The Mets Lineup: What Would You Do?

Jerry Manuel gets beat up a lot on the blogs and on the chat boards, and I'm as guilty as the next guy of thinking, at times, that my ideas are better than his, especially when it comes to the lineup.

There are a few things I would do if I were manager:

GMJ would be shown the door on day one, that is a given.

More importantly, I would put Reyes back at the top of the order and restore normalcy to the world in an attempt to appease the baseball gods.

In fact, my lineup would be as follows:

Jose Reyes
Angel Pagan
David Wright
Jason Bay
Ike Davis
Jeff Francoeur
Rod Barajas
Luis Castillo

Batting Reyes at leadoff is a no-brainer.  The top of the Mets order is not a place for an experiment.

For his career, Jose Reyes is batting an even .300 when leading off a game.  In 2008, his last healthy season, he hit .340 when leading off a game and .327 when leading off an inning.

More importantly, he scored 43 first inning runs when leading off a game in 2008.  That's over 1/4 of your season with a run in the first frame.  If you think that was a fluke, it's not.  He scored a first inning run 37 times in 2007.

I did a detailed stats piece here on why Angel Pagan must bat second in this lineup.  Memo to Jerry:  Playing second base does not mean you have to hit second.

The rest of the pieces fall in place naturally, and Alex Cora or Henry Blanco fit right in when their caddy role dictates they play.  The rest of the lineup consists of every day players.

When Carlos Beltran gets back I would actually hit him in the 2 hole, which would give the Mets a mini-murderer's row of:

Reyes
Beltran
Wright
Bay

The bottom line is this--the manager's role before a game starts consists primarily of putting out the lineup that will maximize production.

I believe Jerry has failed in that capacity.