In a post to NY Baseball Digest, Mike Silva asks, “Can Ike Davis change the offseason?”

That’s all well and good, but here’s what I want to know:

Can Ike Davis change… THE FUTURE!?

After reading this New York Times article, it has become abundantly clear to me that the events of the past four seasons preventing the Mets from winning a world championship have not been just an unfortunate series of coincidences.

Clearly, if these Mets were to win a world championship, something extraordinarily bad would follow, and so agents from the future have come back in time to ensure that the Mets do not win.

I mean, think about it: It’s marginally reasonable that one year, in one seven-game series, Jeff Suppan could allow only one earned run over 15 innings and Jeff Weaver could pitch like a competent Major Leaguer.

And I’d believe that a team could blow a seven-game lead with 17 to go, even if the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against that happening.

And maybe once a collection of otherwise reasonable-seeming Major League pitchers could all crumble at once and form the worst bullpen in human history.

And perhaps I could comprehend that a team could, in one season, suffer debilitating injuries to nearly all of its best players.

But c’mon. Four consecutive years? I’m all about the role of luck and randomness in baseball, but at some point — just like those dudes in the Times — even the most understanding and patient of baseball minds have to consider ideas that they might otherwise deem crazy to explain a series of events as unlikely as this one.

And I think it’s pretty clear: someone, or some group of people, from the future has been charged with coming back in time and making sure the Mets don’t win. I don’t pretend to understand how they’ve done this, either to get back to the past or, once they get here, to make sure the Mets don’t win. Don’t expect me to wrap my head around future technologies.

How, you might ask, could they know that the Mets’ success would bring doom if clearly by the time the future comes it hasn’t? It’s a time paradox, stupid. It will always be this way. They are always charged with making sure the Mets don’t win. It’s just how it works.

So the Mets are not only battling the Phillies and the Marlins and a wholesale lack of organizational depth. They’re up against destiny, the entire plotted course of human events, and maybe the universe itself. That’s a whole lot of adversity, even for Carlos Beltran.

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If you missed it earlier this week, I added my five most-trafficked SNY.tv columns to the right column of this page, mostly just so I could have something there. But I promised to add my five favorite SNY.tv columns, and so here’s that.

Most of them are from this year, which I suppose makes sense if I’m theoretically improving with practice.

One alarming trend I noticed was that most of my favorite columns came within a month-long period from April 21 to May 21 of this season, so maybe I’ve already peaked.

Anyway, in no particular order:

Other things Steve Phillips said, May 21, 2009.
The less-read companion piece to “Things Steve Phillips said.” Way too long, but it summed up a lot of how I feel about baseball in general. It narrowly beat out a similar article from the previous May.

Moving out, moving on, Feb. 2, 2009.
This is my recap of the fan-organized funeral for Shea Stadium over the winter. It was sad, and I was sad, and I had to spend a ton of time de-wimpifying the column. Still turned out quite wimpy, though.

Mind games, April 30, 2009.
A call to stop speculating on players’ mental states based on what we see of them on the field and through the media. Basically a rehashing of what I always write, which is basically that I know nothing and probably neither do you.

Gone to market, Jan. 15, 2009.
I was trashed for this one in message boards by people asking how I expected Omar Minaya to tell the future, but it’s a solid summary of what have been my main criticisms of Minaya.

Abraham Nunez?, June 6, 2008.
Honestly, I have no idea how I didn’t win a Pulitzer for this epic. This one cracks me up, because it’s a clear case of what happens when I remove my mask of sanity. Chris Carlin bashed it on Loud Mouths, and maybe rightfully so, because it’s about Abraham Nunez. But the Mets’ bench really did suck that year.

Those have been added to the sidebar. I have also added, as per Anit’s suggestion, a link to the embarrassing photos of Cole Hamels post for anytime anyone needs a pick-me-up. Being a Mets fan is tough, and New York City can be a cold place, but neither is anything that a picture of Cole Hamels with his dog in a backpack can’t cure.

Lastly, I’ve added two videos to the “About Ted” page. One of them got me in trouble for drinking on camera, and then got me an Emmy nomination (!?). The other one allowed me to just go mess with people in Shea Stadium.

Marty Noble, in a mailbag for Mets.com, says the Mets are “boxed in” with Carlos Beltran and probably could not trade him even if they wanted to because of the money he’s owed.

That’s probably true. As great as Beltran is, it’s tough to imagine a team wanting to give up much of value for a guy coming off an injury-plagued season with two years remaining on a huge contract.

Beyond that, trading Beltran, one of the very best players in the game from 2006-2008, would likely amount to selling low for the Mets.

I don’t think it’s even really worth discussing, and, since Beltran is my favorite Met to watch, I would never advocate trading the guy. But there are couple of red flags on Beltran that make me a little nervous about his next two years.

According to Bill James’ Plus/Minus, Beltran went from being one of the top center fielders in baseball in 2007 and 2008 to just slightly above average in 2009. Obviously he was injured, plus defensive stats tend to fluctuate pretty wildly anyway, but that big a dropoff can’t be a good sign.

