What Are The Mets Planning In Regard To Daniel Murphy and Fernando Martinez?

The Mets have announced their lineup for tonight’s game against the Phillies and it’s the same lineup that won the game for us last night.  I’m not concerned about that, they won the game but there are two players who will be sitting on the bench tonight that do concern me: Daniel Murphy and Fernando Martinez who did not play last night either.  I understand that both guys are lefties and thePhillies decided to put out three lefties this series.  Both Murphy and Martinez are young in their career, Murphy is 24 and F-Mart is just 20 years old.

These guys need to be playing everyday at this stage in their career.  Murphy I believe has declined since we saw him last season.  Murphy should be demoted to Triple A and put at first base for the remainder of the season.  He can improve his defense at 1st and be ready for the 2010 season when he will be our everyday 1st baseman.  One of the reasons Murphy made the team this year out of Spring Training was his ability to hit against left handed pitching.  His numbers have decreased against lefties as Jerry has used him less frequently against them.

Fernando Martinez has been good but it’s obvious that at this stage in his career is not 100% ready for the big leagues just yet.  This is not a knock on him.  I have all the confidence that next year, barring an injury on his part we will see him in the outfield everyday for the Mets .  F-Mart still has to work on his hitting.  He has a very hard time hitting the breaking ball.  Also he still needs to mature a little as evidenced when he didn’t run out that pop out to the catcher.  Last week this went unnoticed but he tried to bunt, it looked to be going foul and the ball did thanks to the catcher but F-Mart did not run out of the box.  I think another few months in the minors where he will be playing everyday will help him improve on his skills and mature into the player theMets hope he will become.

I like both players, I think they are going to be important to this franchise in the years to come but if they are not going to get playing time everyday we need to send them down where they can improve and develop their skills for the majors.