Is Hitting Going to Be Our Strength or Weakness?

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…

Many baseball folk have opined that the Mets look pretty good in terms of pitching, but that hitting remains a question mark, since we are supposedly missing that crucial power-hitting corner OFer, and it’s foolish to rely on Delgado to repeat last year’s performance. (Because CDOG is so inconsistent from year to year???!!!)

Despite the talk of batting orders and the surging confidence in what our Mets may achieve in 2009, I have been thinking about/conjecturing what a good hitting team could look like with our configuration of eight everyday guys. Lots of “ifs” here, and I know many will want to take me soundly to task, but here’s my forecast for an overall team batting average of .284 from the starters. It will be fun–at least for me–to look back on this at the end of September. No power projection (done that), RBIs, triples, doubles, or any of that other important stuff for the time being just BA projections. Here goes. But wait: um, duh, it’s forecasted on the basis of these eight guys staying healthy, more or less, through six grueling months, and, no, this is not the definite batting order.

Castillo–.300

Reyes–.300

Wright–.315

Beltran–.270

Delgado–.260

Church–.280

Murphy–.300

Schneider–.250

Just imagine the devastation if the four guys who hit .300 have these stations in the lineup. Pitchers will have their hands full.