Patrick Flood challenges me to put bacon bits on bacon, which I’m going to mull over. But while I’m doing that, go read his post. As you probably know if you’ve been reading this site, I feel the same way: The hot stove done boiled over.

Eno Sarris polls the Amazin’ Avenue community to determine its preferred available free-agent late-inning reliever. There are a bunch of good options, but I like physical freaks so I voted for Jonathon Broxton.

Vaguely related: When they kick at your front door, how you gonna come?

We are not like the Basketball Wives; we are classy…. [The Mets] were scared of my big fun bags. They were afraid they were too big, and they were going to obstruct the view of the fans seeing the game. Plus they were intimidated by them themselves. So they had to trade him, I guess. I don’t know why you would trade a stud pitcher. I don’t know why it became about me. But it kind of makes me feel good that they were intimidated by me.

– Anna Benson.

Wait a minute: Who’s the “stud pitcher” in question?

Remember Nick Evans? Yeah, don’t worry: few do. Least of all Major League managers.

It’s a shame though, because Evans can hit at least a little bit. And he can play a bunch of positions, and he’s still relatively young. But he’s the victim of a numbers crunch in Flushing: The Mets have a bunch of prospects they need to protect in the upcoming Rule 5 draft that they must feel offer more long-term upside than Evans, so they outrighted Evans to Buffalo to clear space on the 40-man roster, and Evans elected free agency.

Evans will catch on somewhere, and I suspect within a couple of years he’ll find his way into a regular Major League gig for part of a season and rack up 15 homers or so, then Mets fans everywhere will flip out, like, “never should of traided Nick Evans!” Then Evans will serve as a useful cog off some team’s bench for a few years, and then, of course, fade away as we all ultimately do.

None of that now appears likely to happen with the Mets, which seems too bad to those of us who came to root for the young man every time he got passed over for obvious opportunities by various managers. But decent-hitting right-handed corner-bat types aren’t terribly difficult to replace, so losing Evans to free agency hardly cripples the Mets’ future.

The Mets have signed Vinny Rottino and Valentino Pascucci to minor league deals, sources told ESPNNewYork.com.

– Adam Rubin, ESPN New York.

And Vinny Rottino, for good measure. Bensonhurst is abuzz tonight!

I’ve been remiss in noting that the Mostly Mets Podcast (one of which should roll out at some point this afternoon) now has a call-in line. Except you don’t actually talk to us. You leave a message, then we play it on the show and respond. Sorry to screen your calls like that, it’s just, we’ve got this ex, and… well, it’s a long story.

Anyway, here’s what you do:

* Call us at 347-915-METS / (347-915-6387).
* Listen to Patrick reading* a welcome message.
* After the beep, say your name, where you’re from, and then ask your question for the show.
* Hang up.

Also, has anyone yet identified the guys with the bananas in the photo above? They must be on the Internet somewhere.

Lastly, I’m kind of busy today. Sorry about the general slowness.

*- Patrick, is this true? Did you write the message down and read it, or did you go from memory? Either way it sounds very professional. A lot like my dad’s office answering-machine message actually.

Apparently the Mets will indeed tender contracts to Mike Pelfrey and Angel Pagan, so that ends that nonsense. I mean, I guess I should hold off on the celebrating until it happens officially, but it makes so much sense for the moves to happen — as it always has — that it doesn’t seem likely the story will change.

The joke is really on me, then, for spending so much time and energy explaining why the Mets should tender contracts to Pelfrey and Pagan (and maybe on you for reading/fretting) when most likely that was always going to be the case, and when any suggestions to the contrary may have been media-driven storylines-for-the-sake-of-storylines written to fill internet space and sell papers by people covering a team facing basically one major compelling offseason roster decision. And since no one knows where Jose Reyes will end up, and since writing the same damn thing about Reyes every day gets old, attention turns elsewhere.

The only other familiar, biggish names that could be ousted under any broad umbrella of twisted logic were Pelfrey and Pagan, so we read tons of stories of the way the team had soured on the pair and were likely looking for inexpensive upgrades that plainly did not (and still do not) exist.

But of course, maybe that’s just my narrative, and maybe there really was something to all those stories and the Mets just changed their minds. Or maybe — and most likely — there’s plenty of gray area.

The most important thing is that the Mets’ front office is doing the logical thing. It doesn’t really matter how the decision played out in the media as long as the correct one is made in the end. But the lesson, I think, is that moving forward it’s best to view with skepticism any pending illogical decisions being attributed to the team’s clearly reasonable decision-makers.

Really, what else is new?

Cerrone is on the scene.