According to Adam Rubin, the Mets are “particularly intrigued” by Joel Pineiro.

It makes sense, because Joel Pineiro is particularly intriguing. Not necessarily as an answer in the Mets’ rotation, but just in general.

Looking at Pineiro’s counting stats, I’d immediately dismiss him as a potential free-agent fit. After all, he’s 31 and coming off his only decent year since 2003. Plus he doesn’t really strike anybody out.

But Fangraphs paints a more interesting picture, as it often does. Turns out Pineiro pretty decidedly changed his approach in 2009, confirming various reports. He threw way more fastballs (sinking ones, no less) than he ever did before — which probably contributed to his miniscule walk totals — and so, predictably, induced more contact.

His groundball rate went from hovering in the mid-to-high 40s to an outstanding 60.5 percent, dropping his line-drive and flyball rates accordingly. He cut his home runs per flyball rate in half.

There’s probably some luck and randomness in there, but Pineiro pretty clearly figured out a way to pitch to bad contact more effectively than he ever had before. Simply put, batters just didn’t hit him hard.

Whether that’s sustainable is something else entirely. Pineiro succeeded under Cardinals pitching guru Dave Duncan, and, like I said before, doesn’t have much of a track record to fall back on.

Essentially I just wanted to throw out the idea that Pineiro could be more than a one-year wonder. I’d expect him to regress toward his mean, but, assuming he can maintain his adjusted approach, be a pretty decent pitcher in the next couple of seasons.

The Mets could do a whole lot worse, in other words.

Also, for what it’s worth, I had a video game once in which Pineiro always ended up a Hall of Famer when you played in franchise mode. So there’s that.

Anyone who has read this space with any consistency knows how I feel about the Mets trading away prospects this offseason, but I’ll reiterate for newcomers. (And because I just don’t have much else to say today.)

There is a time and place to trade prospects.

Fans of almost every Major League club overvalue their team’s prospects, because — mostly thanks to the Internet, I imagine — we now follow them from the moment of their signing to the time they arrive in the big leagues or leave the organization. But prospects are never sure things, and many, many of the players that appear most bound for success, either mechanically or statistically, never turn into Major Leaguers.

So yeah, sometimes a team is best served by moving one or a couple of its best young players for an established star. If a team feels it is one piece away and a star player could be had at a reasonable cost, then yeah, pull the trigger.

For the Mets, this is not one of those times.

Obviously it’s best to evaluate such deals on a case-by-case basis, as no deal could be properly assessed without knowledge of the specific players involved. But the problem with established Major Leaguers is that they usually cost big money, and the Mets are already close to their reported budget.

A trade for Roy Halladay would be exciting, for sure. It’d give the Mets an unbelievable 1-2 punch at the top of their rotation.

But a trade for Roy Halladay would also be a trade for about $20 million a year for the next several years. And that gives the team a whole lot less flexibility to fill its countless other holes moving forward, including a couple in that same starting rotation.

Many will argue that the Mets are “built to win now” and so must go all-in to compete in 2010, since they will inevitably crumble after 2011 when Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes will, barring extensions, become free agents.

Guess what? That’s nonsense.

The only thing that could make the Mets a “win-now” club is committing to that philosophy. To say that the Mets must win in 2010 would be to know for certain that not a single one of their current prospects will be contributing at the Major League level by 2011.

That’s a possibility, of course. There’s always the chance that none of Ike Davis, Jon Niese, Fernando Martinez, Jenrry Mejia, Reese Havens, Brad Holt and Ruben Tejada pan out. I’m optimistic that at least a couple of them will, but then again, I’m a Mets fan. I overvalue their young players.

And with young players, there are few guarantees.

There is this one, though: For the first few years of their Major League tenure, players are always inexpensive. And with the recent trend of teams locking up young players to long-term extensions, Major League contributors can often be secured for a reasonable price beyond their arbitration years and deep into their primes.

And that, for about the millionth time, is what the Mets need. That’s what allows a team to free up cash for when the right free agents are available, and to take on payroll when a big-name player is available via trade.

Mortgaging the future for the opportunity to win in the present might work, at times, for small-market teams on the verge of losing a slew of stars to free agency. But a team with the Mets’ payroll should never have to.

