Going into last night’s game, Mets shortstop Jose Reyes had stepped to the plate 86 times this season, and drawn not a single walk. The player with the next-most walkless at-bats, Colorado’s Aaron Miles, had gone a mere 67 ABs without a free pass.

For the Mets and their fans, Reyes’s undisciplined approach raises two questions: First, is he hurting the team? Second, is his development being stunted?

As to the first question, the answer is, a bit to my surprise, “Not so much.” As of yesterday, Reyes’s batting line was .267 BA/.267 OBA/.419 SLG, as compared to an N.L. average for shortstops of .258/.310/.367. On-base aver age is far more important than power, but Reyes is contributing enough with his bat to be within range of the average shortstop. Factoring in his speed and good defensive work, I’d say he’s helping the team.

The Mets would score a few more runs if someone with better on-base skills, like Doug Mientkiewicz, was penciled in atop the lineup, but the most important factor in scoring runs is having good hitters, not how you arrange them. Even with Reyes making enormous numbers of outs, the Mets have so far fielded one of the better offenses in the league, and considering intangibles like players’ comfort and confidence in various lineup spots, it’s hard to criticize manager Willie Randolph for having left Reyes in the leadoff role so far this year.

In the long term, the second question is the more important one, and there the answers are more ambiguous. Reyes, who is still only 21, now has 580 career at-bats, in which he’s drawn 18 walks. Since 1947,only two players 21 or younger with between 500 and 600 career at-bats have drawn fewer free passes: shortstop Mike Caruso, who after a promising rookie season with the 1998 White Sox had a miserable sophomore year and then washed out of the majors entirely, and Rennie Stennett, who played a spectacular second base for a fine Pirates team through the 1970s. (Incidentally, Hall of Famer Paul Molitor drew just 19 walks in 521 at-bats as a 21-year-old rookie.)

Even broadening the criteria to include 22-year-olds, walking as little as Reyes hasn’t ruined the careers of the few players who have done so. Others with comparably low walk rates include Benito Santiago, who’s enjoyed a long and fruitful tenure in the majors, and Tito Fuentes, a longtime regular at second base with the Giants in the 1970s.

On the one hand, comparing to players like Fuentes and Stennett isn’t a bad thing; staying in the major leagues for a decade as a regular on good teams is no small accomplishment. On the other hand, Reyes has the talent to do far more than that, and it will be an enormous disappointment if he ends his career having been a defense-first regular for a decade and then a fringe contributor for another year or two.

To give an idea of the difference a more developed batting eye could make in Reyes’s game, simply convert 10 of the outs he’s made this year into walks – and that’s what plate discipline is about. His 2005 batting line would be .306/.334/.480; as a point of comparison, Derek Jeter hit .292/.352/.471 last year. And that conversion doesn’t account for the extra hits Reyes would get if he were swinging in more hitter’s counts – so far this year, he’s worked 3 balls in a count all of six times, and hasn’t once hit with the count 3-0 or 3-1.

What’s odd about all of this is that watching him, you wouldn’t think Reyes is a particularly undisciplined hitter. In some ways, he isn’t: He’s seen 3.73 pitches per plate appearance this year; the National League average is 3.74. He’s prone to chasing pitches on the outside part of the plate, especially when batting right-handed, but he doesn’t have a huge, obvious weaknesses like those Alfonso Soriano has for the sliders in the dirt or anything thrown over his head. Reyes has a quick, compact stroke, and doesn’t strike out excessively, especially for such a young player.

Taking everything into account, then – and this is not the conclusion I thought I’d come to before examining the issue – I don’t think anyone needs to be overly concerned about Reyes’s batting eye. If he continues to walk at the levels he has so far in his career, it will prevent him from being a star, but probably not from being a solid regular at shortstop, and those don’t grow on trees. If his coaches and teammates can help him change his approach and learn the virtues of working the count, he can be as good as anyone in the game.

This is Reyes’s third year in the major leagues, and it’s easy both to forget how young he still is, and to take his talent for granted. He has a lot to learn, but he has the time to do it.