More alarmingly, and sticking with the BillJamesOnline theme, Beltran went from being consistently one of the best baserunners in baseball (averaging a net gain of about 42 bases a year from 2002-2008) to being a -3 in 2009. That’s a pretty tremendous downfall, and not something that can be explained by a couple of failures to slide.

Naturally, both of these are speed-related problems and so, if Beltran is healthy, we should expect the numbers to head back toward his mean. But his injury was a vague one and I’m a paranoid Mets fan. I can imagine nothing worse than seeing Beltran become an injury-plagued or ineffective albatross in his last couple of seasons with the team, somehow empowering all the misguided fans who have forever felt he was overpaid and apathetic.

Of course, all that said, he did hit .325/.415/.500 in 2009. So, you know, even if he’s not quite Carlos Beltran in 2010 and 2011, smart money says he’ll still be really awesome.

I’m looking for content with which to fill out the sidebars here, and I got the idea from Alex Belth and the folks at Bronx Banter to link up some of my greatest hits, so to speak, from SNY.tv.

I realize that’s a bit self-serving, but so is this entire blog, so, you know, whatever. Anyway, I figured I’d break in down into two groups of five: The five most trafficked, and my five personal favorites.

It’ll take me a while to figure out my five favorites, especially since I’m rarely thrilled with the stuff I write and I’ll be biased against the columns that have turned out wrong. But here are the five most popular:

1) Things Steve Phillips said, May 18, 2009.

If my life’s greatest accomplishment turns out to be defending Carlos Beltran from Steve Phillips, I’ll be fine with that. For whatever reason, many of my most popular columns, it seems, are the ones written in blind rage, and this was one of those.

Probably because I was the only person with the patience to transcribe the nonsense Phillips spewed, the column got linked all over the place, including by Joe Posnanski, one of my favorite sportswriters, and by Maxim Magazine. I guess it had a broad appeal. Plus, it got me quoted in the New York Post. It was weird.

2) What’s next for Minaya, Jan. 30, 2008

My reaction to the Johan Santana trade. This one was so popular, I’m certain, because of the surge in traffic to this site and MetsBlog.com surrounding the deal.

This is funny to me for a number of reasons. I obviously can’t contain my excitement over Santana, but the column gets at a lot of the main points I always make, about the importance of not trading the farm and searching the scrap heaps for cheap talent. Mostly, it’s funny because there are copy-editing mistakes aplenty, and because it’s the first time I mention Val Pascucci — except I spell his name wrong.

3) Why I like Carlos Beltran, July 9, 2008.

More Beltran love. This one I liked. The only one here that could be a crossover candidate for the five personal favorites. (Sneak preview: It won’t be, only because it’d be weird to have it linked twice.)

4) Help from the Far East, Oct. 16, 2007

This one, a rundown of the available Japanese pitching talent, comes with a funny anecdote. Apparently it was so loaded up with falsehoods and general ignorance that it inspired Patrick Newman to start his fantastic English-language Japanese baseball site, NPB Tracker. As someone who spends so much time rallying against ignorance in the mainstream media, I humbly appreciate the irony.

In my defense, NPB Tracker obviously didn’t exist at the time, so I was attempting to do what I could with the data available to me. I caught up with Patrick for an interview a year later.

5) An egging most baffling, July 10, 2009

Another column penned quickly in anger. I remember I was on the B Train heading over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn after work when I got a text message from my buddy Jake Rake, just saying, “Jeff Francoeur, really?” The train was back underground before I could figure out what he meant, but I obviously knew something was up. By the end of the 10-minute walk from the station to my apartment, I had the bulk of the column written in my head, and it was on the site about an hour later.

Obviously, Francoeur played a lot better than I expected. A lot. So maybe it’s egg on my face once more. And I know a lot of Mets fans are now sold on the guy. I’ll know better than to totally thrash a deal like this next time, but I’m definitely not willing to say I was wrong yet.

Mike Silva, in a post to New York Baseball Digest, reminds us that Mr. Rocktober, Yorvit Torrealba, was nearly a Met.

It’s true. And Torrealba deserves credit for coming through in the clutch a bunch of times after a brutal year in which his son’s kidnappers made fun of his batting average.

But I suspect there’s a whole ton of randomness at play here. Torrealba did knock the crap out of the ball in 36 high-leverage at-bats in 2009, according to baseball-reference.com, but a) it’s 36 at-bats and b) across his career, Torrealba has been slightly worse in high-leverage situations than in others.

Torrealba had a nice season for a catcher, hitting .291 with a .351 OBP and a .380 SLG, but he posted a .355 batting average in balls in play. Considering his career BABIP is .296, I’m willing to bet there was a little bit of luck involved. Granted, Torrealba’s line-drive rate increased, too, but I, for one, wouldn’t bet on him maintaining either.

In the two years since the Mets backed out of their Torrealba deal and obtained Brian Schneider, Torrealba has posted an 81 OPS+ to Schneider’s 80. Schneider has played a good deal more over that time, though Torrealba obviously had a lot to deal with off the field this season.

