Over at Amazin’ Avenue, Chris McShane argues that the Mets should designate Justin Turner for assignment and replace him with one of Josh Satin or Valentino Pascucci. Given the team’s glut of middle infielders and its reliance on Scott Hairston as a regular starter, it makes sense to bring on another right-handed bat. But Jason Bay is on his way back, which should — for better or worse — relegate Hairston back to the bench.

Turner has options, for what it’s worth, so the Mets could send him down without losing him. They would need to clear a 40-man spot for a right-handed-hitting replacement.

Think of it this way: If someone told you in March that by the first of July you’d be rightfully pissed that David Wright isn’t starting the All-Star Game, well, you probably wouldn’t be pissed at all.

And if that same prognosticator could tell you then, with certainty, that Johan Santana would get left off the All-Star Team despite being worth more this season than every pitcher on it except Clayton Kershaw and R.A. Dickey, you’d probably grip him in a massive bear hug right there, and maybe dance a little in awestruck giddiness. After all, you’ve just met some sort of soothsayer, and he brings very, very good news.

Of course, it’s not March. It’s July and you already know that Dickey and Santana are having fantastic years and that Wright has had just about the best half-season of his career. So if you’re mad that Santana and Wright did not get the recognition they deserved, and if you’ll be mad if and when Dickey isn’t named the game’s starter, that’s understandable.

But isn’t it great to feel feelings again?

The All-Star Game, in its current incarnation, is stupid. Someday, long after the rules have changed and once the breadth of the stupidity has set in, we will look back on this and smack our heads and wonder how in hell it happened. Fans vote to choose the All-Star starters, but then the All-Star Game counts for something. It doesn’t count for that much, mind you, and it’s not like the way World Series home-field advantage was determined before This Time It Counts was any less arbitrary. It’s just… why?

Not-stupid things include the 2012 Mets, no matter how they looked last night. The 2012 Mets are still in the thick of playoff contention here on the first of July. The 2012 Mets have overcome their own awful defense and miserable bullpen to outscore their opponents by 22 runs, playing — for the most part — decent and exciting baseball with a strong flair for the dramatic.

They have won despite the early loss of Mike Pelfrey and with his spot in their rotation occupied for much of the year by guys who make us miss Mike Pelfrey. They have won despite prolonged slumps from Daniel Murphy and Ike Davis, guys expected to be among their best hitters. They have won despite injuries to just about everyone they’ve used at shortstop, and they have won despite underwhelming production from Josh Thole, Lucas Duda, Andres Torres and, whenever he’s been healthy, Jason Bay.

The Mets have won because Wright has carried their offense for half a season. Check this out: The Mets have a .722 OPS on the year, right around the middle of the pack in the National League. Take out Wright’s production, though, and by my math it drops to .690, above only the Padres, Cubs, Pirates and the suddenly miserable Dodgers. Replace Wright with the median third baseman and the number ticks up slightly, but not by much. Wright is the difference between a decent offense and a crappy one.

And the Mets have won because their starting rotation is good. Dillon Gee has pitched better and deeper into games. Jon Niese appears to be making good on his solid peripherals. And Dickey and Santana have been wonderful. Literally wonderful. Dickey is doing things with a knuckleball that no one ever has, and Santana is pitching like Johan Santana after a surgery that ruins lesser careers. The Mets have two pitchers that inspire wonder.

It is all enough to add up to a 43-37 start for these Mets, and the hope that with a little more offense from Davis, Murphy and Duda in the second half and any sort of improvement in the bullpen, they might even actually… man, I don’t even want to say it. Hope! Legit hope.

Has it really only been three years?

I can’t speak for you. But I can identify the watershed moment for me when my desperate Mets-fan optimism awoke from its long slumber and shook out the cramps prompted by three unfortunate seasons bookended by frustrating offseasons. It’s Mike Baxter slamming into the wall to save Santana’s no-hitter a month ago yesterday. Baxter crashes against the wall and nowhere in my conscious mind exists any concern about the team’s financial future or ticket sales or crummy defense. He hangs on to the ball and I could care less about the latest stupid fire-sale column or who said what on Twitter.

