my esteemed colleague mike pondered what the fallout of the mets’ recent spat of injuries will be. deep down, i hope for the absolute worst – if the baseball gods are listening, how about making santana’s left hand get caught in a meat grinder while we’re at it? – but i think mike gets it right when he guesses these particular injuries will amount to a whole lot of nothing. it’s safe to assume luis castillo will make a full recovery from his knee troubles and produce like the luis castillo of old, i.e. two homeruns and a slugging percentage of -.013. likewise, we can expect brian schneider to hit .240 this year and punch a.j. pierzynski in the face. what’s that you say? michael barrett punched pierzynski in the face? just the .240 clip then – i sometimes confuse my scrappy “game-caller” backstops. by the way, whatever happened to paul lo duca? i really admired his tenacity…

kidding aside, it’s doubtful this round of injuries will seriously hamper the mets’ ability to score runs, or claim primacy in the pitching department (as they are expected to).

so, what injuries would? let’s run down the hypothetical injuries the nl east’s projected champ absolutely cannot afford.

1) anything that sidelines johan santana for a significant portion of the season (meatgrinder included). yes, this is a lot like john madden saying “the team that scores the most points wins,” but the importance of santana cannot be understated. he is absolutely essential to the mets’ playoff push, and an injury that limits him to, say, 100-120 innings of service-time, would effectively negate the mets’ advantage over their rivals in pitching. of course, if pedro martinez is able to even come close to performing at the level he did before 2005, the mets’ advantage solidly returns in spite of an injured santana. here’s to hoping that santana and pedro decide to engage in a friendly game of “toss the live hand grenade” sometime this year.

how bout it, my friends?

2) anything that sidelines david wright for a significant period of the season, including his ongoing bout with illiteracy. also obvious, but just imagine how much worse the mets’ collapse last september would have been if wright had rolled over and died like the rest of his team – he batted .352 in the final month of last season. though i cannot respect his views on perpetuating his own illiteracy and the illiteracy of those around him (oliver perez), i admire the hell out of his drive, so much so that i believe a month and a half on the DL for eating out of a jar labeled “rat poison” because he didn’t know better would keep the braves and phils in the thick of the race.

“listen, david, 88-74 is actually less then 89-73. let’s just go ahead and sign you up for a math class too.”

3) torn ACL, jose reyes. when reyes’ production fell off towards the end of last year, he was put under the microscope by many sportswriters who’d previously showered him with praise, who’d called him the second coming of rickey henderson and such. these writers seemed shocked to discover that for every four bags reyes stole, he was caught trying to steal a fifth. fellas, when it comes to stolen-base efficiency, we can’t all be jimmy rollins. besides, as you correctly pointed out in the first place, reyes’ real value on the basepaths is his knack for throwing off the rhythm of the opposing pitcher and creating opportunities for the bats in the lineup after him – i honestly believe this. plus, if reyes improves his discipline at the plate and on the basepaths, both of which were on an upward trajectory before his skid in the last few months of 2007, he will be that much more indispensable to the mets’ success. so, here is to hoping for a blown-out ACL. or even better, a missing right leg.

two-dimensional illusion or korean war casualty? you be the judge.

that about does it for the mets. quickly, let’s run through the potentially disastrous injuries for the other nl east contenders…

phillies: a midseason flare-up in brad lidge’s right knee/brad lidge immitating himself after the pooholes bomb. i’d say the odds of the latter are extremely high. god. kill me now. back troubles for cole hamels. also likely. a “day the music died” type plane crash involving rollins, utley and howard. anything short of that and the phillies will score 900 runs. count it.

braves: chipper jones, another well-regarded member of baseball’s illiterati, suffers total kidney failure after raiding buddy david wright’s medicine cabinet. i swear, you would not believe me if told you just how many MLBers cannot read. john smoltz’s slider realizing that its delivery system is 40 years old and finally crapping out. has not happened yet, doubt it will happen this year. rafael soriano’s elbow condition worsens to the point that it requires surgery. a little more likely than the scenarios i laid out above. and yes, i am rooting for it. i think the braves are being greatly underestimated going into this season. but that’s for another blog another time…