A baseball roster has many authors, and while Sandy Alderson is developing a thoughtful plan for this and future seasons, it is also worth noting that nearly every player contributing right now, firing up the fan base and keeping the season interesting, is a product of the Omar Minaya regime.

Minaya’s legacy will always be defined in part by regrettable contracts, most notably the ones given to Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo (the view from here is that Carlos Beltran and Francisco Rodriguez were largely fruitful signings), and for historic divisional collapses in 2007 and 2008; still, his stamp on the organization was, like most things that acquire a conventional-wisdom narrative, more complex.

– Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.

There has been a lot of apologizing for Omar Minaya around the Internet lately, prompting a minor Twitter meltdown from this guy on Saturday morning. And look: The Mets are at .500 now, playing solid baseball with a bunch of players Minaya acquired in his six-season tenure with the club. That’s great, and some of it certainly looks good on Minaya.

But let us not forget that all GMs acquire a ton of players, and there’s a hell of a lot more to the job than just picking them up. Take Turner, for example. We can cite Turner as an example of Minaya’s success, but that would be ignoring the fact that last season, while Turner was mashing in Triple-A Buffalo, the Mets had Luis Hernandez started games at second base. It’s also on the GM to identify which players can help the Major League club win, and last year, Minaya apparently thought Hernandez was a better bet to do that then Turner.

And then there’s the issue of those contracts, which Martino mentions. There’s a reason we’re now celebrating that the Mets, with their $140 million payroll, have reached .500 on the season. There’s a reason so many guys that now seem like Minaya’s shrewd scrap-heap acquisitions have been forced into duty. Hell, there’s a reason people are actually talking as if the Mets will have to choose between keeping Jose Reyes or keeping David Wright — whether or not that’s true — and it’s not all thanks to ownership.

Minaya’s haphazard spending hamstrung the club, forcing Sandy Alderson and his crew to work with limited resources this offseason. People can shout all they want about how few of Alderson’s pickups have contributed to the 2011 team, but the truth is that Minaya’s myopic approach left the current front office with few options beyond what little they could afford and the players Minaya left behind.

I’m as thrilled as anyone about how good players like Turner, Dillon Gee and Ruben Tejada have looked across small samples this season. But before we cite them as examples of Omar Minaya’s aptitude, let’s remember that if he were still around, there’s a good chance all three would currently be buried in the Minors while Ramon Martinez started at second and Paul Byrd started every fifth night.