UPDATE: Andy Martino asked around and he says that Collins has not named Hernandez his second baseman. He’s merely in the mix, as they say. We could parse this I suppose -- Martino is reporting peoples’ “sense” of the matter while Mike Puma says he got it from someone who has “direct knowledge” of the matter, but at some point the news is so small that if you parse the crap out of it you don’t have anything left to parse. It’s a job battle in which the established favorite is Luis Castillo. That is, by definition, small potatoes.
8:43 AM: Mike Puma of the New York Post reports that Terry Collins has settled on a starting second baseman for the Mets. And it’s not Luis Castillo. Or Daniel Murphy. Or even Brad Emaus. No, it’s Luis Hernandez:
Hernandez has only had 12 plate appearances this spring, so it seems that Collins has made his choice by default rather than on the merits of Hernandez himself.
Not that Hernandez has much of a track record to begin with. He’ll be 27 this year and has spent parts of four seasons in the bigs, but has never had more than 91 plate appearances. His highest OBP was an even .300 in 2007 with the Orioles. He has 3,324 plate appearances in the minors, however, where his career OBP is ... .302. And his career high in home runs was six, which he did back in 2004 while bopping around the Braves system. One hopes that with such a demonstrated inability to hit that he’s a whiz with the glove, but if he was all that you’d think he’d be a shortstop or something.
Baffling move if true.