I’ve now referred several times to the post I made Sunday and subsequently took down because I deemed it too negative, even by my standards.

One of the reasons I didn’t like the post was that in it, I toyed with the idea that if Jon Niese hadn’t distinguished himself from the Mets’ other fifth starter candidates by the end of Spring Training, he should be sent to Triple-A Buffalo to hone his game. I argued that since Niese has options left on his contract, the Mets should simply demote him until they inevitably need him in the rotation rather than risk losing a different starter before the season even started.

A few hours later, I remembered that I don’t really believe that. Niese has distinguished himself from the rest of the Mets’ fifth-starter candidates. Maybe not this spring, but across the course of his young career.

He’s the one, after all, with the big looping curveball he can control, and the solid fastball and good cutter. He’s the youngest of the bunch, and the one with the biggest upside. He’s the one who posted ground-ball rates above 50-percent in Triple-A the last two seasons and managed to get batters out in Buffalo last year despite a hilariously horrendous defense behind him.

Niese, a 23-year-old homegrown prospect with enough Triple-A success to suggest he’s ready to help the Major League Mets, is exactly the type of player I should advocate for in Spring Training position battles. And yet Sunday, temporarily blinded by the Mets’ frustrating decision-making process with Jenrry Mejia and the rest of their bullpen, I found myself considering that Niese should be back in Buffalo to start the season.

He should not be. And the good news is it appears he will not be.

I have no idea by what method Jerry Manuel came to decide that Jon Niese should be ahead of his competitors in the race for the Mets’ fifth-starter job. It sure seems like Spring Training results matter a whole lot in some of the team’s position battles and not at all in some others, and heck, for all I know, there’s some good reason for that.

Whatever. I’ll avoid getting too bogged down in the process this one time. What matters here is the outcome: The man — the young man — best suited to winning games for the Mets in April (not to mention down the road) now appears most likely to be in the position to do so.

That’s something good.

This is a food coma of epic proportions. I’ll try to do my best reporting about what I sampled at the Mets’ second-annual Taste of the Citi event at Citi Field today because I feel it is my responsibility, but holy lord, you’ll have to excuse me if the thoughts aren’t exactly cohesive.

Struggling to stay awake. So much eating.

I should say that, though a good portion of the food at the event will be served at the stadium’s various restaurants and clubs, I stuck mostly to the stuff that will be available at the regular concessions, because TedQuarters is for the people. I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who chooses to dine in the Acela Club, and someday I figure I’ll get up there myself, but it’s not really my scene.

That said, I did try something called the Chocolate Epiphany, a brownie sundae served in the Empire Suites. It was like the full breadth of chocolate’s awesomeness was revealed to me in a single, stunning moment of divine intervention. I wish there was a word for that.

There’s Korean fried chicken at the World’s Fare Market now, too. I didn’t realize this variety of fried chicken was as popular among Mets fans as it apparently is until I Twittered about it from the event, but then I guess I should have considered that it’s delicious fried chicken.

If you’re unfamiliar, the crust is a little stickier and a lot spicier than the fried chicken you probably know, though the particular Korean fried chicken from Cafe Hanover that’s served at Citi wasn’t as gooey with sauce as Korean fried chicken I’ve had in the past. It was damn spicy though, and really good. So that’s something to look out for.

There are also a bunch of new pizza varieties, if that’s your thing. There’s buffalo chicken, chicken parm, veggie, and grandma pizza with vodka sauce. I tried the latter, and the vodka sauce was creamy and delicious.

I almost never get pizza at the game, for what it’s worth. At both of these events I’ve been impressed by how good the pizza is, but for some reason I just never feel like pizza when I’m actually at Citi. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived in two spots — Brooklyn and a very Italian part of Westchester — where great pizza is abundant.

The best thing I ate? The new garlic-parmesan fries from Box Frites. They’ve got garlic butter on them. How could that be bad?

There are Disco Frites, too, with cheddar cheese, gravy and fresh cheese curds. Those were good too, because, you know, they’ve got all those things on them, but not as good as the garlic-parmesan fries. The cheese curds weren’t really sticking to the fries, so they seemed kind of extraneous. Still awesome, mind you, because hey, cheese curds. But why are there cheese curds with this delicious poutine? (Ed. note: For perfectly good reason. See the comments.)

Still good? The chicken tacos.

One major disappointment? The new Nathan’s pretzel dog was nowhere to be found. I’m convinced that I invented this sometime in the early 1990s. I swear I’ve been going on about how someone need to put a hot dog in a pretzel since my first exposure to bagel dogs and I realized that hot dogs could be put in stuff.

The pretzel seems like a natural home for the hot dog since they’re both delicious ballpark foods that people like to cover with mustard. And I put ketchup on my pretzels, because I’m weird like that.

I have been told of instances of pretzel-dogs before, but I’m certain it’s due to fallout from all the campaigning I did for their creation in my teenage years. I know that sounds absurd, but hey, I’m hallucinating from all this food. Just indulge me.

Regardless, I have yet to actually enjoy a pretzel-dog, and so I look forward to doing so on Opening Day at Citi Field.

Also, another great example of the hot-dog-in-something-that’s-not-a-hot-dog-bun is the hush puppy from Ben’s Kosher Deli, which is a hot dog in a knish. They definitely need to get those at Citi Field.

OK, I’m done thinking for now. There’ll be video to follow, someday.

Oh, and pears! They have pears. I have a pear, here at my desk, from Citi Field. I like pears a lot.