Straight up, Torrealba overcame some horrific personal adversity to have a decent season and should be lauded for that. Maybe the run of apparent good luck at the plate was some sort of karmic repayment toward the debt of what happened to his family. But he’s not a better hitter than even Schneider, so it’s hard to get too upset that the Mets missed out on him.

Of course, I’d like it if the Mets could have kept Lastings Milledge, but I fear I’m in the minority there.

According to a report in the Thoroughbred Times, Paul Lo Duca is being sued for failing to pay the stud fee owed to the owners of a horse that knocked up his horse.

There are many funny things about this story:

• 1) It involves Paul Lo Duca
• 2) “Stud fees” are always funny
• 3) Apparently Paul Lo Duca is now working as an analyst for something called the Television Games Network
• 4) Paul Lo Duca is (allegedly) a welcher, not really a surprise since in 2007, he gave the Mets a .689 OPS in return for their $6.25 million

According to Lo Duca, he tried to call the breeder to arrange payment, but his phone was TOAST!

OK, that was a lazy punchline, but it’s Sunday and I’m exhausted from eating wings all day. Have at it in the comments section if you’ve got something funnier.

Matt Cerrone from MetsBlog.com says he doesn’t think the Mets should sign Dan Uggla because of Uggla’s free-swinging ways.

While Matt’s right that Uggla is an unrepentant whiffer, he does manage to get on base adequately enough to be a valuable hitter. Uggla posted a .360 on-base percentage in 2008 and a .354 mark in 2009, so he is by no means Jeff Francoeur.

The problem is, he’s a bad defender by just about every standard. The Mets already have one of those at second base in Luis Castillo, so one could argue that Uggla’s offensive upgrade over Castillo — assuming it’s a wash defensively — makes him a nice fit for the Mets.

But with the team’s defense being as bad as it was, it’d be good to upgrade defensively if they were able to somehow move Castillo, especially if they hope to see some improvement out of ground-ball guy Mike Pelfrey.

The Mets seem more likely to acquire Uggla and move him to left field, but that would essentially sap him of his value by moving him away from a premium position. Because Uggla’s actually probably about 5’9″, tops (he’s listed at 5’11”), I’d be surprised if any team put him at first base.

Regardless, moving Uggla to any corner that’s not third base (which, in the Mets’ case, is occupied) makes him little more than a league-average hitter for the spot. Plus there are no guarantees he could field it adequately.

Granted, the 2009 Mets could have benefited from a few more league-average hitters, but not at the cost of the prospects it’ll take to acquire Uggla.

People keep asking me to eat crow for bashing the Jeff Francoeur deal when it happened, and I’m still not willing to.

I’ll admit this: Francoeur outperformed Ryan Church for the remainder of the 2009 season, so in that sense, it worked out for the Mets. But I maintain that Church — though not worth a ton — should have had more value than Francoeur when he was dealt, and if the Braves were as eager as they should have been to part ways with Francoeur, the Mets should have been able to get him for less.

Don’t try to tell me they couldn’t have used Church, injury-prone and unspectacular though he was, over the course of the last few months of the season.

As for Francoeur, yes, he did a fine job for the Mets, hitting .311 with a .338 OBP and a .498 SLG in his 308 plate appearances. And even though he barely ever walked, it’s true that — as many have pointed out — if he could sustain that type of performance over a full season he’d be worth keeping around in 2010.

The problem is, it’s not at all likely he can. Players cannot reasonably hope to maintain an OPS of .836 — Francoeur’s final Mets line — without taking pitches way more frequently than Francoeur does. That’s the issue.

I Twittered about this a couple of weeks ago, and someone responded that both Carlos Lee and Pablo Sandoval have. It’s true that neither is exactly a paragon of patience, but Lee has walked in 7.3% of his career plate appearances and Sandoval has walked in 7.1%.

Francoeur walked in 3.6% of his plate appearances with the Mets, or about half as frequently as Lee and Sandoval.

For a quick and dirty reference point, I searched baseball-reference.com’s play index for seasons in which players got at least 500 at-bats while walking 30 or fewer times and maintaining an OPS+ above 110, the Major League average for right fielders.

Only 17 guys have done it in the past 20 years, and only Andre Dawson and Dante Bichette have done it twice.

The idea is that pitchers and scouts are smart people, and will learn better than to throw you anything good to hit once you’ve proven you’ll swing at most pitches.

Of course, Francoeur wasn’t exactly facing anyone new when he switched teams in the same division, so it’s a bit puzzling that the change of scenery did seem to affect him so positively.

So maybe Francoeur really just needed to get out of Atlanta, and will somehow maintain his .300+ batting average and decent production moving forward. As a Mets fan, I really hope that happens, and I’ll gladly sit down to a nice big plate of crow if it does.

The odds are strongly against him, though, so banking on it to the tune of the rumored three-year, $15 million contract extension would be shortsighted at best.