Bob Ojeda also doesn’t seem to think Jenrry Mejia should be in the Major League bullpen:

Q: Do you think Jenrry Mejia is major league ready?

A: I am a big believer in you can’t get by with one pitch. When I was [in Florida] earlier in spring training, his other pitches were coming along, but the fastball is the only pitch he can depend on. And if there is a day when that fastball doesn’t show up, then he would have no plan B.

So there’s that.

Shamik reminds me of probably the coolest thing about Jon Niese: He was born the day the Mets won the World Series in 1986.

And check this out: Josh Thole was born the day of the 1986 Mets’ ticker-tape parade. (Also, that is a hilarious Wikipedia find.)

After they dropped the first two games of that Series to the Red Sox at Shea, the Mets had an off-day on Oct. 20. In South Carolina, Reese Havens was born, and then the Mets took four out of the next five to take the championship. Coincidence? Yes. But still.

If that’s not enough to blow your mind, chew on this: Brad Holt was born when the Mets and Astros were tied at two games apiece in the NLCS that year, right before the Mets took a pair of marathons, the latter prompting the epic and notorious flight from Houston.

Also, draw your own conclusions here, but Captain Kirk Nieuwenhuis was born on Aug. 7, 1987, just a little over nine months after the conclusion of the ’86 series.

In all the Jenrry Mejia hype, I haven’t spent a lot of time discussing the Mets’ 25th roster spot, which will ostensibly go to a left-handed bench bat.

According to Newsday’s David Lennon, the race is between Frank Catalonotto and Mike Jacobs, and Chris Carter has “no shot.”

Given the choice between the two, I’d take Catalonotto. Jacobs’ lone skill — his power — is not as valuable as Catalonotto’s combination of on-base ability and defensive flexibility. The Long Island native plays first base way more capably than Jacobs, plus can play the corner outfield spots and backup second base in a pinch.

It’s too bad if Carter really has no shot, though, because though he can’t boast the Major League experience of his competitors, he seems to blend a nice mix of their assets. He’s got power, as evidenced by the .493 slugging percentage he’s posted at Triple-A over the past four seasons. He can get on base, based on the .373 OBP he’s posted in that time.

And though he’s certainly no Keith Hernandez, he’s likely a better defender than Jacobs at first, and he can back up the corner outfield spots as well.

So why doesn’t Carter have a shot? Beats me. A bad attitude? Mental mistakes? His work ethic has earned him the nickname “The Animal” from Jerry Manuel, and he graduated from Stanford in three years.

Most likely, Chris Carter has no shot because Chris Carter is not a Major Leaguer. He only has 26 Major League plate appearances.

And that’s a funny thing.

What makes people Major Leaguers? Why is Mike Jacobs a Major Leaguer?

Mike Jacobs is a Major Leaguer because he was on the Mets’ 40-man roster and so got called up from Double-A at 24 in 2005 when Mike Piazza got hurt but didn’t go on the Disabled List. Jacobs hit a pinch-hit home run and then, when the Mets tried to send him back to the Minors, Pedro Martinez threw a hissy fit. So Jacobs stuck.

He went on a tear that lasted the rest of the season, and so from then on, Mike Jacobs was a Major Leaguer.

Maybe if Piazza didn’t get hurt, or if Esteban Loiaza didn’t leave that pitch over the plate or if Pedro wasn’t Pedro, Jacobs would’ve ended up in the Majors anyway. After all, he was crushing the ball in Double-A when he got the call. He had a .965 OPS. Mighty stuff.

But you know who else could crush the ball at Double-A? Chris Carter did. He posted a .960 OPS in his one brief stint there in 2005, then followed it up with four straight solid-to-excellent performances at Triple-A.

And so it’s not hard to imagine a situation in which Carter, and not Jacobs, could have been blessed with a timely opportunity, a whimsical ace and a month-long hot streak to carry him to four years of big-league fortune.

It was not that way, though. It was the other way. Jacobs is the Major Leaguer, Carter the career Minor Leaguer. Maybe the superior player and maybe the better fit for the Mets, but seemingly the less likely candidate for the Opening Day nonetheless.

Carter leads all Mets still in camp this spring with a 1.476 OPS. Of course he hasn’t had very many opportunities.

But I guess that’s just the thing.

There’s a movement brewing to get him on the club. I sense it’s in vain, and that it won’t be as loud as the movement to keep Jenrry Mejia off the club. Regardless, I’m on board.

And I’m not alone:

A poll on Amazin’ Avenue today on the matter yielded a shocking 80-percent support for Carter. Patrick Flood wrote a post a few weeks ago that touched on similar topics to this one and combined two of my favorite subjects: Quadruple-A players and The Clash.

Sign up. Join the movement. Free Chris Carter.

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.