Kudos to the Mets for realizing that carrying an injured player is a bad idea, rather than DLing him so that he can heal and their manager can have a full complement of players.

But the disabling of Rod Barajas, and promotion of Mike Hessman, gives the team a number of useful options they have lacked for weeks.

Hessman has spent most of his career in the minor leagues. But while playing there, he’s managed to log time at every position as recently as 2009. For a team that had Henry Blanco as David Wright’s backup, only Alex Cora as the backup to both Luis Castillo and Jose Reyes, and no right-handed alternative to Ike Davis, this obviously solves a lot of bench problems (though just as clearly, Hessman shouldn’t be used in more than an emergency basis at 2B or SS).

The recent slump David Wright has gone through is unsurprising, considering how he simply hasn’t rested in weeks. Jerry Manuel said he wanted to give Wright a day on Sunday, but it wasn’t clear how he’d do that. So Hessman can spot Wright every once in a while- a vital skill by itself.

Hessman can also give Ike Davis the occasional day off at first base, ideally against tough lefties (Davis has just two of his 14 home runs against them), so the Mets still have a power bat at the position. Both of these roles were filled by Fernando Tatis, incidentally, and since Tatis went down with his season-ending injury, have been filled by… no one.

As a pinch-hitter, Hessman is a strong complement to Chris Carter. While Carter provides lefty pop, Hessman is a career .887 OPS hitter against lefties in the minors, including 1.280 in 49 at-bats this season.

Mike mentioned that he is a Quadruple-A player, but that is, frankly, an idea I don’t believe in. He simply hasn’t had enough big league time to draw any conclusions about his ability to hit major league pitching. But if the Mets are smart, they’ll have a chance to judge for themselves.

Howard Megdal is the Editor-in-Chief of The Perpetual Post. He covers baseball, basketball and soccer for Capital New York, MLBTradeRumors.com, New York Baseball Digest and has written for ESPN.com as well as numerous other publications. He is the Poet Laureate for SBNation New York. His book about Jewish baseball players, “The Baseball Talmud,” is available for purchase on Amazon.com and wherever books are sold. His next book, "Taking The Field", is available for pre-order on Amazon.com and will publish in May 2011.

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Tags: David Wright, Fernando Tatis, Ike Davis, Mike Hessman