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.

OK, I’ll get to the links in a few minutes, but I’m riled up about all this fifth-starter stuff that seems to be the talk of the Internet today. Howard Megdal wrote a column for SNY.tv advocating Nelson Figueroa for the fifth spot in the Mets’ rotation.

Sam Page responded to my post from yesterday and Howard’s column, among others, with a comprehensive post at Amazin’ Avenue laying out a series of scenarios. He ultimately concluded that the most competitive rotation for the Mets would involve sending Oliver Perez to the bullpen something he and everyone else knows they won’t ever actually do.

Meanwhile, at Fangraphs, Marc Hulet suggested a new approach to the fifth-starter’s role. He thinks teams should employ a “three-man job share,” where three different pitchers rotate in the fifth spot in the rotation.

In turn, Rob Neyer weighed in on Hulet’s plan and pointed out that it’s a bit specific to the Blue Jays — the example he uses — and that, though the current system of trotting out unqualified retreads is certainly flawed, it’s not clear Hulet’s is markedly better.

Last night, before I read Hulet’s post or Neyer’s response, I began a post about a completely hypothetical idea for the Mets based on something I noted in this item on The Book Blog.

I don’t have The Book handy, but the e-mailing reader points out that “MGL states that most teams would be better served to use three long relievers instead of their fifth best starter.”

It makes some sense, based on the premise that batters get progressively better with increased appearances against a particular pitcher in a game.

It’s not going to happen for the Mets out of the gate, and I’m not certain it should. The team will certainly give Johan Santana, John Maine, Mike Pelfrey and Perez spots in the rotation, and the guy who appears most likely to win the fifth spot, Jon Niese, also appears reasonably likely to be better than all but Santana.

But once one of those guys suffers an injury or proves ineffective, the Mets could feasibly have Figueroa, Hisanori Takashi and Fernando Nieve on the squad as potential replacements, assuming they follow my suggestion, which they won’t, which is part of what makes this completely hypothetical.

None of the potential starters would be ready to throw deep into a game, so, in reality, the Mets would likely ask one to start and pitch a few innings and work on stretching him out in subsequent starts.

But what if they didn’t?

What if, for one turn in the rotation, the Mets just used three relievers?

In theory, it would maximize the effectiveness of all three in that game, since likely none would have to face the same batter more than twice. And it would keep all three fresh enough to allow them to maintain their bullpen roles during the rest of the rotation, so the Mets could essentially have eight relievers while only carrying 12 pitchers. Plus it would guarantee regular work for the long man in the ‘pen, probably an added benefit.

It would require deft management of the bullpen, and I’m not sure Jerry Manuel would be the guy to handle that. Plus, the reliever rotation spot would almost certainly have to be sandwiched by the Mets’ two most reliable starters — Santana and someone — since the bullpen would be shorthanded the day before and after.

It’s not going to happen, but I wonder if it would be more effective than simply inserting one of Figueroa, Takahashi or Nieve into the rotation. I imagine the plan’s downfall would actually be the rest of the Mets’ rotation, which probably — and depressingly — isn’t good enough to endure a couple of days a week with a short-staffed bullpen.

Amazing:

While manager Jerry Manuel went north to watch Jon Niese face the Astros Sunday, Figueroa started against a college team at a half-empty Tradition Field. The biggest applause for Figueroa came when he struck out Anthony Toth to end the third inning, and it wasn’t entirely for him.

As part of an in-game promotion, one section in the stands won free tacos as a result of the strikeout. Figueroa laughed and pointed to the crowd.

“No disrespect to the batter,” he said, “but tacos are good.”

You’re damned right they are.

Figueroa appears to be on something of a press tour of late, with lengthy features on him popping up in just about every local paper. It seems the going story — or at least the story he’s putting out — is that if he doesn’t make the Major League Mets, he’ll refuse his assignment to Buffalo and sign a lucrative deal with a Japanese team.

It makes sense for a player of Figueroa’s age — especially one with a family — to want to shore himself up financially before his career ends, and so good for Figueroa for being honest about it.

Still, I’ve got to figure at least some of the sentiment comes from feeling just a bit jilted by the club he grew up rooting for, since the Mets don’t appear to be giving him the time of day after a stellar year in Buffalo and a solid performance down the stretch in 2009.

And it is perplexing how the Mets could seem so willing to let Figueroa, almost certainly their best in-house insurance option for the starting rotation, leave the organization.

If Jon Niese cracks the rotation out of Spring Training, the Mets will enter the season with four starting pitchers coming off injury-plagued 2009 seasons. The fifth, Mike Pelfrey, plans to throw more breaking balls than ever before.

And yet Figueroa, a rubber-armed craftsman capable of eating innings in the back of the rotation, could very well be pitching thousands of miles away when the Mets inevitably need a fill-in starter.

Francisco Rodriguez, Pedro Feliciano, Ryota Igarashi and Kiko Calero are likely locks to start the season in the Mets’ bullpen, and probably should be.

The Mets appear to want to keep Fernando Nieve in the Major League relief corps as well. He’s out of options, and though he has yet to show he can get batters out as effectively as Figueroa, the club likes his upside and praises his versatility.

So that’s five. That leaves some combination of Jenrry Mejia, Hisanori Takahashi, Bobby Parnell, Sean Green and Figueroa for the two remaining bullpen spots, assuming the Mets carry seven relievers.

Mejia, as discussed many, many times, should not be any where near the Major League bullpen when the season starts. He may be, but he shouldn’t be.

Takahashi has been dominant in Grapefruit League play — even better than Mejia, really: 8 1/3 innings, 4 hits, 0 ER, 10 Ks, 1 walk. I’m skeptical, of course, like I am of all Spring Training stats, especially since Takahashi is a deceptive pitcher most hitters stateside have never seen before.

Both Parnell and Green have options and could be sent to Triple-A Buffalo. Adam Rubin reported yesterday that the Mets would be less likely to demote Green because he’s owed nearly a million dollars — a hilarious failure to understand sunk cost that set me into a tizzy in a post I’ve since deleted because the moves haven’t actually happened yet.

Assuming, for the sake of this argument, Takahashi has earned a role in the bullpen, the Mets can keep Figueroa around by sending both Green and Parnell down and sending Mejia to Binghamton to start games.

It wouldn’t make sense if it was clear that doing so would create a significantly worse Major League bullpen at the season’s outset, but it won’t.

The bullpen — and indeed, the entire pitching staff — is a fluid thing, especially early in the year. The Mets, with so many injury risks, should take caution to hang onto all their chips.

I put up a lengthy post earlier ripping the Mets for a bunch of potential roster moves suggested in Adam Rubin’s article today, but I’ve since decided it was way more negative than I’d like to be at the season’s outset, especially considering none of the  contested moves have actually been made yet.

I’ve taken the post down and I’ve saved all the content for when they actually happen.