With the absences of Jed Lowrie and Todd Frazier, after Monday’s game, the New York Mets have now played J.D. Davis at third base in their last three games, and put him in the cleanup spot in their last two.

So obviously, the fact that they are playing Davis so much and slotting him ahead of Michael Conforto and Wilson Ramos in the lineup means they definitely have a high opinion of him. After all, they traded three of the team’s top-50 prospects for him, so they weren’t going to not play him.

Still, the fact that the Mets are throwing Davis into the fire like this is a little bit puzzling. They’ve already taken the risk of immediately placing the powerful but unproven Pete Alonso in the two-hole. Thankfully, that has worked out as Alonso has been crushing the ball through his first four games.

But to put Davis in the cleanup spot ahead of Conforto and Ramos, as they did last night, is bold, to say the least. Davis has not proved that he can hit Major League pitching at all, as he hit just .175/.248/.233 in 113 plate appearances last year with the Astros.

Davis is also not as gifted as Alonso, in that there are more flaws and fewer strengths with regards to his offensive profile. He also doesn’t hit the ball nearly as hard, hits a lot more balls on the ground, and is much more easily beaten by hard fastballs. This is not the profile of somebody that you throw into an everyday role on a potentially competitive team.

Davis’s defense is also a huge question mark. While he has made some decent stops here and there, his throws have been iffy and he has looked uncomfortable at times. He threw two lollipops over to Robinson Cano in yesterday’s game, and he also spiked a throw to first that Alonso bailed him out on with a nice pick. Additionally, he completely whiffed on a strong one-hop throw from Juan Lagares that would have easily retired the runner trying to advance to third.

Putting Davis at third also forces primary infielder Jeff McNeil into left field, where he has hardly ever played. McNeil hasn’t been awful in the outfield, but this shift hurts the team’s defense as a whole. McNeil is comfortable at third and has played there a lot, so McNeil to Davis is a defensive downgrade at third base.

Additionally, McNeil playing in the outfield forces either Lagares or Keon Broxton out of center field and onto the bench, while Brandon Nimmo moves to center. Nimmo is a worse center fielder than Lagares or Broxton, McNeil is a worse left fielder than Nimmo, and Davis is a worse third baseman than McNeil. That’s three negatives and zero positives.

The Mets are hurting the defense just to get Davis’s 36 wRC+ bats into the lineup. To make matters worse, they’ve been batting him higher than some of their much better and more established hitters. Davis does have some potential as he produces a fairly high exit velocity, but he hits too many balls into the ground and is very susceptible to fastballs.

They cannot rely on him to produce as the middle-of-the-order bat that they’re pretending he is. If he’s ever going to hit in the middle of the order on a regular basis, he’s going to have to prove he can even be respectable against Major League pitching before the Mets even think about putting him in that position.

The point is that the Mets can’t rely on Davis to be someone he isn’t. It also isn’t worth sacrificing defense and potentially losing games to find out if Davis is that player or not. He simply should not be getting any free passes while the Mets are trying to compete with three other great teams in their division. Considering how much the Mets gave up to acquire him, it’s understandable that they would want him to succeed, but they need to be more realistic and evaluate what they have rather than fantasizing that Davis is some star hitter.