The great thing about baseball is how it shifts your opinions on players from Point A to Point B and then back to Point A again. Always evolving, always transforming and always wonderfully unpredictable. It’s sort of like real life that way.
I remember all the jokes, all the griping and all the complaining when Omar Minaya first signed journeyman pitcher R.A. Dickey and yet six months later he was one of our favorite players (no doubt he used his Jedi mind tricks on us). Same thing occurred with other players like Scott Hairston and more recently Marlon Byrd. That’s why I always find it so silly when people fight so vehemently with each other about these signings. I mean, go ahead and complain about the signings, but why actually fight about it knowing how unpredictable baseball can be?
I bet if you asked 100 Mets fans in July if the Mets should go with Lucas Duda at first base in 2014, about 90 of them would have jumped up and screamed, “No freaking way!”
I bet if you asked those same people today, it would be more like 50/50.
Suddenly, after only a week’s worth of games at first base to replace the injured Ike Davis, the lumbering former left fielder is starting to change some minds about him.
Hey, even Sandy Alderson called him out in an interview on WFAN back in June, and then three days ago he was back on WFAN singing his praises…
In Wednesday’s 5-2 win over the Braves, Duda went 3-for-5 with a home run and fell a triple short of the cycle. He is now hitting .371 (13-for-35) with one homer and four RBIs in 11 games as a first baseman this season.
As a matter of fact, if you took Duda’s .817 OPS this season and put it up against all first base qualifiers in the National League, he would rank sixth in between Allen Craig and Adrian Gonzalez.
Duda credits the switch to first base for his transformation at the plate of late. “I’m much more comfortable at first,” Duda said. “That takes the pressure off.”
I’ve never actually been on the Lucas Duda bandwagon per se, but I certainly find myself wondering more and more about the possibility of bringing him back as our first baseman next season. And that’s coming from one who has been advocating we trade Duda for most of this year.
Again, baseball is so beautiful that way…