A team with the Mets’ payroll should be built to win every single year, because making the playoffs — no matter how strong the club — doesn’t come anywhere close to guaranteeing a World Series victory.

The best way to do that is to make the postseason as frequently as possible, and so no team with the Mets’ means should ever build to “win now.” It is the very definition of short-sighted thinking.

Michael Baron at MetsBlog suggested the Mets bring back Fernando Tatis next year and, predictably, met a lot of animosity in the site’s comments section.

Tatis became something of a lightning rod for angry Mets fans in 2009 for a number of reasons. For one, he endured a ridiculous stretch from May 31 to June 24 during which he somehow hit into nine double plays in 45 at-bats, or one double play every five at-bats. That’s nuts.

A lot of that had to do, I would guess, with how frequently Tatis was hitting behind David Wright, and how often Wright was getting on first base during that stretch of the season. Either way, Tatis finished up the season with 13 GDPs in 340 at-bats — not the most impressive rate in the world, but one reasonable enough to suggest the rough stretch was mostly due to an unbelievable run of bad luck.

More of the distaste toward Tatis, I think, had to do with how often it seemed he was playing in favor of someone more exciting, whether it was Daniel Murphy at the start of the year or Nick Evans at the end. I get that and I felt the same way; we have little more to learn about Tatis, and it was baffling when, at the end of the clearly lost season, Nick Evans sat on the bench overlooked while Tatis played nearly every day.

But it’s not really fair to pin that on Tatis. It’s not his job to refuse assignments so fans could see more of younger players.

And because Tatis was pressed into so much duty in 2009, it’s easy to forget just how valuable a bench player he is. Tatis actually played average to above average defense at every single position the Mets put him in 2009, including a statistically — albeit in a tiny sample size — better second base than Luis Castillo, Alex Cora and Anderson Hernandez.

Plus, Tatis can hit a little bit. He posted a respectable .777 OPS for the Mets in 2009, and given his career lines, that’s probably a reasonable indication of what he can do at the plate.

Simply put, Tatis is a good player to have on the bench. I kill Omar Minaya pretty frequently in this space for the way he fills out the margins of his roster, but he did a great job identifying Tatis’ ability and rescuing him from the scrap heap before the 2007 season. And Tatis was likely worth well more than the $1.7 million he earned in 2009.

There’s nothing really exciting about Tatis, plus he’ll be 35 on New Year’s Day, so it’s difficult to advocate his return to a team that should be moving toward youth.

There was no good excuse for Jerry Manuel playing Tatis over Evans with so much frequently when the team should have been assessing whether Evans could be a right-handed platoon bat in 2010. But now that it happened — now that the team doesn’t have any real way of knowing whether Evans is ready to hit Major League pitching — the Mets could do a lot worse than bringing back Tatis for 2010, assuming a reasonable price tag. His defensive versatility alone makes him a useful cog, and it’s not at all his fault that he was forced into so much playing time in 2009.

So word is the Mets are bringing back Jeff Francoeur, and that’s no surprise. I have been down on Francoeur since the trade, but it’s fair to argue he earned a shot at a second go-round with the team with his solid half-season in 2009.

Plus, the way a large portion of Mets fans took to the guy, benching him or parting with him before 2010 would be akin to doing the same with Daniel Murphy before 2009. The team is backed into the corner by fan perception. We could argue that there are reasons not to bring Francoeur back, but it’d be pointless. There was really no way the Mets weren’t going to open 2010 with Francoeur in right field.

The more alarming thing about Bart Hubbuch’s tweet linked above, though, is the part that says the Mets “wouldn’t rule out a contract extension.”

OK, that’s where we start pushing into the realm of terrible, horrible, no-good ideas. Handing Jeff Francoeur a multi-year extension based on what he did for the Mets would be like punching common sense in the face.

Jeff Francoeur was pretty good for the Mets over 289 at-bats. Before those 289 at-bats, he had been downright terrible for the Braves for a year and a half and well below average for a right fielder for the two seasons before that.

Sample size. Sample size. Sample size.

If Francoeur’s turnaround is real, the Mets will have plenty of time to sign him to an extension during the 2010 season, after he’s proven he can maintain the necessary level of production. Signing him to an extension anytime before that would indicate a reckless disregard for history.