An e-mail in Marty Noble’s inbox this week went like this:

How could you pick John Franco over Armando Benitez as a closer? Franco petulantly ran Jeff Kent and Scott Kazmir out of town, undermined Valentine and Art Howe behind their backs and bad-mouthed Benitez to the local media. He also lost a staggering 56 games and never saved 40 games in any year as the Mets’ closer.

There are a few parts of this argument I fundamentally disagree with, but the whole thing mostly just makes me sad.

So many Mets fans, it seems, lack fond memories of John Franco.

But I loved John Franco when he was on the Mets. Loved him.

He had such a hilariously brazen mound presence. Here was this tiny little Italian dude standing on the mound, looking like a caricature of some shmo from my block on Long Island, throwing changeups over the plate and basically daring his much more imposing opponents to swing.

It somehow embodied the outer-borough aesthetic. Franco was a quintessential Met.

He was booed with some frequency, but that always made perfect sense to me. Made me like him more sometimes, even when I was participating in the booing. New Yorkers boo, and what better target than this other New Yorker.

John Franco got kicked out of John Franco day. I was there. He was honored in a pre-game ceremony, then got booted for his part in a bench-clearing brawl in the fifth inning. Classic.

Franco also, I firmly believe, is the person responsible for the “Lar-ry” chants used to tease Chipper Jones at Shea. I was at a game sitting in the last row of the Loge, right above the Mets dugout, and Franco was on the perch yapping back and forth with some fans. A fan asked what Chipper’s real name was, and Franco told him. A few weeks later, the chants started.

Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I like to credit Franco.

And now he’s mostly a punchline to Mets fans, probably due to some combination of his last couple of years in Queens and his rumored role in the Scott Kazmir trade.

Franco has since downplayed that talk, but even if he did recommend Kazmir’s departure, that really shouldn’t be on him. It’s not the lefty reliever’s job to make personnel decisions. Plus I’m certain he wasn’t the person who suggested trading Kazmir straight up for Victor Zambrano.

I’ve never heard John Franco linked to Jeff Kent’s trade before, but maybe Mets.com reader Tom C. from the Bronx knows something I don’t. Either way, I hated Kent when he was with the Mets, probably more than any other Met in my lifetime. I’ve made my opinion on Kent perfectly clear: The guy might be a Hall of Famer, but he will always suck to me.

So if John Franco ran Kent out of town, good. Sorry if it bothers Tom C. so much; I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for the guy.

In a post to Twitter yesterday, I wrote:

The Mets are a train plowing inexorably toward Bengie Molina Station.

Today, first via email and then via Twitter, Howard Megdal responded:

In their defense, that’s mostly gravitational pull.

Howard is a friend and colleague, and has funny and interesting things to say about the Mets and many other subjects. You should follow him on Twitter.

I just got a call from someone at the Mets taking issue with my frequent criticism of the team for giving Cory Sullivan guaranteed Major League money, as that was apparently not the case. I was, to be honest, putting blind faith in the excellent Cot’s MLB Contracts site.

Sullivan’s was a split contract, meaning he was paid a different rate for time with the Minor League club, and the $600,000 rate was prorated for time spent on the big-league roster.

My bad.

Presumably, the call had something to do with my admittedly speculative column on Chris Coste yesterday, and I assume means Coste did, as Sam suggested in the comments section, receive a split contract.

So a mea culpa: The Mets will not be spending much money on Chris Coste if he’s not on the 25-man Major League roster. But I’ll maintain that they could have waited for the non-tender and Rule 5 pictures to clear up before committing a 40-man roster spot with Coste, and that they probably should be searching for catchers with more upside.

And maybe they are.

Anyway, it’s good to know someone’s reading.

FOX Sports’ MLB offseason blog says “a number of teams have shown interest in Angel Pagan,” but that “he isn’t close to being dealt.”

So, you know, who knows what that means? If I were running a Major League team, I’d show interest in Angel Pagan too. He had a very solid year, plays a good center field, and doesn’t appear to be in the mix for a starting job with the Mets next season.

What the report does say with certainty is that a source “insisted” the Mets don’t want Jose Guillen.

Phew.

That rumor, of course, came indirectly from Adam Rubin, who was careful to avoid saying that the Mets were interested in trading Pagan for Guillen. Instead he wrote that the Mets want a power bat for left field (duh), the Royals want to trade Guillen (no s@#!) and they’d be interested in Pagan (me too).

He posted a blog update a week later to insist that his reporting was legit, which it almost certainly was, since he didn’t really say anything groundbreaking. He added then, citing one of his favorite Dominican newspapers, that Guillen would approve a trade to the Mets.

Rubin didn’t link to the Diario Libre‘s website, and unless the article was about Taco Bell menu items or asking how to get to the library, I wouldn’t be able to read it anyway. But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Guillen himself was reacting to the very rumors that were first printed in the Daily News.

And the wheels go round and round.

Tobi Stoner got lit up on Sunday, but he has been mostly effective in the Dominican Winter League. So, you know, good.

Scouts will tell you that Stoner has “short stuff” and doesn’t project as a Major League starter. He’s been solid but not outstanding in most of his Minor League stops, though his strikeout to walk ratio has predictably trended downward as he’s moved through the Mets’ system.

I’m rooting for Stoner for a variety of reasons. He’s a nice guy, for one. I got to talk to him a bit in Binghamton this year, and he seemed to recognize and appreciate that a lot of Mets fans would buy his jersey for comedic reasons.

Plus I’ve got this thing for homegrown and inexpensive contributors that I keep blabbering on about, and maybe he could be that. I thought a decent comp might be Brian Bannister, but it turns out Bannister’s peripherals were a bit more impressive than Stoner’s across a very similar trek through the Minors.

Regardless, the important thing, I think, is that we always remember to punctuate his name with cliched stoner utterances like “bro,” “man,” “phriend,” and “let’s get pizza.”

Will the joke get old quickly? Yeah, and it’s probably already dead. But just ask Norm MacDonald: If you keep using the same joke long enough after it’s no longer funny, it starts to get funny again.

My Twitter is absolutely blowing up with rumors about the Mets pursuing Johnny Damon this offseason now that he wasn’t offered arbitration by the Yankees.

I’m not sure any of them are substantiated, but I figured this was as good a time as any to link up this post from late October, when I pointed out what a downright Mets-ish move signing Damon would be.

I want to reiterate one thing about Damon that bothers me, though, and it has little to do with the player he is on the field:

Johnny Damon is a massive sellout.

This isn’t a good reason not to sign a baseball player, I realize. It’s an emotional thing, not the type of thing that should dictate front-office decisions. But here’s what I wrote in October:

I really don’t begrudge baseball players for taking the largest contracts offered to them, but leaving the Red Sox for the Yankees while shaving his caveman beard and cutting his hair was just too much. C’mon, guy. At least get yourself a beard clause in the contract. He makes Mark McGrath look like Ian MacKaye.

And here’s Reel Big Fish on the matter.