whether the weaker of Santos/Schneider is more useful to the team than whoever would get the 25-man roster spot if one was cut.

I say no. Angel Pagan/whoever is more useful than Santos.

He takes the walk when it’s given to him and that’s ideal when you’re batting 8th. That’s a lot more than I can say about Santos.

The way injuries have gone with this team, the fact that they can actually claim to be short Ramon Martinez, you just can’t give up resources. It would be terrible, terrible risk management, forget even the fact that Castro’s better than Santos.

The other legitimate question here: Whither Javier Valentin? He’s clearly a superior option to Santos. Assuming he has any kind of arm left (which is a big assumption, he was a good defensive catcher, except in his last real MLB season, 2008, when baserunners were able to run pretty wild on him), he has a career .712 Major Leage OPS and in his first week or so in Buffalo has a 1.140 OPS with three homers in under 40 PAs. If Santos does go down to make room for Schneider, and the Mets eventually need to callup another catcher when their China-doll tandem of Castro/Schneider suffers the inevitable injury, I may scream if Santos gets the call instead of Valentin.

I fear the organization may find Thole expendable because “we have Santos”. Is that a plausible fear? Omar did claim to learn from the Jesus Flores fiasco.

I felt compelled to offer some visual backup.

With the caveat that I want Castro to stay and get the bulk of the playing time, that’s not really fair – their justification is the fact that right now Santos is hitting just as well as Castro and has had a couple of big hits. It’s not really compelling justification, as we all know, b/c everything he’s ever done in his career suggests regression, but it certainly is a justification that I can understand.

Also, this is probably the 4th or 5th week in a row that I’ve seen the phrase “when he stops hitting in a month” or something like it. I know and you know and Omir probably knows that he’s going to stop hitting eventually, but let’s stop putting a time frame on it that there’s absolutely no way of proving, b/c it makes us look arrogant on one hand, and wrong on the other. Let’s just enjoy the ride while he is hitting, and hope the front office makes the right moves.

As soon as he finished swinging, he had this borderline screaming happy luck. Like he immediately realized he made good contact on it, and that in and of itself was worth celebrating.

From a post today:

Omir Santos is hitting .270, Ramon Castro is hitting .253

This is posted with the implication that Santos > Castro because of batting average. Let’s rephrase this silliness:

Omir Santos’s wOBA is .311, Ramon Castro’s is .327

You can take all the statistics you want and statistical analysis is a wonderful tool, but Ramon Castro isn’t doing anything that Omir Santos isn’t doing right now. That’s fact.

Going completely off of his Minor League Statistics to evaluate him is like looking at Gary Sheffield’s historical stats and thinking he is going to hit .320 42 HR 120 RBI. He is not the same player anymore and the same can be said for Omir Santos. Players “figure it out” and this is the only real opportunity he has gotten at the Major League level and he’s proven worthy so far. I’m not saying that 27 (?) games worth of performances is equivelant to years of Minor League Statistics, but it’s also apples and oranges.

This is not to say he is a better long-term option than Castro, but rather to speak to all the “Non Big League Caliber Player” comments out there. It’s fine to speculate, but when all is said and done, Omir Santos is a valuable piece to have.

You can come back at me with two words: Robinson Cancel, and be 100% correct, but I think Santos is just flat a better player. He has his faults and I don’t think that he is a Starting Caliber Catcher, but I’m glad we have him.