I don’t think anyone is saying that hewyard will never be a good player, I’m just saying that I don’t think he’s ever going to a superstar player. I think he can hit maybe 25-30HR’s, but he may hit .240 or .250 doing it.

I think people forget one very important detail regarding Jason Heyward. He’s 22 years old. That’s 3 years younger than Ike Davis, 4 years younger than Lucas Duda.

I’m not a Heyward fan. I honestly could care less about him. I appreciate the fact he’s a kid and has talent though.

Consider that since 2000 there have only been 4 hitters age 20 or younger to qualify with enough MLB at bats. Miguel Cabrera, Elvis Andrus, Starlin Castro and Jason Heyward. Only Cabrera had more RBI than Heyward.

People here talk about Heyward like he’s a 27 year old who had 1 good year and vanished. Last year was a bad year for him, this year he’s started slow. Maybe he’ll have another bad year… who knows. but he still likely has 8-12 years left before you need to judge him.

You can make a very serious argument that Heyward was rushed to the big leagues since he played 5 games in AAA and only 47 in AA. That’s not a slight on Heyward’s talents it is a knock on the Braves folding under the pressure of calling up a young phenom. Something Washington is trying to avoid with Harper.

I know that his lack of experience at any position is his biggest down fall. I think he has the all the abilities to be a average 2nd basemen if not a good one. He’s never going to look graceful and make a lot of acrobatic-jaw dropping-wow plays. But he has the ability to play 2nd everyday …what he lacks is the ability.

But I also try to be fair…there have been assumptions that Murphs bad D and overly aggressive base running will cost the Mets more wins than his bat will help win. I thought it to be interesting to see if that’s really the case. So I’ll try to keep a running tally going as long as I can. It will be interesting to see the final outcome. Of course there will be games that Murph didn’t do anything that effected the outcome of the game and his bad D might cost a run, but his good bat created a run, so those days will have to be balanced out.

Gee is a guy who needs the corners to be successful…and Parnell had a couple of K’s that he didn’t get because of the tall and narrow zone.

I don’t know what’s going on this year, but the Umpiring has been pretty bad.

I hate the idea of instant replay in baseball, but these guys are making it pretty had to defend the “purity” and “human factor” of the game.

Wait, I have an idea! Lets actually pay umpires in the minor leagues and train them so they can become decent at their jobs when they get to the show. Most of the bad calls I see are because the umps are out of position.

Wait, another idea! on close plays when a manager argues, why not have the crew chief decide if another ump had a better view of the play and have a quick conference to try to get the call right.

Probably worth noting in 2010, Ike Davis hit .295 against lefties in 122 AB.

He’s 0 for the season, I think he should have played yesterday to be honest. Even Keith said the same thing, don’t let him sit on the bench with an 0fer just because a lefty is throwing. He’s not incapable of hitting lefties.

Even with a young cornerstone such as Wright or Reyes someone has to play 3B and SS in the minors and some guys just won’t adapt to another position at the ML level in a timely enough fashion to combine good or even adequate defense with their prime meaning their just never going to put it all together at the same time.

It takes millions of reps for some guys to just be competent when they get up here in one way or another and the guys more able to make those switches are found in the first couple of rounds or later round tool based guys or internationally. That’s why a slowdown in the system based on one and two year signings that don’t take away from infusing true talent into the system is so critical.