I’m scrambling a bit today and I’ve got a delicious lunch meeting on the horizon, so I’ll turn it over to some TedQuarters readers.

Remember reader Jim from yesterday? Turns out he doubles as writer Jim. Here’s a timeline of the Mets’ 2009 season he compiled for Vanity Fair. It’s likely nothing you didn’t live through, and it’s a bit brutal to recollect, but it’s sort of hilarious to see it all spelled out in order like this. And some of the juxtapositions are great:

June 1, 2009: The Mets are winning—until J.J. Putz enters the ballgame. He faces five batters, gets none of them out, and gives up four runs. Afterward, Mets manager Jerry Manuel looks on the bright side: “The good thing is, he threw strikes.”

June 5, 2009: J.J. Putz goes on the disabled list with bone spurs in his pitching elbow. He is out for the season.

That being said (to paraphrase Larry David), Steve Sidoti from Seven Train to Shea‘s putting together videos to get Mets fans excited about 2010. My favorite part of this one? The first three home runs are pulled to left. Nothing groundbreaking, just always fun to remember that it did sometimes happen.

Finally, and speaking of the 2010 Mets, Chris M made a pretty interesting point via e-mail yesterday regarding recent comments from Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya about where the Mets’ prospects will start the season, and the reaction from Mets fans about what the comments imply. It’s this:

Most people seem to focus on this “lack of communication” between Jerry and Omar, and see it as some type of problem.  I have a different take.  Omar is the GM and Jerry is the manager; they do not have the same job.  Omar puts together a roster, Jerry’s job is to get the best out of that roster and motivate his players.  I’m sure Jerry hears what Omar is saying and understands that some of these guys will be in the minors, but what is wrong with the manager going to bat for some of these young kids?  These are players that, if all goes well, will be playing for him in the next year or two.  Shouldn’t Jerry say things like he’s saying to boost the confidence of some of the young players?  Show that he believes in them and that they belong with the big club, even if he knows they won’t be here just yet?

Rob Neyer reacts to David Pinto’s reaction to a Dallas News interview with pitcher C.J. Wilson about the Rangers’ defense.

Wilson says:

Now, it’s like people are really excited to play here, to pitch with Elvis Andrus at shortstop, and Mike Young at third base, and Kinsler at second and Chris Davis at first. For me, that’s a big thing for us, is that our defense is so much better that people are excited to be pitchers now for us.

Pinto says:

Better defense means less frustration for the pitcher and less work as he doesn’t need to get four outs in an inning.

Neyer says:

This leads to an obvious question: Are we undercounting the impact of fielding? …  Brainy sorts have made a great deal of progress in separating pitching and fielding, but it occurs to me that there might still be a great deal of work to be done.

I say: This makes me think about Mike Pelfrey and all his supposed mental issues last season.

We know 2009 was stressful for Big Pelf. He became a father. His ERA swelled. He ran laps around Coors Field.

But perhaps more maddening than all that, he yielded a high rate of groundballs in front of an infield that often included Luis Castillo at second and Alex Cora at short, and, to boot, David Wright having a rough year with the glove at third.

When people argue that Mike Pelfrey’s struggles in 2009 were all mental, I usually counter that he was mostly the victim of that awful defense behind him, since many of his rate stats were similar to those in his breakout 2008 season.

But I rarely consider that we could all be right, and that the crummy defense could have made Pelfrey crazy. I mean, after all, it made me crazy just to watch.

One of the weird tidbits in Pelfrey’s statline from 2009 that often goes unnoticed was that he yielded only nine home runs in his first 24 starts, then nine more in his last seven. Randomness? Could be. Did he tire due to the Verducci effect? Possibly.

Or did he tire of watching grounders dribble by his lead-footed infielders and just start chucking it?

I have no answers, of course. I’m not privy to Mike Pelfrey’s mental state and I probably shouldn’t be speculating about it.

But I suppose, like Neyer and Pinto suggest, it’s important to consider all the various ways defense that might affect a pitcher’s game beyond what could be measured.

In an e-mail, reader Jim makes a good point:

One semi-obvious thing to keep in mind in the fifth-starter competition: Every year the Mets (and most other teams) have a de facto six-man rotation.

In 2009, Mets had 10 pitchers who made starts. All 10 made at least 5 starts.

That was not really an exception.

In 2008, Mets had 11 pitchers making starts. Six made five starts or more.

2007: 12 starters. Eight of them made five starts or more.

2006: 13 starters. 10 made five starts or more.

2005: 12 starters. Eight made at least five starts.

