Thursday Morning Mets Newsstand

The roundtable is a lengthy one, clocking in at more than 6,500 words. It's a very good read, but will take a solid chunk out of your Thursday if you decide to brave its murky depths.

Blogger: I have come up with a new statistic. It involves balls put in play. I call it batting average.
Establishment: Great! How's it work?
B: See, what we'll do is, we'll take the number of hits that the batter has and divide it by the number of at-bats that he has in order to determine how often he gets a hit.
E: That sounds like on-base percentage. What's the difference?
B: Well, it's all in what you call "at-bats" For one thing, we don't count walks.
E: What do you mean you don't count walks?
B: They don't count. We take plate appearances and subtract walks. They never happened.
E: How can a walk never happen?
B: It just doesn't.
E: Aren't walks good things? Like in Little League, we always say "Walk's as good as a hit."
B: I hate walks. They're gone.
...

Q: After suffering through leg injuries in his first two pro seasons, Jose Reyes has been mostly injury-free since 2005. What, if anything, can we credit for the change in health?

A: As much as I'd like to give a simple answer here, like "Vern Gambetta's workouts" or "hanging out with Rickey Henderson," I'm not sure there's any one thing that helped. Instead, I think it was all of the above. The Mets really threw the kitchen sink at the problem, but the key was that Reyes really bought in. A commitment to change appears to work, so along with good tools, good personnel, and a little luck, the Mets ended up with one of the best three shortstops in the game. Now, just as some teams do with certain skills, I wonder if the Mets feel confident in their ability to do it again. Rocco Baldelli would be a lot better in right fielder than Ryan Church would be.