I probably shouldn’t publish this, because it could very well end with me getting scolded about how all of our meetings are very important and I should be paying attention to learn all the crucial intricacies of our business for better leveraging low-hanging fruit in the marketplace of the…

See, now I’m boring myself. And meetings scheduled in the middle of a pretty busy day, when the Mets are playing — even if it’s an otherwise meaningless Spring Training game — are terribly frustrating.

I had one of those and I don’t have a DVR at my desk, so I missed a good hour in the middle of the game today. Cerrone’s got a DVR at his desk and wasn’t at the office, so I guess I could have used his. But his TV isn’t as nice as the one at my desk, and I really couldn’t bring myself to watch an hour of already-played meaningless baseball on a pitiful little screen.

So I missed Jack Egbert’s entire uninspiring appearance in the Mets’ 8-4 loss to the Astros. ‘Tis a pity.

I did see all of Johan Santana’s effort. I’m sure someone somewhere will make too much of the fact that he was hit hard, since Santana allowed six hits and four runs and couldn’t get out of the second inning, but it’s Spring Training, and Santana said he felt good after his first game action coming off arm surgery, and that’s all that matters.

If you’re tempted to think Spring Training stats should count for a whole lot, consider this: Astros first baseman Geoff Blum went 4-for-4 in the affair and is now hitting .538 for the Spring. And Geoff Blum has a .697 career OPS. Everyone’s at a different spot in his preseason conditioning, the competition is all over the map, players are tinkering with certain aspects of their games, and sample sizes are tiny. The output — the actual numbers produced in Spring Training games — mean nothing.

Calling the games entirely pointless, though, is likely a bit overblown. Since the managers and GMs and organizational scouts are, in theory, watching these games to assess the talents of the players on the field and will likely partly base roster decisions off those assessments, we can try to do the same. The problem is, without reliable stats to guide us, and without any actual training in scouting, our eyes have a tendency to see what we already believe to be true.

For instance: It certainly looks to me like neither Alex Cora nor Luis Castillo really has the range to be a Major League middle infielder at this point. And man is that frustrating, knowing what I know about how Mike Pelfrey has been hammered in the press for his supposed psychological issues.

The Astros rolled out some Double-A guy named Wladimir Sutil at shortstop who made a great diving play moving to his left to start a double play. Cora dove in vain for one that wasn’t even hit too hard.

That’s a miniscule sample. I’m just sayin’s all. It’s just frustrating. If you’re going to have backup infielders who can’t really hit, it’d be nice if they could defend.

OK, moving on: Clint Everts’ breaking ball moves a lot. So that’s cool.

Jason Pridie made a nice running catch in right field in the ninth, then turned and nailed the cutoff man, who clearly doubled off Kody Clemens at first base. Clemens was ruled safe, probably because his pops was in the house and the ump feared the Rocket’s rep. But the ump should have made the right call, since that story was a big misunderstanding and Roger probably wasn’t fired up for this Spring Training game.

Ike Davis hit a home run to straightaway center, and the legend grows. He also struck out thrice. That part will get glossed over by legend.

David Wright pulled a homer. Josh Thole hit a couple of warning track doubles.

Mike Jacobs walked twice, and has now walked five times in 13 Grapefruit League plate appearances.

Finally, Astros reliever Samuel Gervacio cracks me up. He does this weird thing before he starts his delivery — it looks like he’s showing the ball to the opposing team’s third base coach, like he’s about to perform a magic trick and is assuring the crowd that it’s a regular baseball he’s about to make disappear.

Then he abruptly turns to the batter as if completely startled by the fact that there’s someone standing there waiting for him to pitch, interrupting the magic show he’s performing for the third-base coach and the fans along the left-field line.

He’s pretty good; he struck out 11.2 batters per nine innings in the Minors and I imagine he’ll end up a closer eventually, so you’ll probably see a lot more of his strange performance. But it’s still novel now, so I’ll enjoy it until some team better than the Astros scoops him up and he’s using it to dominate the Mets in the future.

One of the big stories coming out of Port St. Lucie this year is the battle among a slew of pitchers to become the Mets’ new eighth-inning guy in the presumed absence of the injured Kelvim Escobar, who everyone thought would be the Mets’ eighth-inning guy.

I missed something here, something big. I missed when it became common, accepted fact that all teams need a dedicated “eighth-inning guy” to only pitch the eighth inning. Did someone make some decree? Was I blissfully burying my head in the sand?

