**Updated** About two minutes after I posted this blog I saw that David Lennon of Newsday tweeted that Ike Davis will be sent down today.***

I started writing this post worried that this topic had been written to death already. Then the more I looked around the more is started to hear a common call for Ike Davis to start on Opening Day. I am a big Ike Davis fan and I definitely hope we see him at Citi Field sooner rather then later, but here is why I feel Daniel Murphy has to be the Opening Day First Baseman for the NY Mets.

Everyone has been yelling and screaming about how the Mets need more pitching.  They do, it’s obvious.  Well since the Wilpons hid the checkbook how do you get one?  Well the only avenue I see is via a trade.  In order to do that you need chips.  So unless you want to see another Kazmir-for-Zambrano mugging, you need to have some young major-league-ready type players.  I don’t want to see the Mets touch any of the names we have been talking about all season: FMart, Davis, or Mejia.  So to be able to pull off any trade we gotta find some young quality somewhere.

And obvious idea points to Daniel Murphy.  When you sit down and look at it you raelize that the best case scenario is that Murphy will be a Met for only this year and then he’s gone.  That’s the best scenario, that’s if he produces at the plate and plays a decent glove in the field.  Enough to convince the Mets brass to leave Davis in AAA for the year.  If Murphy struggles, it could end a lot sooner then that.

What they need to do is give Murphy the starting job, let him prepare for opening day starting now.  Give him a few months to see what he can do.  It’s obvious that Ike Davis is the Mets future at 1st base, and he might be the near-future too.  So lets let Murphy proove he can hit in the bigs and build up some value.  This way he can be used as a chip in a future trade down the line sometime between the All-Star break and the trade deadline.  Murphy is a young guy with a lot of talent (at least the plate) and his contract is cheap.  He’s the kind of guy a lot of small markets like and would take in a trade.  It might be enough to offset the cost of acquiring a decent arm at the price of a big prospect.  A package of Murphy and a longer-range prospect might do it, you never know.

If you bench Murphy now in favor of Ike Davis, who has totally dominated the spring training competition, you have basically given up on Murphy and totally wasted the investment you made in him last year.  The Mets committed themselves to Murphy last year, and it’s silly to cash out now, when his value is the lowest.  Lets give him a few months and see what he can do, you never know you just might go on a heater and get a great deal of value back for your efforts.  When your the New York Mets you have to think big picture/long term benefit of the club, and this is the move that betters the club big picture.  I just hope Jerry and Omar are able to think that way with their jobs on the line.