Every year there are 15 to 25 starts that will not be made by the pitchers in the five-man rotation.

It’s true, and so it’s a bit silly to fret too much about who will win the fifth starter’s job, since the rotation will ultimately change multiple times during the year.

That said, another semi-obvious point is that any team should want to get as many starts as possible from the best starters it has, and so it should spend Spring Training assessing exactly who those guys are.

And I guess the bottom line is that throughout the season, the team should be using its five best healthy arms in its rotation, which seems simple enough.

As a fan, I’m rooting for Jon Niese to crack the squad because I favor young, homegrown talent and I think Niese is an underrated prospect with a lot of upside.

But if Niese fails to distinguish himself as decidedly better than alternatives like Nelson Figueroa and Fernando Nieve, he probably shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt, if only because he can be sent back to the Minors without having to clear waivers and neither Figueroa or Nieve can.

Since the Mets will inevitably need another starter at some point, Niese could hone his game in Buffalo until that happens.

Of course, if Niese does show his manager and coaches that he’s markedly better than the competition, there’s no question he should open the year on the staff. He’s 23 and he’s had plenty of experience in the high Minors, so no reason to hold him back, since he inarguably has the most upside of any of the rotation candidates.

As for Hisanori Takahashi: I know he’s looked awesome in his Spring Training outings, and I know the Mets don’t think he profiles as a lefty specialist, but if he’s going to be on the big-league club, I think it should probably be in a bullpen role.

But while I’m no scout, I have a sneaking suspicion he’s been so effective in Grapefruit League play because of the hesitation in the middle of delivery. I’m guessing that’s the type of thing that would be difficult for a batter to time when he first sees it, but that he might be able to adjust to the second or third time facing Takahashi in a game. Again, not an informed opinion — just a hunch.

But if Takahashi can keep deceiving hitters and throwing strikes, he’d make a nice fit for a relief role, perhaps throwing multiple innings at a time.

I think Figueroa could handle that too, of course, and Takahashi — like Niese — could go to Buffalo without being passed through waivers.

So filling out the last few spots on the staff will take some careful handling from Omar Minaya and his crew. They must identify the pitchers who will best help the club in April, but take care not to risk losing the ones who might help them in June just to carry a couple who might not be appreciably better.

So John Maine had a crappy outing Grapefruit League outing yesterday, providing everybody everywhere with reason to remember John Maine.

Maine, I think, often gets lost among Ollie Perez and Mike Pelfrey in discussions of the questions in the Mets’ rotation. We talk about the Good Ollie and the Bad Ollie and whether or not Pelfrey is crazy or just the victim of the horrible defense behind him, and Maine’s sort of forgotten, with the assumption that he’ll be pretty good if he’s fully healthy, and that he may never really be fully healthy.

I was a guest on The Happy Recap Radio yesterday and we discussed Maine a bit. The knock on Maine has always seemed to be his stamina, and so I speculated that if it didn’t appear to be working out for him as a starter, he could thrive in a bullpen role. He’s got a good fastball that’s a very effective offering for him in the past, and I figure if he could dial it up a notch in shorter bursts, he could be a pretty great setup man.

It’s funny, then, that it turns out Maine chalked up his rough outing yesterday to entering the game as a reliever. To his credit, it’s not something he’s had a whole lot of practice doing — Maine has made 216 starts in college and professional ball and only seven relief appearances. (And despite that, Maine has gone on record with his choice of closer music, one of the best reasons to like John Maine.)

Anyway, the THR guys and I also discussed Maine’s injury issues the last couple of years. I wondered on the show if Maine flourished under Rick Peterson, reputed as an expert in keeping pitchers healthy through sound mechanics.

I did a little investigating this morning to see if there have been any marked differences in Maine under Dan Warthen. I used June 17, 2008 as an end date, which I realize is a bit arbitrary since obviously it’s not like Maine completely shifted to all of Warthen’s philosophies the day Warthen took over.

Anyway, here are Maine’s lines with the Mets before and after the Tuscan tile replaced the hardwood floor.

Under Peterson: 362.3 IP, 154 ER, 321 K, 142 BB, 46 HR, 3.83 ERA, 4.25 FIP

Under Warthen: 140 IP, 70 ER, 107 K, 71 BB, 16 HR, 4.50 ERA, 4.68 FIP

What does that mean? Hard to tell. The biggest difference is that Maine was a lot better at staying on the mound under Peterson, but I’m unwilling to chalk that all up to the change in pitching coaches.