And I know a no-hitter is just one game, and they’re frivolities decided in large part by luck, and that Baxter, in giving himself up in the midst of a strong season, might have cost the Mets more than he provided. It’s not a rational thing. It’s that brief, unencumbered, wrenched-stomach feeling — nerves and joy — of thinking that you’re watching something special, that you’ve got some small part in something awesome. And even knowing that baseball is entertainment and its outcomes are, in truth, more or less meaningless, you feel Citi Field rumble with excitement for maybe the first time ever and realize that you’re hardly alone.

I want that again now. Again and again. And maybe I’m blinded by that hope, but now I can look up and down the Mets’ roster, and without even squinting or straining or rationalizing I can consider the several ways in which they might produce the greatest and longest-lasting version of that satisfaction, no matter what anyone says.

Which is to say: Screw the haters. Love the Mets.

I’m going to guess false. Bay has a couple of things working to his advantage, assuming staying on the Mets is an advantage: His contract and his handedness.

Bay is owed $19 million after this season. In Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo, Sandy Alderson showed a willingness to part ways with highly priced veterans who didn’t appear apt to help the club. But if Bay can’t turn it around in 2012 and doesn’t look likely to help the Mets in 2013, it shouldn’t matter how much he’s owed. It might be tough for the club to stomach swallowing that much sunk cost, but if they can find a guy at or slightly above the league minimum they think can outproduce Bay — which doesn’t seem unreasonable — then, you know, peace out.

Bay does hit right-handed, which is valuable to the Mets because of their glut of lefty-hitting outfielders. With Lucas Duda, Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Mike Baxter in the fold and Matt den Dekker coming up the pike, Bay could balance out the mix a little. Again, though, it doesn’t seem crazy to imagine the Mets finding a righty-hitting outfielder that can outproduce Bay against lefties on the cheap. Scott Hairston, for example.

The Mets will and should give Bay every chance to make good on his contract. Since it hasn’t happened yet, and with the injuries piling up, it doesn’t seem likely to happen. And this front office doesn’t seem prone to carrying players that can’t pull their weight just because they’re paying them. I’d guess Bay comes to Spring Training, we read a couple stories about how he’s in the best shape of his life, and the Mets keep him around while the roster picture clears up. If no one gets hurt and he isn’t 2009 (or even 2010) Jason Bay again, they cut him loose late or send him packing in a Gary Matthews Jr.-style deal, provided he’s willing to waive his no-trade clause.

But trying to predict things in baseball is often a fool’s errand.

There were a bunch of questions similar to this one. As Rob suggests, the Mets should be reluctant to trade prospects for bullpen help. Trading for relievers at the deadline is generally a really bad way to get good value for your young players. And that seems especially likely this season, with more teams in the Wild Card hunt and the price of rental players (presumably) inflated. Flags fly forever and prospects are no safe bet to pan out, so if there was some way the Mets could guarantee that trading a prospect would net them a World Series win, it’d be worth it. Since there isn’t, hanging on to the young guys seems like the best way to win a championship. It doesn’t help or hurt the team’s chances this year, and it doesn’t hinder them for years to come either.

That said: The Mets could use some bullpen help. I suspect their biggest help will come from regression to the mean — bullpen performances are fickle and exist only in small sample sizes, and Frank Francisco, Ramon Ramirez and Jon Rauch are all probably better than they have been this year.

An extra quality arm would sure be nice, though. Justin Hampson earned the first crack at being the second lefty in the bullpen. If he can’t cut it, maybe Edgin will get a look. The Triple-A relievers that appear most likely to help the 2012 Mets’ bullpen are a couple of familiar ones, though: Manny Acosta and Pedro Beato.

Acosta has been lights-out in a small sample since returning to the Bisons, posting a 1.32 ERA with 15 strikeouts and no walks in 13 2/3 innings. He was almost unfathomably bad in the early part of the year with the Mets, but pretty good for the big club in 2010 and 2011. If whatever was wrong is better now, Acosta could again provide some quality innings out of the bullpen down the stretch. The ERA will be ugly all year.

Beato has also pitched well in Buffalo, striking out 16 and walking eight (three of them intentionally) while yielding a 1.35 ERA in 20 innings. He’s throwing in the low-to-mid-90s again and says he feels fully healthy after shoulder soreness sidelined him for the early part of the season.

