The Sporting News has ranked the National League's top infields and the Mets come in third behind the Cardinals and the Phillies. They provide a useless blurb about each team:
Most of the club's offense is generated by the versatile infield. Reyes, sure-handed but not a particularly accurate thrower, is the only above-average defender.I'm not exactly sure who is providing them this information, but I'm guessing that nobody saw that Jose Valentin ranked at or near the top among NL second basemen in every defensive metric last season. This is also the first I've heard of Reyes not having an accurate arm, but I only watch all of the games so what would I know?
Further, I'm a bit iffy on ranking the Cardinals at the top here. Sure, Pujols is amazing, and Rolen, while not as good as he once was, had a nice bounceback year in 2006. But Adam Kennedy? David Eckstein? I'm not so sure they shouldn't be third and the Phillies and the Mets each bumped up a spot, but Eck has fine defense and the Mets (Valentin) and Phillies (Wes Helms) have definite question marks for 2007. So it's a toss-up.