The Ike Davis story doesn’t start with his home runs shattering car windows in his team’s executive parking lot, like the Jason Heyward story does. That’s too perfect, almost too folksy a beginning for a player breaking into the Majors with the 2010 Mets.

The Ike Davis story starts with a team putting faith in a backup first baseman recently cut by the Kansas City Royals, coming off two straight seasons with sub-.300 on-base percentages. It starts with a bizarre 20-inning game that depleted the Mets’ bullpen and forced them into a roster move, setting off the chain of events that would lead Davis to Flushing.

It starts with confusion. Confusion over whether the Mets are rushing yet another prospect, confusion over what the team intends to do with the injured Daniel Murphy and, heck, confusion over why Davis was penciled into the Triple-A Bisons’ starting lineup and at Coca-Cola Field in Buffalo before he knew he was bound for Citi Field on Monday.

And it starts with doubt. Doubt that Davis will hit Major League lefties or lay off Major League curveballs, doubt that he’ll make much of a difference in the Mets’ pennant hopes even if he does succeed, and hell, doubt that the team’s’ front office operates with some semblance of a cohesive plan and is not simply fueled by a haphazard series of reactive moves.

Then it started with a single.

Davis may struggle with big-league pitching as some expect him to, show the world he needs a little more development time and provide the Mets an easy decision when Murphy is ready to return from his knee injury in a few months. Or he may mash the ball the way he did all spring and the way he did in his first 10 games in Triple-A in 2010, and stick with the club for good.

For now, the Mets’ top hitting prospect is the Mets’ starting first baseman. The first chapter of the Ike Davis story is underway.

According to SNY’s Brad Como, Ike Davis is on his way to Citi Field.

So am I, incidentally.

Anyway, in these funky times, I think it’s important that we remember that Davis’ first name is actually Isaac, and Isaac is a totally sweet first name.

Indeed, there appear to be enough dependable arms that they won’t need Mejia to be the primary setup man, and the rookie was only supposed to stay in the majors at age 20 if he played a pivotal role in the pen.

So send him down now, build him back up as a starter in Triple-A and maybe by mid-June Mejia could be ready to take a spot in the rotation and make an impact.

– John Harper, N.Y. Daily News.

It looks like the newspapers are catching up with the blogosphere on this issue, and, well, great.

And it could turn out that the Mejia-to-the-bullpen experiment, if the Mets send him down and stretch him out soon, ultimately only worked to give him a taste of Major League hitters while simultaneously limiting his 2010 innings total.

Granted, relief appearances are not the same as innings thrown by a starting pitcher. And given Jerry Manuel’s tendency for overworking his relievers for stretches of the season, it’s reasonable to worry about Mejia remaining (for now) in his manager’s care without any apparent set of front-office mandated rules governing his use.

But since last we heard — per Gary Cohen, during a game on SNY a few nights ago — Manuel is the biggest and perhaps only advocate for keeping Mejia on the Major League club, I have to imagine the manager will change his tune or be voted down as it becomes clearer that the Mets will eventually need starting-pitching help. Or, you know, he’ll be replaced by someone with more of a longterm stake in the team’s success.

The Mets could have optioned Jacobs to Buffalo immediately, but designated him for assignment instead. That way, there would be no chance of a scene if Jacobs decided not to report after reflecting on the situation. Jacobs indicated he would go to Mets’ top minor league affiliate if playing time existed — which should be the case once Davis is promoted.

“I’m not going to go down there and sit on the bench, I’ll tell you that,” Jacobs said. “That’s for sure. I’m definitely not going to waste my time doing that.”

How Davis performs could have interesting ramifications for Murphy. Poised to be the Opening Day first baseman, Murphy suffered a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee during a rundown the final week of spring training. If Davis takes off, a team source speculated that Murphy could even find himself at Buffalo. There, Murphy could primarily play first base, but also be exposed to second base and the outfield to improve his versatility for an eventual utility role.

– Adam Rubin, ESPNNewYork.com.

OK, obviously the most important tidbit here is that Ike Davis is apparently on his way up to the big club, and soon. I figured the front office was being careful about starting the prospect’s arbitration clock and would wait at least a little longer, but then, when has this front office really been careful when it comes to saving money, especially down the road?

