But to me, the biggest contingency plan for the 2010 Mets is the 2011 Mets. Because if things go horribly awry this season — and after 2009, we’d be foolish to dismiss that possibility — the team at least won’t have to look far to see the future. Top prospects Ike Davis, Fernando Martinez, Josh Thole and Jon Niese — should he not earn the fifth starter’s role in Spring Training — should all start the year in Triple-A….

And so I’m hoping that the Mets’ biggest failure this offseason was not in roster construction, but merely in communication when they threw around terms like “unacceptable” and “change” and “spend” and “trade.” Maybe they would’ve been better off starting with the slogan I suggested back in September:

“The 2010 Mets: Please Be Patient While We Get Our S@#$ Together”

– Me, here, Feb. 10, 2010.

I’m wrong about enough stuff that it doesn’t really pay to start going back and quoting myself. Heck, I was hardly right about everything in that post — little did I realize the Mets were about to turn their top starting-pitching prospect into a middle reliever.

I just stumbled onto it today and thought it was funny how my proposed slogan for last offseason seems to be pretty close to the actual slogan for this offseason. So that part of the post, at least, appears prescient.

I was probably wrong, though, in assuming that one year of development time for the Mets’ crop of upper-level prospects would be enough to return the Mets to contention in 2011. Yes, Ike Davis, Jon Niese and to a lesser extent Josh Thole seem primed to be (and continue being) valuable and cost-effective Major League contributors. But I was probably at least a bit guilty of the standard fan practice of overrating prospects. Clearly 2010 did not go as we would have hoped for Martinez, Reese Havens, Brad Holt or Jenrry Mejia.

James Kannengieser at Amazin’ Avenue recently took a stab at projecting the 2011 Mets’ win totals based on the current roster. He based the post on WAR and took an admittedly conservative approach, assuming that none of Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and David Wright return to the forms they showed from 2006-2008 and that neither Davis nor Thole provides more to the club in 2011 than he did in 2010.

Still, despite all that, Kannengieser puts the Mets — these Mets, without any offseason additions — at 79 wins. With some reasonable, inexpensive roster tweaking, a couple of high-upside plays that pay off, a return to peak form from at least one of the stars, and some improvement from Davis, Thole and Niese, it’s not too hard to imagine an 87-89 win team.

Maybe that’s hoping for a lot of things to go right. The new front office would have to make the right upside plays, for one thing, or at least enough of them to have some of them work out. For another, we’d have to hope the young players improve instead of suffering regression in their sophomore seasons.

But a well-managed team with a solid crop of young contributors can turn things around mighty quickly. And a win total in the high 80s should put the Mets at least on the fringes of contention.

So while yes, this offseason is a winter for the Mets’ getting their proverbial s#@$ together, it could also feasibly be one in which they scrap together enough small moves to field a competitive team in 2011. We shall see, I suppose. At the very least an Opening Day lineup with some promising young homegrown players should be more palatable than one with Gary Matthews Jr., Alex Cora and Mike Jacobs in it.

Also, for what it’s worth: That headline is a Rhymefest reference. I’m not actually ahead of my time or behind in my rent, though the latter is mostly because my wife is a vigilant bill-payer, for which I am thankful.

As you’ve probably heard by now, the Mets have opted not to offer arbitration to John Maine and Sean Green and not to even offer a contract to Chris Carter, meaning, in all likelihood, none of them will be back with the Mets in 2011.

The departures of Green and Carter serve mostly to further indict the Omar Minaya Administration. I defended the trade of Billy Wagner for Carter at the time, arguing that since it was unclear that Wagner would a) remain healthy coming back from surgery and b) decline arbitration, the Mets only opted for a sure thing and a potentially valuable spare part instead over the potential for draft picks. Of course, at the time I hadn’t seen Carter throw.

For their part in the deal, the Sox got 13 2/3 innings out of Wagner during their stretch run in 2009, plus prospects Kolbrin Vitek and Bryce Brentz — the players they drafted and signed for slot money with the compensation picks for Wagner.

The Mets got a few million dollars in salary relief, plus 180 plate appearances, a .706 OPS and some woeful defense out of Carter. Plus perhaps a series of lessons in stem-cell research. (Incredibly intense stem-cell research.) Hindsight is always 20/20, but, well, oof.

Green came over with J.J. Putz and Jeremy Reed in a deal with the Mariners that assured Omar Minaya could go out for bagels without having to hear about the Mets’ awful bullpen. To date, Minaya’s series of quiet breakfast runs in the latter part of the 2008-09 offseason stands as the Mets’ biggest gain from the deal.

