’t all that appealing anyway. Meanwhile, perhaps because everyone suddenly wants steak, chicken is on sale. I could buy the chicken and a bunch of delicious seasonings and side dishes to make that chicken taste better, or I could buy the steak.

I would buy the chicken. Minaya, last year at least, bought the steak. That’s the problem with adhering to the grocery list.

The general manager’s job is to put together the best possible baseball team. It doesn’t matter really matter what kind of players he needs to get there — whether his team is power-laden or pitching-heavy or defensively apt — so long as they can win ballgames.

So when he approaches the offseason, his job should be to read the market and use the resources at his disposal to put together the best team. That’s all. Setting a plan at the offseason’s outset would be to imply that there’s no need to adapt to the whims of the market. It’s writing a grocery list and stubbornly sticking to it, ignoring what’s in stock and what’s on sale.