Jack Flynn - Jed Lowrie

Brodie Van Wagenen moves quickly.

Just when you think you have a bead on what the Mets are going to look like in 2019, the new Mets general manager zigs when you thought he was going to zag.

The latest misdirection came on Thursday, when word broke that the Mets were signing infielder Jed Lowrie to a two-deal worth $20 million. It was a signing that initially left many – including yours truly – scratching their heads.

Lowrie’s best position is second base. But didn’t the Mets just trade for Robinson Cano, a second baseman with a huge financial commitment, earlier in the offseason?

Didn’t the Cano trade block Jeff McNeil, an exciting young infielder who Mets fans assumed would be starting at second base in 2019? Isn’t Lowrie going to further bury McNeil on the depth chart?

Lowrie will be 35 on Opening Day. Aren’t mid-30s free agents out of style, as general managers shift their focus to roster building based not what’s already on the back of a baseball card, but based on what might be there one day?

The answer, to all of these questions, is yes.

That, then, begs another question – what is BVW thinking?

Last week, the theme of the Keon Broxton-JD Davis acquisitions was adding roster depth by identifying good players who were blocked in other organizations. This week, signing Lowrie is about adding depth by acquiring an undervalued asset.

We are nearly 20 years into the new millennium, and free agent acquisition seems to be taking its cues from the movie Logan’s Run. A free agent over the age of 35 is, for the most part, destined for baseball’s version of Carousel. (Note: I know that one renewed at Carousel at the age of 30 in the movie, not at the age of 35. Allow me some editorial freedom here.)

Van Wagenen was able to sign his former client at such a reduced price because of the bias against mid-30 free agents seeping into the consciousness of other general managers. In Lowrie, we are talking about a middle infielder who has averaged 155 games over the last two seasons, with an OPS+ of 120 in each campaign. How many switch hitting second baseman have been as durable and as productive as Lowrie has over the last two seasons?

Lowrie comes to the Mets on a club-friendly deal not because he is a bounce-back candidate, as has been the fashion for Mets free-agent signings in recent years. He comes to the Mets on a club-friendly deal because the rest of the league spent more time looking at his age than Van Wagenen did looking at his statistics.

Lowrie can still play three infield positions – two of them competently. He’s likely to feature as the backup shortstop for the Mets while playing more regularly at third base and second base, but he’s unlikely to play more than once every other week at short.

Ultimately, Lowrie provides added depth to a team that had taken a “wing and a prayer” approach to player health for the better part of a decade now. Mets fans aren’t used to seeing five legitimate major league players competing for three positions. Given the psychological beatings we’ve taken over the course of our lives, we can almost be forgiven for being confused and upset by such routine competence.

Lowrie may be coming off the best two offensive seasons of his career, but he has indeed reached an age where all but the very best players begin a slow fade. Cano is still performing at a high level as well, but he too has reached the point where he can no longer reasonably be expected to maintain the same elite production – especially if he’s going to be asked to play 160 games a year.

And that’s the point. Before this signing, the Mets needed to start Cano at second base 155-160 times if they were going to compete for a playoff spot. Now, they can dial that number back to something like 120-125 times, and feel secure knowing that an above-average major league player can start the other 35-40 games.

“But wait!” the bruised and beaten Mets fan exclaims, scarred by years of magical thinking and ownership incompetence. “Jeff McNeil was going to play 155-160 games there before we got Cano, and he’s an above average major leaguer! He could’ve started the other 35-40 games instead of Lowrie!”

Here’s the problem with that. Jeff McNeil is not yet an above average major leaguer.

Sure, McNeil was terrific in 63 games last season, as the Mets limped home to a 77-85 record. That does not mean he was going to be terrific this season. Relying on the Jeff McNeils of the world to maintain a 60-game stretch of brilliance over a full season, without having any reasonable Plan B as a fallback, is emblematic of the Little Jeffy Wilpon Theory of Roster Construction. That type of junk science belongs in the proverbial trashcan.

The question of blocking McNeil from regular playing time entirely is a legitimate one, and manager Mickey Callaway is going to have to be creative with everyday lineup construction and position assignment. There is already a path to 65 starts for McNeil even with the Mets retaining Todd Frazier, with room for more based on injuries or ineffectiveness.

Let’s start at second base. Cano is good for 125 games there, with Lowrie getting the other 35. (Although there are 162 games in the season, it’s easier to use a base of 160 for estimating purposes.) The Mets should be looking to start Lowrie 130 to 135 times across three positions, so in this exercise let’s get the new guy his games before we get to McNeil.

Amed Rosario is hopefully going to start 150 times in 2019, so we can get Lowrie another 10 as the backup shortstop. All of the pearl clutching about Lowrie no longer being able to man the shortstop position credibly is losing sight of the fact that he’s very unlikely to get more than 100 innings there. The 2019 season does not hang in the balance of the 100 innings that Jed Lowrie stands at shortstop. If Rosario is injured for any length of time, the Mets will surely need to employ a glove-first minor league shortstop to replace him.

For us to reach his magic number, Lowrie would need to start 85 to 90 games at third base. That leaves 70 to 75 games for McNeil to split with Frazier the hot corner – and more if he outplays a veteran on a one-year deal whose career offensive numbers are in a freefall.

All of this is predicated on Cano, Lowrie and Frazier being healthy for a full season – a longshot for three guys in their mid-30s. It is also predicated on McNeil continuing to earn regular playing time, which certainly isn’t a guarantee either.

The best thing about it is that there’s room for all four infielders to get more playing time if any one of them has a significant injury that puts them on the shelf for a month or longer. Would you have preferred that additional playing time go to Jose Reyes or a nondescript middle infielder who ideally belongs in Syracuse?

We haven’t even touched the first base question yet. There are a lot of Mets fans who assume that Peter Alonso is going to cruise to the Rookie of the Year Award, smack 35 home runs and bat .300 with passable defense. But again, that’s another application of the Little Jeffy Wilpon Theory.

Alonso has just 300 plate appearances at the Triple-A level in his young career. The pitchers in The Show are better than those in the Pacific Coast League, and the ball doesn’t carry through the air of major league ballparks the same way it does in the PCL deserts. Mets fans building projected rosters on Excel spreadsheets should be planning for regression, not immediate superstardom.

Alonso has the talent to be the next Rookie of the Year. He is probably going to be the starting first baseman by the time 2019 ends. But there is always a possibility that he stumbles out of the gate, and it may take him time – maybe even a full season – to really find his footing.

The Lowrie signing helps mitigate the effect of that as well. If Alonso struggles, Lowrie can play more third base. Frazier and McNeil can play more first base, as Alonso sits next to veterans on the bench who are going to ease his transition into the major leagues. Even Cano can play some games at first, which he began doing in Seattle last year as a concession to Dee Gordon and/or to Father Time.

Now, is Lowrie going to be the final significant acquisition of the offseason? The national baseball writers seem to think so, and the Mets payroll projects to be north of $155 million barring salary dumps involving Frazier, Juan Lagares or Jason Vargas.

But Brodie Van Wagenen keeps zigging, when everyone else expects him to be zagging.