METS: Absence Makes The Carlos Grow Fonder

I finally understand why David Wright has been shoehorned into the number-2 hole in the batting order so often this spring. It's simply because the guy he's supposed to protect in the batting order, that gorgeous hunk o' monster Carlos Delgado, is busy being a gushing smiling new daddy back home in Puerto Rico.

It also reveals quite a weakness in the Mets lineup. If Delgado's absence is causing such a mess in the offense already, what will happen during the real season if he takes a day off?

Sure, manager Willie Randolph had been experimenting with Wright batting second even before Delgado took off to be with his wife, but I think the results so far have shown that it's not especially useful to do so. The team has had awful results in scoring runs these past five weeks, and a strong possibility to WHY can lie in the composition and layout of this lineup.

The team is already slugger-heavy like an American League team. Over the years, I've seen how lumbering lineup can rot away the manager's mind, having them constantly dream of Earl Weaver's "Three Run Homer" offense. So you get plenty of games where the team blasts a bunch of homers and wins by a dozen runs -- and plenty of games that are lost on the missed bunts, the wasted sacrifice situations, the romance and allure of swinging for the fences rather than building an attack batter by batter (anyone remember the ninth inning of last October's final game for the Mets?).

With Jose Reyes putting on daily exhibitions of "small ball", the rest of the team hasn't had to work very hard at anything but swinging as hard as they can. It's like Reyes is the only NL component of the lineup, while the rest of the hitters are pure AL.

However, upon further analysis: who else on the starting 9 actually is a prototypical #2 hitter? Nobody, and that's the truth. The analysis actually makes me, for the first time, feel great sympathy for manager Willie Randolph. On any given day, his catcher and 2/3 of his starting outfield could be in need of rest; his second baseman could be faced with hitting from the right side, which means he needs to be replaced with a platoon guy who CAN; and his first baseman might start feeling the pangs of age and might ask for a little rest (to be replaced with another first baseman nearly 15 years older than her).

In every case, the man being replaced is a power hitter. And in every case, his replacement is not (Julio Franco, Endy Chavez, Lastings Milledge, Ben Johnson, Damian Easley, Ramon Castro). The lineup is no longer as top-heavy as an augmented porn actress with home run threats, and suddenly, the entire team hitting strategy must do a complete about-face.

Poor, poor Willie. Maybe this is the year where he will have to come face to face with NL-style baseball. Nyahh nyahnn hyannn.