Pitchers get hurt, after all, and Maine could have been well along the path to injury by the time Warthen replaced Peterson. Since the differences in FIP aren’t massive, it’s likely the Maine’s uptick in ERA is more the product of some bad luck and terrible defense, not to mention the shoulder injury.

Of course, the Warthen/Jerry Manuel team, while paired with the Mets’ front office, hasn’t done a lot to inspire confidence that it can successfully coach players back from injury.

The grand conclusion? I’ve got none, other than that Maine was good enough in 2007 and when healthy in 2008 — and heck, in his final few starts after returning from injury in 2009 — that he’s certainly earned the benefit of the doubt for 2010. One Spring Training outing shouldn’t ever change anything.

I have a couple of posts I was hoping to get done this weekend but it doesn’t look like either will be finished today, so instead, read Brian Costa’s profile of Jenrry Mejia. It’s fascinating:

“I didn’t like baseball,” Mejia said. “I just wanted to make money.”

Only after Mejia turned 15 did he begin playing baseball, a decision fueled not by some newfound love of the game but by the same ruthless pragmatism that caused him to eschew it in the first place.

When Pedro Martinez signed a four-year, $53 million contract with the Mets in late 2004, Mejia realized what so many other teenagers in the Dominican Republic already knew: For the talented and lucky few, baseball is a way out.

Whoa. A lot to process here. First, and I recognize that this isn’t exactly breaking news, what does it say about the conditions in the Dominican Republic if Jenrry Mejia developed Major League dreams because they were relatively practical? I abandoned my Major League dreams because they were so impractical. (Also because I sucked.)

And it’s actually kind of refreshing to hear Mejia say that straight up, I suppose, and to read a feel-good story baseball story that doesn’t involve any treacle about some kid’s unyielding love for the game.

But the most interesting thing about the piece, I think, is the implication that Mejia only even took up baseball because the Mets signed Pedro to that big contract. I know we’ve heard a whole lot about how that deal improved the Mets’ standing with Latin American prospects, but here’s some concrete evidence of it.

Really takes the sting off Pedro’s final two injury-prone seasons with the Mets, doesn’t it? Jeez. If Mejia turns out half as good as people seem to think he will (and the Mets don’t screw it up somehow), Pedro’s contract becomes a steal in some bizarre way, like a gift that keeps on giving.

So that’s cool. I’m a big fan of the man, as you may know, and so here’s hoping Mejia can help Mets fans remember him in a more positive light.

Adam Rubin reports that Jerry Manuel “appears to prefer” going with 20-year-old Ruben Tejada over Alex Cora in Jose Reyes’ stead.

Though Rubin’s usually on top of these things, it’s just a report and so I don’t want to overreact. And I’m bored of killing Omar Minaya for signing Alex Cora to the deal he did when he did.

But if that’s true, that means that this offseason, coming off a season in which their starting shortstop got hurt, the Mets signed a backup shortstop that their own manager was not comfortable starting if their starting shortstop got hurt.

One more time: If that’s true, that means that this offseason, coming off a season in which their starting shortstop got hurt, the Mets signed a backup shortstop that their own manager was not comfortable starting if their starting shortstop got hurt.

I suppose that’s slightly overstating the case. For all I know, Manuel’s perfectly comfortable starting Cora and just happens to think Tejada’s great.

That’s a stretch, though, considering Tejada didn’t exactly light the world on first at Double-A last year, and he’s 20, and…

You know what? Screw it. No more on the Great Alex Cora Debate until the season starts, I promise. I’m certain you’ve already made up your mind on the matter anyway.

So I spent some time on Omar Minaya’s conference call with reporters earlier this afternoon, and found out that Jose Reyes will be home “watching movies with his family” for the next 2-8 weeks and cannot elevate his heart-rate or perform any baseball activities until his thyroid levels stabilize.

That’s bad. Not downright terrible, I suppose, given how strange the whole vague thyroid news was, especially since Reyes’ agent Peter Greenberg stressed that the condition will be treated without medication and that doctors are certain everything will stabilize soon enough.

But it’s bad because a 2-8 week setback means Reyes will very likely miss Opening day. And the problem is compounded by the fact that, instead of having one of the best shortstops in the Majors hitting third and prowling the middle of their infield, the Mets will most likely have Alex Cora there.

Maybe they could weather Alex Cora’s weak hitting if he could save them some runs on the field. Or maybe he could make up for all those extra grounders he lets roll by if he knocked a few balls out of the park.

None of those things is likely to happen, though. Instead, Cora will just go on being the league’s most overpaid and overplayed replacement player.