Mejia to the Bullpen version 2.0 looks like it’s somehow going even worse than it did the first time around. Maybe something clicks for him and he figures out how to throw strikes in a relief role, but right now he doesn’t look anywhere near ready to help the big club there.

My first instinct was to assume confirmation bias, but I went to the gamelog. The Mets are 6-12 in their first games after traveling this year and have been outscored 106-82 in them.

But 18 games, you know, is a small sample size. And I don’t think it’s enough to rule out randomness. One of those rough losses came with Chris Schwinden on the mound in Colorado and another was Johan Santana’s oddly scheduled return after the no-hitter. It’s something worth keeping an eye on, I suppose, but it’s too soon to rule out noise. The Mets have, at times, played some pretty bad baseball in the middle of homestands and at the end of road trips too. And they’ve had some pretty strong games the first day after traveling that get swept under the rug a bit when we’re trying to identify a trend.

Italics denote preeminent Hairston status.

*- Though Hairston patriarch Sam Hairston only played four games in the Major Leagues, he played parts of four seasons in the Negro Leagues in the late 1940s. Per the stats on baseball-reference, he never homered, but it’s worth noting that across the four seasons, his teammates on the Indianapolis Clowns combined for only three homers. Presumably that’s either due to some absurd ballpark or an incomplete record of stats. Also, the first two Hairstons to play in the Majors — Sam and John — were both catchers. None of Jerry Sr., Jerry Jr. or Scott has spent an inning behind the plate in the Majors or Minors.

The Bisons’ bats came out to support Garrett Olson on Wednesday in a 9-4 win for the good guys. Some notes:

– Valentino Pascucci celebrated his Triple-A All-Star nod with three doubles, a walk and five RBI. Pascucci’s been slumping pretty hard and, by his account, enduring some of the worst luck he’s ever had in his career — hitting a bunch of line drives right at people. All the doubles today were crushed, one to right-center, one down the left-field line, the third over the left-fielder’s head. With Vinny Rottino getting claimed by the Indians today and the Mets still in need of some right-handed pop… could this finally happen? Is Jason Bay’s return the biggest impediment to Pascucci glory in Queens?

– If Josh Satin stays this hot, someone’s going to consider harnessing him as an alternative energy source. He has 14 hits in his last 23 at-bats with a double, two homers and four walks.

– Left fielder Fred Lewis went 2-for-3 with two walks and a double. In his last five games, Lewis is 10-for-19 with two doubles, two homers and four walks. Lewis, 31, is a longtime TedQuarters favorite who would probably have seen time with the big club by now if he didn’t hit left-handed. He’s not on the 40-man, but in an ideal world he’d probably be a better fit for the Mets’ current roster than one of the excess middle infielders. Lewis also made this play in Tuesday night’s game:

– Duff’s, the wings place recommended by Catsmeat and plenty others, was closed by the time we finished up last night. We instead tried Gabriel’s Gate, as suggested by multiple Twitterers. The wings were delicious. I can’t say they’re the best I’ve ever had or that they’re better than anything I’ve had in New York City. But for all its sports bars, the Upper East Side seems to lack a great wing joint, so these were much appreciated. Freshly fried and crispy, good Buffalo flavor and the right amount of spice to make ’em burn but not hurt.

– Pedro Beato came on to relieve Olson with one on and one out in the top of the 7th. He got out of the inning unscathed, then yielded an unearned run in the 8th after a Jordany Valdespin error, a balk and a double. Beato’s fastball sat around 93-94 on the stadium gun here, and, though he walked two batters, he threw 16 of 24 pitches for strikes. Beato has pitched effectively for the Bisons. I imagine if his velocity is routinely in the low-to-mid-90s — it had been down a bit, apparently, upon his return from the disabled list — he’s the next call for the big-league team’s bullpen.

– The on-field character race here features two types of Buffalo wing and a ramekin of bleu cheese. There’s also a celery stalk, but the celery stalk has not raced in either game we’ve seen. Rumors around the press box say that the celery stalk has a pulled hamstring and/or is abstaining from racing for philosophical reasons.

– Jordany Valdespin singled, tripled, turned two double plays and booted an easy grounder.

– I had another beef on weck.

– If you care, Wikipedia Wednesday is Thursday this week. I hope.