Mets manager believes Jose Reyes will make his way back to hitting leadoff

Jose Reyes batted eighth on Wednesday for the Mets.

During Wednesday night’s brutal 8-2 loss to the Braves, Reyes went just 1-for-3. Honestly though, the fact that he didn’t go 0-for-3 is an improvement of sorts as he’s currently hitting just .114. Yikes.

But, Terry Collins still believes Reyes should be hitting leadoff, and that he will be eventually. He actually elaborated on this post game.

“If Jose rights the ship he’s the ideal guy because of the other things he brings to the table. Your leadoff guy is the guy that ignites the offense — he gets on base with the middle of the lineup coming up. Right now, certainly there are going to be times with what we’ve seen from Michael, so far that leading off is a good spot for him. He’s getting some balls to hit and certainly putting them in play and doing a good job with them. Right now we can only worry about what’s going on at the moment and he’s the right guy for that. Michael has demonstrated what you can do if you’re not a base-stealer and that’s hit the ball over the fence.”

Yes, all of us know that Reyes does have the potential to be leadoff. We’ve seen how well he’s done in that position — both last season and in years past. But right now, Reyes just isn’t hitting. He’s not getting on base… and Michael Conforto is.

Conforto, who wasn’t even supposed to be on the roster (we really can’t remind everyone of that little tidbit enough as he’s bee on fire this season), is currently hitting .325 with thirteen hits, one double, four homers, and eight RBIs. Not too shabby for the third week of the season.

To put things more in perspective, let’s look at Reyes so far. We already stated how he’s hitting just .114. He has eight hits, two doubles…. and that’s it. Yes, Conforto went 0-for-4 in yesterday’s game unfortunately, but we’ve all seen how this kid has proved himself so far this season.

Next: Injury updates on Matz, Lugo, and Flores

If Reyes breaks out of this slump, yes, I do believe he’ll be back in the leadoff spot. But, I think it’s too soon to be talking or thinking about this. Let’s focus on other issues, you know, like how this team just isn’t winning as of late.