But hey, great guy.

The other option — and one Minaya alluded to on the call — would be to call up young Ruben Tejada to fill in at shortstop until Reyes is ready.

Tejada’s only 20 and he’s not a hugely regarded prospect, but he held his own in Double-A last year (especially considering his age), posting a .289/.351/.381 line and by most accounts exhibiting decent range in the infield.

The young Panamanian would complete the Seven-Nation Army situation I speculated about a couple of weeks ago, but I fear he wouldn’t hit very much at all. As decent as he was in Double-A last year, and even accounting for some improvement as he ages, Tejada’s only a year removed from a brutal .229/.293/.296 line in High A ball in 2008.

CHONE projects a .291 on-base percentage and a .316 slugging for Tejada in 2010 and a .318 OBP and .338 SLG for Cora.

Is Tejada better enough than Cora on defense to make up for the difference offensively? I don’t know. I can say that after seeing a couple of Spring Training innings with Cora and Luis Castillo in the middle infield, I’d rather see just about anyone else out there when Citi Field opens in April, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Mike Pelfrey feels the same way.

It’s a bit more complex than that, of course. Tejada would have to be added to the 40-man roster, and though the Mets have an open slot now that Jay Marshall’s been sent back to Oakland, they may have been hoping to use it for someone like Hisanori Takahashi or, ugh, Jenrry Mejia. And I’m sure there are plenty of other mechanics at play that I’m not even considering.

Of course, none of that would matter if the Mets had signed a backup shortstop who could adequately back up shortstop. Certainly, no one could have predicted Reyes would miss time with a thyroid condition, but predicting Reyes to miss time didn’t exactly require a great soothsayer after the way his 2009 went down. And the Mets signed only Alex Cora to back him up.

But hey, great guy.

So Adam Rubin — who is usually spot-on about stuff like this — reports that Jenrry Mejia will work as a reliever in big-league camp for the remainder of Spring Training and, even if he is sent back to the Minors to start the season, will not be stretched out to start games by Opening Day.

Fantastic.

I’ve said my piece about why I think using Jenrry Mejia in a Major League bullpen role is a bad idea (twice, actually), but I figured I should consult some people who know more than I do about prospects and player development before I continue beating this drum.

John Sickels writes the excellent MinorLeagueBall.com for SB Nation. Back in January, he ranked Mejia tops among Mets prospects, and wrote:

He needs to refine his breaking ball and a full year of Double-A/Triple-A is necessary in my view, but he also has number one starter potential. I hope they don’t rush him.

I followed up with him earlier this week to see what he thought about Jerry Manuel’s Major League bullpen idea and all that. I e-mailed John a general overview of my thoughts on the matter, and he responded:

I agree with your take on it. He had just 10 starts in Double-A last year with spotty results, and I think he needs more work with his command before being pushed into a major league role, even in the bullpen. He’s only 20 and I think he needs at least another 10 starts in Double-A and 20 more in Triple-A before being fully ready for major league action, for the reasons you mentioned.

Cool. Good to know I’m not crazy.

Next I e-mailed my colleague Toby Hyde, who you might know from MetsMinorLeagueBlog.com. Toby’s obviously been following the situation pretty closely, and he wrote me this:

Look, if he’s clearly one of the six best relievers in camp, he should be on the big league roster.  The Mets’ first goal is to win games at the MLB level, and if the staff decides that Mejia is decidedly better than the final guys competing for bullpen spots like Kiko Calero and Clint Everts, then Mejia should break camp with the team. Otherwise, he should go back to the minors to refine his craft.  I don’t think he’s at a point yet where he’s ready to contribute, and bringing him up as a reliever now will at best delay, and at worst halt the development of his secondary offerings that he’d need to be a successful MLB starter, or even elite reliever and realize more value down the line.

There’s no question his fastball is awesome.  It lives in the mid-90s and has wicked movement.  He can cut it or sink it.  In the fall, he often could not command it.  His command looks better this spring, but what will happen when batters start really getting their timing down and learn he’s really a one-trick pony with a damn good trick?  For every good curveball he throws, there are a few bad ones.  This is why the minors exist.

Oh yeah, he’s 20.  How many 20-year olds have been really good big leaguers?

So Toby’s mostly on board, and I might even quibble with his first point a bit.  Certainly the Mets’ goal should be to win games at the big-league level, but I wonder exactly how many more games they can expect to win with Mejia in the bullpen over one of the men he would replace.

