The Best Laid Plans

I’m going to assume that the line-up that the Mets ran out last night was not the one that Omar Minaya was counting on to lead his team to the top of the NL East. Here’s the team that they put on the field, as well as their ZIPS projected wOBA for the rest of the season:

Pagan, CF, .312 woBA
Castillo, 2B, .324 wOBA
Wright, 3B, .415 wOBA
Sheffield, LF, .343 wOBA
Tatis, 1B, .334 wOBA
Martinez, RF, .308 wOBA
Santos, C, .273 wOBA
Martinez, SS, .263 wOBA

Wright is great, Sheffield is hitting like its 1999 instead of 2009, and Castillo and Tatis are useful role player, but that is a line-up that badly misses Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran, not to mention Carlos Delgado, Daniel Murphy, and Ryan Church.

Of course, they were playing the Washington Generals Nationals, so they racked up a fairly easy win anyway. But against an actual major league team, that’s not a line-up that is going to score many runs.

Fernando Martinez is a really good young talent, but he’s not ready to produce at a level that a contending team needs from a corner outfielder. Pagan is a decent reserve outfielder, but you don’t want him playing with any regularity. Santos and Martinez are not major league players.

The Mets stand a half game behind the first place Phillies, and they’ve learned the last few years that the margin between first and second place can be microscopic. They aren’t in a position to be punting winnable games, and while Reyes and Beltran will get healthy again relatively soon, the team needs better back-up plans. They can’t be caught running out a line-up like this too often.

Trading season is just about to kick off. I’d suggest that the Mets should be at the front of the line.