The Mets started the 2008 season (finally!) with Moises Alou on the DL, this time recovering from hernia surgery. That left the Mets in need of a starting left fielder, preferably one who could bat right-handed. And while you think it’d be relatively easy to find a halfway-decent right-handed bat to platoon with Endy Chavez or one of the other spare-part lefties the Mets had lying around, it’s a lot harder to acquire a particular type of player when the entire league knows exactly how badly you need one. So rather than give up his one real remaining minor-league trading chip for Xavier Nady or somebody and force me to murder him, Omar Minaya decided to deal with the vacancy internally.

The nice story of spring training was the fine hitting of Angel Pagan, a one-time Met farmhand drafted in the fourth round in 1999. He spent six years playing at all levels in the minors before getting sold to the Cubs, who used him mostly off the bench, but in the major leagues at any rate. Anyway, of all the potential replacements for Alou in left field, Pagan had by far the best spring, batting .329 / .386 / .461 with 10 RBIs in 27 games. Plus, as a switch hitter, he could, at least ostensibly, bat right-handed. So Pagan made the club as the starting left fielder, at least until Moises comes off DL later this month (fingers crossed), and he immediately joined the list of Great Names In Mets History.

While it’s been slightly overshadowed by the Mets’ disappointing 2-4 start, Pagan has rewarded this temporary promotion with a .821 OPS in, granted, extremely limited action. He’s a relatively young guy—this is his age 26 season—who we might ordinarily expect to improve, especially if he gets a chance to play every day. Does Pagan’s hot spring and early April represent a new level of ability, or is it all just sample-size smoke and mirrors?

Year    G  GS   AB   R   H  HR  RBI    BA   OBA   SLG
2006   77  37  170  28  42   5   18  .247  .306  .394
2007   71  32  148  21  39   4   21  .264  .306  .439
2008   11  11   39   9  15   0   10  .385  .458  .513

Can’t it be both? Above are the Oxymoron’s career numbers in the big leagues. You can see that this year Pagan is off to a good start, and if he can even come close to maintaining this pace this would easily be his best year yet. Of course, the problem is that it’s in eleven games—he’s on pace for 147 RBIs, for the love of god. No one believes Angel Pagan is going to knock in 147 RBIs, any more than anyone believes that Jose Reyes is going to go the whole year without a stolen base.

So this is just a small-sample-size thing, right? Well, yeah. But if you look at his spring training stats, which of course need to be taken with a grain of salt, in addition to the fledgling regular season, you get something like this:

Time    G   AB   R   H  HR  RBI  BB  SO    BA   OBA   SLG
Spr.   27   76  11  25   1   10   7  10  .329  .386  .461
Reg.   11   39   9  15   0   10   7   4  .385  .458  .513
Tot.   38  115  20  40   1   20  14  14  .348  .409  .478

Now, I’m not saying that his last 115 at-bats, mostly in spring training, should make us throw his other 300+ major league at-bats out the window, but 115 plate appearances is a lot closer to statistical significance than 39. And while I don’t really think he’s going to maintain this pace for a full season, I do think it’s possible that Pagan might have made the leap from replacement-level to league-average. If the Mets could just get average production out of left field until Moises gets off the DL, I’d be thrilled.

Of course, the reason why Through-the-Looking-Glass (where up is down, and black is white) even made the team in the first place over say, just going with Marlon and Endy, is that he could hit right handed, and break up that long string of lefties in the bottom half of the Mets order. And here’s the part that makes me pause:

Split      PA   H  HR  RBI  BB  SO    BA   OBA   SLG
vs. RHP   239  63   4   25  20  40  .290  .350  .429
vs. LHP   158  33   5   24  12  24  .236  .287  .421

Batting left-handed, Pagan has basically been a replacement-level player: nothing special, but a fine stopgap for an injured starter. As a right-handed batter, he’s been somewhere between bad and terrible. If Pagan made the team on the strength of his ability to swing the bat right-handed, we may be in trouble.

So what difference does it make if Pagan can’t hit righty? Neither can Church, Delgado or Schneider. The problem is that if Pagan isn’t at least a credible threat against a left-handed pitcher, the opposing manager has no incentive to pull a lefty reliever, which can turn a LOOGY into a long reliever.

Of course, as I write this Pagan has just hit a double off Jeff Suppan to lead off an inning. If he keeps doing things like that, I’m not going to care what side of the plate he does it from. He might, too—the clever chaps over at Baseball Prospectus think he’s got a 40% chance of having a breakout season.

Of course, he did hit it left-handed.

Thanks as always to Baseball-Reference.