I know about the closer. I know all teams, for some reason, need one guy who pitches the ninth inning when his team is leading by three or fewer runs, and that he should not be used in the eighth inning, and never, ever when the game is tied or his team is losing. That makes sense; every team needs someone to accumulate as many saves as possible, or something.

But only in the last couple of years have I learned of this other necessary component of good bullpens: the bridge. The Mets have been searching in vain for the bridge since Duaner Sanchez searched in vain for Dominican food that fateful night in 2006. Aaron Heilman was not the bridge. Roberto Hernandez was not the bridge. J.J. Putz was not the bridge.

Look: I recognize that pitchers — like anyone — prefer to know what job they’ll be asked to perform when they show up at work. And far be it for me, with my spreadsheets and calculators, to point to the days not too long ago when late-inning relievers would regularly throw upwards of 90 innings a season. Game’s changed now.

But it strikes me, as it has for a while now, that there’s got to be a better way. If I were managing a ballclub, I’d want my best reliever in the game in the highest-leverage situation. If that happened to come in the sixth inning, after the starting pitcher grew tired and walked a couple of guys in a tie game, would I be smart to bring in one of the worst pitchers on my staff because I’m reserving a better one for the eighth inning, when he’ll come in with no one on base?

Anyhow, putting that rant aside, as long Jenrry Mejia’s excluded from the big-league bullpen come Opening Day, the Mets will have taken a better approach to building a relief corps this year then they did last year, the offseason of Omar’s much lauded two closers.

Certainly there will be uncertainty. Ryota Igarashi has yet to pitch in real games stateside. Kiko Calero gets hurt a lot. Bobby Parnell is still pretty young, and walks a lot of guys. Who knows when Escobar will be ready? What’s up with Clint Everts, and Hisanori Takahashi and Fernando Nieve, assuming they don’t land in the rotation?

But in collecting a slew of relatively low-risk, high-upside guys — many of whom have potential for a lot of strikeouts, to boot — the Mets will likely be able to find a good mix of effective relievers.

And it’s not as simple as saying, “oh, throw enough [expletive] against the wall, some of it’s bound to stick.” They tried that in 2008, recall, and nothing stuck. It’s a matter of finding the right [expletive], and — and maybe this is blind, Mets-fan optimism — I think it’s a much stickier brand this year.

That’s gross, and I apologize. The point is, no matter how much speculation you read about how and where Pitcher X fits into the Mets’ crowded bullpen, know that the team is better off because of that crowd.

Some guys will crack the Opening Day roster, some won’t. I’ll probably obsess over it like I do ever year, but it won’t matter, since the front office will inevitably tinker until it settles on the right mix. What actually matters is that, if just a couple of the big-upside arms stay healthy and pitch to their potential, the Mets should have a better bullpen than they’ve had in several years.

And this, without having acquired two closers.

TiVo delayed because I was at the gym, refining my chiseled physique:

It will be hilarious if, after the Mets’ much-ballyhooed and ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of Bengie Molina and concurrent stockpiling of lesser catchers this offseason, Omir Santos can find a way to harness good timing and great fortune to sneak his way onto the Major League roster to open the 2010 season.

When people like me point to metrics like batting average in balls in play, or a player’s history to argue that he has gotten lucky in a game or a month or a season, the suggestion assumes that the player’s luck will balance out, that he will endure similar stretches of misfortune or at the very least normal amounts of luck soon, and will not continue being inordinately blessed.

We almost never consider the possibility that Omir Santos might just be the luckiest man in the universe.

If Santos’ well-struck sinking liner in the second inning today was hit three feet to the right, it might have been swallowed up by Nationals third baseman Alberto Gonzalez and turned into a rally-killing double play, all but wasting a bases-loaded opportunity for the Mets.

Instead, it scooted down the foul line and connected with a wheel on the bottom of the wall in foul territory along the third-base line. It bounced into a tiny gap between the wall and the ground but — and this is important — pretty clearly did not get lodged there.

Regardless, Nats left fielder Willy Taveras determined the hit should be a ground-rule double, but could not appropriately raise both his arms to signify that opinion, probably because when Willy Taveras sees a baseball, his instincts tell him to swing at it, no matter what the situation.

No umpire ruled the ball dead, so Santos — and all three men in front of him — just kept running as Taveras leisurely found the ball and returned it to the infield. By the time it got there, Santos had scored on an inside-the-park grand slam, something that hasn’t happened in an actual Major League game since 1999.