In their tenures with the Mets, Green, Putz and Reed combined for a -1.2 WAR (per baseball-reference.com). For that, the Mets traded seven players, most of them young. Joe Smith, though he’s been injured for parts of both seasons since, has been a much better reliever than either Green or Putz was for the Mets.

Of the three, Maine will be remembered most fondly by Mets fans, certainly not for his pitching in 2009 and 2010, but for his contributions to the team in 2006 and 2007, especially on the second-to-last day of the latter campaign (the day, of course, that Lastings Milledge and/or Jose Reyes “woke up” the long-dormant Marlins). Plus, Maine always seemed like a  decent and likable dude — a guy who managed to convince Marty Noble that he had never been to the Internet, who went on the record with his choice of closer music and who earned praise from Smith and Mike Pelfrey for his prowess in Call of Duty.

Maine’s last two years with the Mets stand as a lesson to fans — to this one, at least — that pitchers cannot be counted on to return from shoulder injuries. I hoped all along that Maine would turn it around and again become the pitcher he was in 2007, but clearly he physically could not.

Maine is still young enough that he’ll likely surface somewhere. Since he always had a limited arsenal even when he was effective, I imagine he might make for a decent reliever (though there was always talk that he took too long to get warmed up). In any case, he’s not going to get anyone out throwing 85, so he’ll have to strengthen his shoulder first. Good luck to him.

The folks at Amazin’ Avenue put up a good John Maine farewell thread, so check that out if you’re feeling sentimental for his departure. We will remember him whenever we see the Verizon Fios guy.

Even though he’s moved on from ESPN, Steve Phillips is still doing the goofy “pretend I’m a real-life GM” thing. Only now he’s not at a podium taking scripted questions from fake press, he’s sitting in front of a bookshelf talking to a webcam and showing a healthy dose of bare chest. The big reveal, of course, is that Steve Phillips owns books.

To his credit, Phillips’ objective is to fix the Mets for 2011 and not necessarily beyond. But the two major pillars of his offseason plan are trading Ike Davis for Prince Fielder and shelling out for Cliff Lee. Coincidentally, I have specifically argued against both of those moves in this space.

Both moves would inarguably make the Mets a better team in 2011. But Fielder is slated to be a free agent after 2011 and will require a hefty long-term contract extension to stick around, whereas Davis will be inexpensive and under team control until the latter part of this decade. Lee is awesome, but he is a 32-year-old pitcher likely to command a massive paycheck that could ultimately hamstring a team. Also, given what we know about the Mets’ payroll commitments for 2011 and their lack of flexibility, signing him seems completely infeasible.

In other words, Phillips’ plan to fix the Mets seems a lot like a reasonable way to further break the Mets. Yes, adding Prince Fielder and Cliff Lee (and Orlando Hudson) would make just about any team a lot more likely to contend in the short term. But it is the GM’s job to consider the future as well.

Really, there’s an almost stunning lack of insight in the video, considering Phillips is an actual former Major League GM. Every decision he suggests has been beaten inside out in the comments section of every Mets blog, and he appears to approach the team’s needs in terms of labels — No. 1 starter, “true cleanup hitter.”

At least he’s willing to keep Carlos Beltran around, though, despite his wholesale lack of “game-winning plays” and tendency to “lock up in a critical situation.”

That leaves the bullpen devoid of an experienced lefty, unless … dare we say it? OK, here goes.

The Mets should make Oliver Perez a lefty specialist next season. Or at least bring him to spring training with the hope that he earns the job, along with maybe Pat Misch (who might be needed at the back of the rotation). They should not — and, because Sandy Alderson and his men are rational types, probably will not — release him this winter to appease a bloodthirsty public.

– Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.

Many of Martino’s points in the article are reasonable — especially the excerpted one about how there’s no sense cutting Perez without giving him the chance to succeed (or fail) in Spring Training. They’re paying him whether they cut him now, they cut him in March or they keep him on the team all season.

But citing batting average as evidence that Perez is effective against lefty hitters is silly. Yes, he held them to a .214 average in a tiny sample in 2010. He also yielded a miserable .411 on-base percentage because, as we know, he doesn’t often throw the ball over the plate.

That’s a tiny sample, though. Of course, it’s hard to find a reasonable-sized sample because Perez’s career stats don’t really reflect the type of pitcher he has been for the last two seasons. Perez faced lefties 91 times in 2009 and was legitimately effective, holding them to a .200/.278/.313 line.

