Since the Mets have done little in the way of providing storylines this winter, the media and blogosphere has had to grasp at straws in order to create content that involves the Major League Baseball team in Flushing.

One of the more recent angles has been the “intelligence” of the Mets’ new front office and their possibly not-so-coincidental targeting of similarly “smart” baseball players.

If you haven’t already read, new GM Sandy Alderson is a graduate of both Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School; his assistant Paul DePodesta is also an Ivy Leaguer, a grad of Harvard. Their combined smartness is expected to make the Mets a better organization. If you believe the Mets were a “dumb” organization before, then there is certainly some credence to that thought — even if DePodesta’s brains didn’t keep the Dodgers from recording the second-worst record in their LA history in 2005.

But when the intelligence angle is extended to the players, I’m not so sure it holds much water. The prospect of seeing brainiacs Chris Capuano, R.A. Dickey, and Chris Young in the clubhouse was interesting enough for an article in The New York Times, but that trio’s success will depend much more on their arms than their heads.

Maybe I’m just being my typically pessimistic self, but it wasn’t that long ago that the media made a big deal of John Maine’s intellect. More recently, there was Stanford grad Chris Carter, whose background in stem cell research apparently wasn’t valued enough by the Mets’ braintrust to offer him a contract.

One of my all-time favorite baseball stories about intelligence was rehashed by Mets By the Numbers a few days ago. It recounted the story of Jay Hook, an original Met whose sketches describing the Bernoulli Principle’s involvement in the flight of a curveball were published in an industrial magazine (pictured left, from the MBTN website). As it would happen, not long after the article’s publication, Hook was lit up (as he often was) by the opposition’s bats, prompting manager Casey Stengel to remark, “It’s wonderful that he knows how a curveball works. Now if he could only throw one.”

I know, I know — it’s a slow winter, and the writers have to come up with something. Intelligence is as good a topic as any; it’s hard to argue — at least, when there aren’t games being played — and getting smart ballplayers neatly follows the story of the intellectuals in the Mets’ fantasy front office.

What do you think? Would you feel more confident about the Mets’ chances if they acquired players with higher IQs?

Last week we briefly discussed the Mets’ signing of lefthanded pitcher Chris Capuano — which I still think is a good, low-risk pickup that could pay surprising dividends.

If you want to learn a little more about Capuano, check out this Q&A Kerel Cooper had with a Brewers blogger over at On The Black: Getting To Know Chris Capuano.

If you missed yesterday’s post on cancer survivor Jackson Todd, then you may not understand what’s going on here. Each day, we will honor a random former Met who wore the uniform number that correlates with the Days Until Pitchers And Catchers Report (DUPACR) to Port St. Lucie. So yesterday, it was 30 days until, and today, it’s 29 days until, so we’ll focus on a former Met who wore #29. Get it? And just so you know, this series was inspired by the book and website “Mets By The Numbers“.

It would be easy to choose Frank Viola for #29. “Sweet Music” comprised one-fifth of what should have been the greatest starting rotation in Mets history — and it could be argued, was exactly that on paper. The Mets entered the 1990 season with a rotation that consisted of Viola, Dwight Gooden, David Cone, Ron Darling, and Sid Fernandez — with Bobby Ojeda as the sixth / swing man. Wow. As it turned out, that team finished second to the Pirates (!) with a 91-71 record. Ouch.

But this isn’t about Frank Viola nor the underachieving ’90 club. It’s about Alex Trevino. Who?