Reese Kaplan - Production Where You Least Expect It

Cautious optimism is the best way to describe Mets fans' attitude these days after taking 3 of 4 from the Fish and manhandling the best of the west against Oakland's league leading Scott Kazmir.  According to the broadcasters, it's been a long, 8-year dry spell since the Mets last posted double digit scores in back-to-back games.

There are some good signs of late.  Bartolo Colon just keeps rolling along doing it with mirrors, yet somehow confounding the opposing hitters.

Jon Niese is staying healthy and having the best season of his young career.  With any justice, he will represent the Mets at the All Star Game.

Curtis Granderson continues to produce, last night against a tough lefty.  While there are still some who question the decision to pay him for four years of thus far uneven production, the fact remains he's on track to achieve 25+ HRs in a hitter's hell.

David Wright is starting to look like the former All Star he is.  While he's got a lot of ground to cover to make up for his slow start power-wise, he's hit consistently well for more than a week.

The bullpen has had some very nice performances lately from Jeurys Familia and Vic Black.

There have even been contributions from unlikely places like Chris Young narrowly missing his third HR of the game and even Eric Young looking like a starter (this week, anyway).

The one player who most of us can't figure out, however, is big Lucas Duda.  His batting average won't impress anyone, but he's got a highly respectable OBP, seemingly buying into the Mets philosophy of taking a base on balls rather than swinging at an unhittable ball.

Let's take a brief look at some of the Mets' other first basemen since Divisional play began and see how Duda stacks up.  Thus far he's delivered 10 HRs and 35 RBIs over 220 ABs while hitting .250.

In 1969 Donn Clendenon was imported to provide a middle-of-the-order presence to the lineup. His actual numbers were highly respectable.  In 202 ABs he hit .252 with 12 HRs and 37 RBIs - virtually an identical performance.

In the 1970s Ed Kranepool saw a lot of 1B action, posting his best totals of 14 HRs, 58 RBIs and .280 in 1971 but over twice as many ABs.

Dave Kingman was the next player who saw a lot of time there.  His best year was 1982 when he delivered a league leading 37 HRs and 99 RBIs with a Mendoza-like .204 average in over 600 ABs.

Eddie Murray, John Olerud Keith Hernandez and Carlos Delgado round out the better options since then.  In 1993 Steady Eddie delivered 27 HRs, 100 RBIs while hitting .285.  In 1998 Olerud delivered one of the all-time great Mets seasons with 22 HRs, 93 RBIs and a blistering .354 batting average.  Even Keith Hernandez paled next to Olerud in that his best season was a slash line of 18/89/.290.  Carlos Delgado did serious damage in 2006 and 2008 while twice blasting 38 HRs, driving in 114 and 115 respectively and hitting an average of .265 for his Mets career.

The point of this exercise is to extrapolate Duda's numbers over a 600 AB season.  Doing so would net him nearly that mythical 30/100 season everyone craves.  No one can say whether or not he'll ever again approach his rookie .290 average, but as much as we might want a "bigger" name out there, it appears with rare exception his numbers actually put him in pretty good company.