Regardless, if Davis is as good as the Mets and their fans hope he is, the club will likely lock him in to a contract that extends beyond his arbitration years at some point early in his career, as is the trend with young players. But I’m getting ahead of myself. He hasn’t even been added to the 40-man roster yet.

When that happens, he’ll be an upgrade over Jacobs, for sure. How big an upgrade depends on a couple of factors. Davis struck out a lot last season in Double-A and struggled against left-handers. He hasn’t done much of either in his first 10 games at Triple-A, but it is a tiny, tiny sample: Far too small to adequately judge any improvement in those areas.

At whatever level, Davis should be playing everyday to develop those skills (and all of them, really), so assuming he’s actually Queens-bound, we should soon get a good sense of whether Davis can handle Major League southpaws. Of course, that’s making the giant assumption that Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya do right by their top prospect and don’t platoon him with Fernando Tatis.

I lobbied for Chris Carter a bit on Twitter yesterday. The way I see it, Carter, a proven Triple-A hitter, represents a nice stopgap option for the Mets until Murphy returns, and should probably be given a chance to succeed in the Majors, since the Mets don’t have many more inspiring options.

I’m not about to claim Carter’s a better player than Davis, though, and since I’m plain-old Mets-fan excited about seeing Davis at Citi Field, I’m not going to argue against his promotion. If there’s one top prospect that should be spending more time in the Minors developing his game, it’s certainly not the one who will be playing everyday.

As for Jacobs: Jeez. “No chance of a scene”? “Waste my time”? I’m sorry. I know you once hit 32 home runs in the big leagues, bro, but you’re also rocking a .671 OPS from first base this season. And for those who want to — rightfully — point to a small sample size on Jacobs’ line so far, consider this: Jacobs hit .208/.296/.375 for the Mets this season, and .228/.297/.401 for Kansas City in 2009. Almost identical. Mike Jacobs spent all of 2009 hitting like we watched him hit for the past two weeks. That’s how you get cut by the Royals. And the Mets. The deepest recesses of baseball ignominy.

And as for Murph? I like Murph. I want to see Murph play, because, as I’ve now written about a million times, I don’t believe one full season of Major League at-bats at 24 is a good indicator of anything, and I’m holding out hope that Murphy can be a decent low-cost contributor for the Mets. That’s not going to happen if he never gets a chance, of course, but if the club would actually consider moving him to a super-utility role, I’m all for it.

If I were managing a ballclub, I’d want my best reliever in the game in the highest-leverage situation. If that happened to come in the sixth inning, after the starting pitcher grew tired and walked a couple of guys in a tie game, would I be smart to bring in one of the worst pitchers on my staff because I’m reserving a better one for the eighth inning, when he’ll come in with no one on base?

– Me, here, March 8.

Not trying to be snarky. Wait, yes I am. Seriously though, ugh.

To be fair to Jerry Manuel, Raul Valdes had been pretty dominant coming into Friday’s game. Still, he’s been used a ton of late, and he’s Raul Valdes.

And Manuel had stated before the game that Ryota Igarashi — on the strength of his recent performances — would be the “eighth-inning guy” Friday, implying that Manuel believed Igarashi to be the team’s second-best available reliever. If that was the case, Igarashi probably should have been in the game in the seventh, if not after Oliver Perez tired then certainly after Fernando Nieve loaded the bases.

NUMBERS DON’T LIE: If Manuel’s decision Wednesday night to use Fernando Tatis as a pinch-runner and Alex Cora as a pinch-hitter in the 10th inning seemed curious, statistics and history backed him up: Cora is simply a better pinch-hitter.

In 88 pinch-hit at-bats, Cora has 25 hits and one home run, for a .291 average. Tatis is 19-for-79 (.241), with two homers.

– Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.

Yeah, I know the whole “small-sample size” thing is bandied about a whole lot at this point of the season, but I’m going to to ahead and invoke that clause here. Tatis has a lifetime .788 OPS in 3417 plate appearances.

Cora has a lifetime .657 OPS in 3484 plate appearances.

Perhaps Tatis is every bit as unclutch as Mets fans seem to believe he is and he would have locked up in that spot, and maybe Cora can actually will himself to first base in pinch-hitting situations in way he somehow can’t in most other at-bats, but I refuse to accept that Cora is “simply a better pinch-hitter” than Tatis, who is simply a better hitter.