What the Mets Should Do

Evidently the Mets have axed Brad Emaus and promoted Justin Turner. The move makes sense to me; Emaus wasn't hitting at all and looked worse defensively than Daniel Murphy. So now the question is, does this make any other roster moves start to look enticing? I think it does. First of all, Justin Turner can play shortstop. He's played 53 games at the position in the minor leagues. Jose Reyes, when healthy, plays all day, every day; specifically, from 2005 through 2008 he averaged five missed games per season and averaged 8.8 innings of shortstop per game he played. I think Turner is every ounce of shortstop backup we need unless Jose goes really seriously down, in which case Ruben Tejada makes perfect sense as the promotional backup shortstop. So there's no need for Chin-lung Hu on the major-league roster (though he's got an endearing name), given that he's got a career .507 OPS. That's the obvious move to make. The other one is to consider, once Jason Bay comes back, whether we need two backup outfielders on the team at once; both Scott Hairston and Willie Harris can play all three outfield positions.

Now, if you had the starting lineup of Thole/Davis/Murphy/Reyes/Wright/Bay/Pagan/Beltran and pared the bench down to Paulino/Turner/Hairston or Harris, that leaves the question of which two players to add to that bench. Nick Evans seems like a pretty good candidate, since he can play all four corner positions and hits really well. Not sure who the fifth bench player should be, though.