Across his career, Perez has yielded a decent but hardly Felicianoesque .691 OPS to lefty hitters. As a point of reference, Feliciano’s career OPS against for lefties is .580. Scott Downs’ is .631. J.C. Romero’s is .603. Randy Choate’s is .598.

Martino’s article includes quotes from a scout that suggests Perez drop his arm angle to be better against lefties, so maybe there’s hope that with an adjustment he can become an effective specialist.

I’m skeptical, though. Even when Ollie’s pitching well he’s wild, a terrible quality if you’re coming into games with runners on base. And does anyone — anyone — like the idea of Perez coming into a close game to face Ryan Howard in the 7th inning?

And while Martino suggests there “are no obvious substitutes” for Feliciano or Hisanori Takahashi in the farm system, I’m not certain that’s true. Well, I guess I should say I’m almost certain they are not substitutes for Feliciano and Takahashi because both of those guys were great for the Mets. But I’m not certain Ollie Perez is the best internal option.

Skinny lefty Mike O’Connor pitched to a 2.67 ERA in 70 1/3 innings in relief for Triple-A Buffalo in 2010 while holding lefties to a .289 on-base percentage.

The Mets put out a press release yesterday to say they re-signed him. If you’re into conspiracy theories you might assume that means they see O’Connor in some Major League role next year, since Val Pascucci’s return did not merit a press release. Of course, O’Connor — whom you might remember from one excellent start against the Mets in early 2006 — did not fare any better than Perez against lefties in his Major League stint, and also proved pretty wild. But he’s got a full year working out of a Triple-A bullpen under his belt and always exhibited excellent control in the Minors, unlike Perez.

Further, Buffalo southpaw Adam Pettyjohn pitched mostly out of the bullpen for the first time in his career in 2010, and though he yielded a 4.94 ERA, he did manage to hold lefties to a .313 on-base percentage. He seems like a less impressive candidate for the Major League bullpen than O’Connor, but if the competition’s Oliver Perez, then, well, you know.

So while the Mets absolutely should consider Perez for any role they feel he can capably handle — including a lefty-specialist job — I’m skeptical that he really could perform any better in the job than other options in the system, or, for that matter, a bunch of guys who might be on the scrap heap. Just because he’s better against lefties than he is against righties does not mean he’s actually good against lefties.

Since returning from the East in 2006, Perpetual Pedro has pitched in 408 of the Mets’ 810 games — 50.3%, or more than half. This means that if you have watched any single Mets game in the past five years, there is a better chance than not that you saw Pedro Feliciano pitch in it. Since the beginning of 2009, only David Wright, Luis Castillo, Angel Pagan, and Jeff Francoeur — position players — have played in more games for the Mets than the lefty specialist. If you’ve been a serious Mets fan in the fairly recent past, Pedro Feliciano has become a bigger part of your life than you may have realized. He has represented quiet stability for a relatively unstable organization, and he is probably leaving just as things are becoming stable.

The Mets not having Pedro Feliciano is going to be like those observation tower fly saucers disappearing. He’s just a situational lefty, and they’re just awkward pieces of Robert Moses’ sixties. Everything will function pretty much the same without them. But the first time Ryan Howard comes to the plate against the 2011 Mets in the seventh inning, it’s going to feel really weird.

– Patrick Flood, PatrickFloodBlog.com.

Flood nails it here. It’s inarguably a good thing for the Mets that Pedro Feliciano declined arbitration today — with the front office now saying it will pay above slot for draft picks, the delicious sandwich-round pick is more valuable than a slightly overpaid lefty specialist. But it’s still going to feel really weird to watch so many Mets games without Pedro Feliciano in them.

At a game I was covering during the 2009 season (before it went to hell), the Mets called on Feliciano to face Howard and Ibanez with a runner on and no outs with a one-run lead in the eighth inning. He got Howard to ground into a double play and Ibanez to tap out weakly. Took him four pitches.

I waited in the Citi Field clubhouse to talk to him about it after the game, because I thought maybe he’d have something interesting to say about the inning, even if I didn’t have anything particularly interesting to ask.

Instead, he was just all, “yup, that’s my job — I get lefties out.” So I tried to follow up and ask him if he got especially excited to face a lefty like Howard, and he was like, “nah, not really, just gettin’ lefties out.”

It was awesome. And it made it seem really weird when he campaigned to be the “crossover” 8th-inning guy in the offseason.

Anyway, good luck to Perpetual Pedro wherever he lands. And good luck to Paul DePodesta with that sandwich-round pick. I suggest muffuletta. High upside.