As most of you read earlier, the Mets designated Manny Acosta for assignment today and opted to take Blaine Boyer north instead.

I’m not going to go into all the reasons why I preferred we kept Acosta instead. Hey, I’m a big boy and I can live with the decision. But when speaking to reporters about the decision, Collins said something that really didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I’m not knocking him by any means, but for the first time since he became manager he reminded me of, dare I say it?

As you know, the thrust for my argument in keeping Acosta was that he was a proven commodity, was coming off a solid season, and was a flyball pitcher, something that’s a big plus in the wide open spaces of Citi Field.

This afternoon, Collins explained the decision to keep Boyer by saying this:

“I’m a big groundball guy,” the manager said. “His numbers state that he doesn’t really give up big innings, and he makes them hit the ball on the ground. We’re going to need that.”

Now normally, I wouldn’t even give that comment a second thought, but coming from the same guy who said he viewed second base as an offensive position, I would think he would choose the flyball pitcher over the groundball pitcher given that all the additional grounders could exploit the defensive inefficiencies of Brad Emaus.

The other day during my conference call with Sandy Alderson, somebody asked him what goes into making these types of decisions and if spring performance was a strong consideration. As I expected he would say, he mentioned past performance as the main barometer because it represents a larger body of work. I agree, so lets take a look…

Blaine Boyer, 29, had a 4.26 ERA and a 1.54 WHIP in 54 games for the Diamondbacks last season. He struck out 29 and walked 29 in 57 innings pitched.

Manny Acosta, 29, had a 2.95 ERA and a 1.21 WHIP in 41 games for the Mets last season. He struck out 42 and walked 18 in 40 innings pitched.

It’s just a real head scratcher as I could easily think of a half dozen reasons to keep Manny Acosta… and maybe only one reason to keep Boyer.

I’m thinking that they just wanted to get rid of as many Omar Minaya guys as possible so they could establish their own identity, which is cool. and okay with me

But when the difference in performance level is this far apart between two players as in the case between these two players, you just gotta take Manny Acosta, you just gotta.