Jenrry Mejia didn’t fail today. He was awesome, because Jenrry Mejia’s pretty awesome. He tossed a 1-2-3 inning with a strikeout, hit 97 on the gun, and even threw a couple of consecutive breaking pitches over the plate.

The last note is the most important one. It provides a glimmer of hope that, should he make the Major League staff, Mejia can continue using and honing his secondary stuff instead of relying on fastballs while allowing the rest of his arsenal to atrophy.

One of the men he’s sort of competing with for a bullpen job, Sean Green, was not nearly so impressive. The sidearmer walked one batter and hit another in yielding two runs to the Braves in the ninth, demonstrating more of the control issues he has shown in most of his Grapefruit League action.

Another bullpen competitor, Bobby Parnell, allowed three hits and a run in his frame. He walked one and struck out one. So no great shakes there, either.

Ryota Igarashi managed to get out of his inning unscathed, but allowed one line-drive hit and one walk.

I still maintain that the Mets can have a perfectly fine — and markedly improved — bullpen without hindering Mejia’s development as a starter or losing rotation insurance-person Nelson Figueroa by simply sending Mejia to Double-A to start games and Green and Parnell to Triple-A to work out their various kinks.

That would leave a bullpen of Figueroa, Igarashi, Francisco Rodriguez, Kiko Calero, Pedro Feliciano, Hisanori Takahashi and Fernando Nieve, whom the team does not appear willing to risk losing through waivers.

Maybe none of the eighth-inning candidates in that situation has Mejia’s “electric” stuff that everyone keeps raving about, but Calero has been an excellent Major League reliever when healthy, Takahashi has been at least as dominant as Mejia in the Grapefruit League, and Igarashi can dial it up into the mid-90s.

So though Green doesn’t appear all that likely to help the Mets out of the gate — and I don’t want to read too much into the Spring Training results, but it’s his inability to get the ball over the plate with his new delivery that is concerning — the Mets certainly have options beyond him.

And to ask fans if they’d prefer to see Green or Mejia in the eighth inning of Opening Day in 2010 neglects the crux of the argument against using Mejia out of the bullpen this season.

That one says this: The short-term cost of having a pitcher inferior to Mejia pitching the eighth inning of Opening Day 2010 will be far outweighed by the long-term benefits of having a fully developed Mejia pitching the first innings of many Opening Days to come.

I’m rooting for Jenrry Mejia to fail today.

This sucks.

Since I started writing for SNY.tv — back when I was still of prospect age myself — I’ve been singing the praises of young players, and arguing that the Mets promote from within and put faith in their prospects.

And today, I want to see their best young pitcher take the mound and crap the bed.

I wish that weren’t the case. I wish I could find a way to root for Mejia in these games, because I am rooting for Mejia. I want him to be great, obviously. I want that so badly.

But I want him to fail today, because I don’t think he should be in the Major League bullpen come Opening Day.

It’s just that I think Mejia’s best chance at becoming great involves more time in the Minor Leagues, strengthening his arm and improving his arsenal. And I don’t think 10 2/3 very good Grapefruit League innings should be enough to discredit the 44 1/3 unspectacular Double-A innings Mejia threw last season.

Simply put: I’m not sure Mejia is even ready to be in a Major League bullpen, and even if he certainly were, it wouldn’t be the best thing for his development.

But I’ve said this a billion times already and I’m not writing now to rehash the argument.

I’m writing in part to detail this weird, visceral sensation of rooting against the Mets’ top prospect.

I’m also writing because of a tweet from James Kannengieser that named the Mets’ beat writers “accomplices” to their crimes, which set me thinking.

For all the fan backlash to the team’s treatment of Mejia — and there has been a ton — I’m pretty certain the only newspaper writers that have even suggested calling him up into a bullpen role would be a bad idea are Ken Davidoff and Joel Sherman, and only the latter drummed up a full column out of it.

Some of the beat writers were using Twitter today to engage readers on the subject, and the outcome struck me as funny: Nearly all the readers want Mejia in the Minor Leagues so he can develop into an elite starter down the road, while nearly all the beat writers seem to think he should be an eighth-inning guy helping the team now.

It’s hard to doubt a contingent of men who spend so much time around the team, for sure. But then, most prospects and development experts appear to agree that Mejia needs more time on the farm.

And so I wonder, when we hear the common rhetoric that “New York is a results-based town” and “the Mets need to win now” and “teams in this market need to compete every year,” where does that talk come from? I was always led to believe it came from the people reading the papers, not the ones writing them.

I don’t think there’s anything malicious to it, though. Everyone covering the Mets in Spring Training is likely exclusively covering the Mets in Spring Training. Maybe it’s hard to see the big picture when you’re standing so close.

Mejia looks awesome, I’m certain. And probably when you’re down in Port St. Lucie, and everyone’s smiling in the sun and having fun, everything looks pretty awesome. And you start thinking, “heck, with one really good eighth-inning guy like Jerry’s looking for, this team can really put things together.”

I bet you don’t necessarily think about the Phillies and how good their lineup is or the Braves and how good their rotation is or, perhaps most importantly, how marginal a difference a great eighth inning guy really makes over a merely solid eighth-inning guy.

But the important thing for fans to remember is, it’s not any beat writer’s job to decide whether Jenrry Mejia cracks the Major League roster or not. And it’s not Jerry Manuel’s either.

That responsibility falls on the Mets’ front office, the same one I was so eager to credit with foresight in February. Beat writers are charged with relaying the details of what happens to the team. Manuel is charged with getting the best performance out of the players he has on his roster for this year’s Mets.

This decision will be all on Omar Minaya and his crew. Pay no attention to the men in front of the curtain.