The following data is current through 5-30-2011.

If you, dear reader, are like me, then you agonize unnecessarily over every lineup on every team in every game. Aaron Rowand leading off?! Yargh! No! Carlos Gomez batting second for the Brewers?! WRONG. Aaron Miles batting anything?! Unforgivable.

Holding egos constant, inefficiency is the greatest enemy of success. With regards to lineups, however, teams can really only lose a handful of runs over the course of full season, but a handful of runs, in real terms, can mean the difference between the division or a boring October. So it’s a dicey proposition. A mismanaged lineup on the Royals team does not mean a whole lot because they will lose the division by several trillion runs. A few lost runs for the Rays, Yankees, or Red Sox, though, can mean the season.
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Continuing our Trade Targets series, here are five middle infielders who could be available at (or before) the deadline.

PLAYER: Jose Reyes
TEAM: Mets
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Giants, Reds, Brewers
CONTRACT STATUS: $11 million, free agent after the season
PROJECTED WAR: 3.3

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It seemed unlikely that the Mets would be the center of baseball attention any time during the 2011 season. They made a splash by hiring Sandy Alderson and his cast of familiar faces to run the front office, but they made mostly small moves this winter, knowing that the pieces just weren’t there to contend. The biggest buzz most of us expected was a potential Jose Reyes trade, and even then the buzz would be Reyes, not necessarily the entire Mets team.

That changed, of course, when this week’s New Yorker dropped on Monday morning. Within its pages team owner Fred Wilpon was quoted as saying some less than flattering things about his team and its players. As if that weren’t enough, the latest issue of Sports Illustrated also features and article about Wilpon, in which he talks about the team’s financial woes. They’re taking losses, and while they have money coming off the books this winter they might not be able to reinvest all of it. That might make things tougher for the 2012 team as well.

The Mets did get some good news, though, that can perhaps inspire optimism for the coming off-season and even 2012. According to ESPN New York’s Adam Rubin, injured ace Johan Santana threw off a full mound on Monday, for the first time since he struck out Omar Infante on September 2, 2010. His return this season could help the Mets considerably.

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The vastly under-appreciated Carlos Beltran hit three home runs last night, boosting his line for the season to .296/.387/.590 (.417 wOBA). Although the Mets are, as expected, not in contention this season, Beltran’s return to his pre-2010 offensive form so far has been a welcome development. Given Beltran’s age and recent injury issues, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he’d simply not be able to contribute much this season. Despite the hot start, he’s in the last year of a big contract and probably not part of the Mets future. Beltran is probably a trade candidate. What sort of value does he have on the trade market?

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Let’s get all the Ike Davis caveats out of the way first.

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Johnny Damon’s case for the Hall of Fame has recently come up (again). Indeed, some people seem to think it is time to start discussing which hat he should be wearing for his induction. My initial response is “he’s been good, but not good enough,” but hey, I’ve been wrong before. Many times. While the voters have made some progress in recent years, they aren’t exactly known for their objectivity or consistency. What the voters will do with Johnny Damon is one question, one that involves stuff like history and folk psychology, things I’m not interested in dealing with here. Instead, I want to address what the voters should do in Damon’s case.

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It happens every year. A manager gets an itchy trigger finger early in the season and buries a guy before he even gets a chance to earn the faith the manager put in him to start the season. This year is no different, and with an idea sparked from Eric Seidman’s piece yesterday on Brad Emaus — an article that the Mets completely ignored when they waived him today — I present the 2011 Brad Emaus All-Stars.
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Building a roster is tough. Rebuilding one is even tougher. Not only does a team need to adhere to a strict game plan in acquiring the right mix of talent at both the major and minor league levels, but it must also resist the urge to break away from a strategy if the returns are not immediately satisfactory. Sometimes multiple roster turnovers are needed before a competitive team emerges. I bring this up because the Mets currently find themselves in a strange situation, the gray area between competing and rebuilding.

Their roster was originally constructed with a win-now mentality. But a slew of serious injuries and the regression associated with various players aging kept them from seriously competing in years past. These same factors have also rendered them unlikely to battle for a playoff berth this season. The extremely high cost of several players, acquired under previous management, mixed with the financial troubles of ownership has made budgeting a serious consideration. The Mets simply cannot spend like they used to.

Without a dynamite farm system, and with high-priced players on the books, it could be particularly difficult for the team to get where it needs to be, even with a solid front office featuring Sandy Alderson and Paul DePodesta.  How can the Mets right the proverbial ship? Here is a brief overview of do’s and dont’s that could help vault the team back to the top of the competitive spectrum.

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With a healthy, productive season, Jose Reyes will become a very wealthy man next winter. The switch-hitter, eligible for free agency following 2011, could hit the market as a 28-year-old at a premium position with at least three 5.5+ WAR seasons to his name.

That’s not to say that Reyes’ game is without question marks, however. Hamstring issues that haunted him early in his big league career crept back up in 2009, costing him most of the season, and he missed time last year getting treatment for an overactive thyroid as well as nursing an oblique injury. Reyes didn’t play poorly in 2010, but a 2.8 WAR campaign was disappointing nonetheless. One of the biggest reasons that Reyes fell short of being the championship-caliber player we’ve come to expect was a downturn in his plate discipline.

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Revamping a flagging team doesn’t happen in one offseason, especially an offseason spent discovering new and unhappy things about the owners’ finances. The ‘Sandyball’ era in New York has started, as Sandy Alderson got the old gang together and made wholesale changes in how the Mets are run. The new question is, ‘how long will it take for the new organizational philosophy to take hold?’ And can a team that made no obvious fundamental changes to the roster will their way to a different fortune in a new season?

The Starting Nine
SS Jose Reyes ^
CF Angel Pagan ^
3B David Wright
RF Carlos Beltran ^
LF Jason Bay
1B Ike Davis *
2B Brad Emaus / Luis Castillo ^
C Josh Thole *

* denotes left-handed hitter; ^ denotes switch-hitter

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