Even if Mejia would legitimately post better numbers in the bullpen than one of the Mets’ other options, do the few extra runs the team will save by carrying him in the bullpen make it worth hindering his development as a starting pitcher, not to mention starting his arbitration clock early?

I’d say no. There’s a ton of uncertainty, of course, and I recognize the argument that says all young pitchers are a safe bet to get hurt and so teams should cull the most possible value out of them as soon as they can. But if Mejia’s got the potential to be a frontline starter, the team should do everything in its power to let him achieve that potential.

The Mets’ history of organizational myopia is what weakened their farm system in the first place. Now, when it looks like they may finally be crawling their way out from all that, they appear to be considering a quick-fix decision with the best prospect in their organization. Amazin’.

At SNY.tv today, Mike Salfino weighs in on Fernando Martinez’s ranking on the assorted preseason prospects lists. His big finish:

It’s human nature to be impatient after writing about a guy now for three years. And it’s quite uncommon for a guy to stay atop these lists for that long without demonstrating any Major League ability. However, that’s not Martinez’s fault, as he was just 17 years old when he first came on the scene. He was never expected to debut before this year and he appears to me and many others to be right on schedule with very little left to prove in the high Minors.

I generally try not to get too worked up about rankings on prospects lists, since they’re only lists. As I pointed out two years ago, Albert Pujols was ranked only the 42nd best prospect by Baseball America before his rookie season and Mariano Rivera never even cracked the top 100.

The lists are fun to examine, and they’re useful as quick-and-dirty indicators of a prospect’s reputation, but to me, it’s just not that big a deal if a player is 40th or 75th.

But Mike argues, pretty accurately I think, that Mets fans and certain analysts are close to giving up on Martinez simply because they’ve been hearing about him for so long and he hasn’t produced anything yet. I’ve beaten this drum before: He’s 21. No one should have expected anything out of him yet.

I agree with most of Salfino’s points, as I usually do, and I recommend checking out the column. I’ll quibble with a couple, though:

For one, some of Mike’s argument rests on Martinez’s impressive performance in Triple-A in 2009. But while his .877 OPS was certainly good, it was also only across a 190 plate-appearance sample, far from huge and not even terribly larger than his rough 100 PA stretch in Citi Field.

The other thing — and this is certainly the big thing with Martinez, and the reason he was knocked down all those lists — is the injury thing. Salfino points out that none of Martinez’s numerous injuries have been related, and that not many position players have lost careers due to the injury bug.

I wonder, though, how many position players have never even had careers due to the injury bug. Martinez has always been labeled a great prospect and so will likely be given every opportunity to keep playing, but I wonder how many teams have given up on a Minor League just because he couldn’t stay on the field?

And I wonder, too, if the injuries might be related after all. Are some people not simply prone to injury?

My buddy Charlie is one of the best athletes in my group of friends from high school. He’s a huge guy, easily 6’5″, and he was always among the first chosen in pickup games in every sport. He can dunk a basketball, he’s a dominant force at linebacker in tackle football games, and he’s a three-true outcomes masher in stickball.

But, perhaps as some sort of karmic tradeoff for his size and ability, Charlie gets hurt all the time. There’s no identifiable balky knee or troublesome shoulder, either. It’s all different body parts injured in all different ways.

And I don’t mean he has a low threshold for pain or anything like that — I’ve seen the bruises and the swelling and the x-rays; they’re real injuries. An ankle sprained while pitching. A finger broken by a bounce pass. A collar bone broken when he made the mistake of trying to tackle me.

So with guys like Martinez, or Nick Johnson or Cliff Floyd or or Pete Reiser or whoever, I wonder if they’re kind of like Charlie, and there could be something in their makeup that leads them to get hurt all the time.

Of course, I might have thought the same thing about Jose Reyes at some point in 2004, and he played in nearly every game from 2005-2008.

I’m still bullish on Martinez as a prospect, and I certainly hope the injuries are only a byproduct of a teenager growing into a man as he attempts to compete at an extremely high level.

What Mike points out, after all, is correct: Though few of the stats in Martinez’s history exactly jump off the page, that he’s performed as well as he has at the levels he’s faced at the ages he’s been is remarkable.

That’s not say he should break camp with the big club, of course, nor do I think that’s something being considered.

At the same time, I’m not sure I understand the common Internet idea that Martinez needs to stay healthy for a full year in Triple-A before joins the big club. I don’t see why it would be any more difficult for him to stay healthy in the pros than it would be for him to stay healthy in Triple-A, so if Martinez is performing and the Mets have a need, his injury history shouldn’t prevent a callup.