That was pretty much the highlight of the Mets’ 6-5 win over Washington. Oliver Perez walked the first batter he faced, then threw mostly strikes. Sadly, he was punished for it, allowing seven hits and five runs over three innings, but the good news is none of them actually count. And Ollie was hitting the low 90s on SNY’s gun, a good sign so early in the Spring considering the way he struggled to hit even those speeds before he was shut down last season.

Hisanori Takahashi flummoxed the crap out of the Nationals’ hitters, striking out six and allowing one hit and no walks over three innings, earning the win. Takahashi had good movement on his breaking stuff but doesn’t throw particularly hard — he topped out in the high 80s — and I couldn’t tell if the Nats were struggling with his pitch selection and control or being thrown by the little hesitation-delay Takahashi does in the middle of his delivery.

Pat Misch threw an effective three innings in a very Pat Mischy (Pat Mischious?) fashion. Ike Davis smacked a double but got caught off third base when he bluffed like he was going to tag up and go home on a fly to left. It’s funny; Davis — for all the talk of his polish — seems like he’s bidding for the “hitting savant” stigma that Daniel Murphy is working to shed, at least based on his play in all these meaningless games.

I don’t read too much into Davis’ run of errors at first or the baserunning blunder, naturally. I just find it entertaining that Murphy might now get the reputation as the better fundamentals guy.

Same deal as yesterday, except only one of the two games the Mets played. Specifically, the one I watched:

The Mets lost this one to the Marlins in the 10th inning, 3-2. It was heartbreaking, but mostly for Keith Hernandez, who pretty obviously wanted to get out of there and was hoping they’d just call it a tie after nine.

Ralph Kiner was in the SNY booth, and Ralph Kiner is awesome. He told Keith Hernandez, “time stops with you,” which made me hope Ralph knows something about Keith that I don’t yet. Perhaps Keith Hernandez has the power to control time, like Zack Morris or something.

Marlins’ reclamation project Hayden Penn has some crazy facial hair. It’s like a modified Colonel Sanders, only blonde — not white. Just calling it a mustache and soul patch wouldn’t be doing it justice; the mustache is real thick, almost hanging down over his lips in the Nietzche fashion.

On the Mets side of things, Jenrry Mejia was clearly the most impressive part. See below for more details, and keep in mind that all this means very little.

Jon Niese was pretty damn decent, too. He did allow three hits and two walks, but none of the hits were terribly well-struck, and he struck out five batters in his 2 2/3 innings. He threw his cutter a ton, which was cool, and still has all that movement on his curveball.

SNY had a gun going today, so we got some early returns on Ryota Igarashi’s fastball. He was sitting in the low 90s and pitched pretty well, except for an near-inexplicable home run to Emilio Bonifacio — Bone Face, to some — who only has one home run in 722 Major League plate appearances. Luckily, this one doesn’t count for anything.

Mike Hessman is huge. He looks like he can smash a ball. I really have to get to Buffalo this season to see him in a lineup with fellow Quad-A masher Val Pascucci. Also, why isn’t Pascucci in the big camp?

Kai Gronauer, a German dude who I thought was only in camp because teams need lots of catchers in camp, played DH today. And he got a hit. Bully for you, Kai Gronauer. Or as they say in German, herzlichen glückwunsch.

I don’t actually speak German. I just looked that up. Come tell me I’m wrong now, Internet.

Wilmer Flores had a hit, a single up the middle. So that’s cool.

Bobby Parnell gave up the decisive blast in the top of the 10th, a two-run opposite-field homer to Marlins’ prospect Michael Stanton. Stanton has a buttload of power, and also two names. I’m not entirely clear on the mechanics of this, but his baseball-reference page calls him “Giancarlo Cruz-Michael Stanton.”

If I had to pick between those names, I’d go with Giancarlo Cruz, mostly because I once attended a game that Mike Stanton the lefty reliever lost without even throwing a pitch. Serious. I was in Milwaukee, and Stanton was making his Nationals debut, I believe. He came in to a tie game with a runner on third in the bottom of the ninth. He promptly balked, forcing in the winning run. Only time I’ve ever seen that happen.

Anyway, it seems as though the Mets’ book on this Michael Stanton involved not throwing him any fastballs over the plate. Pedro Feliciano made it work for him, striking him out on three straight changeups in the dirt.

Parnell hung a breaking pitch over the middle and Stanton made him pay, jacking a line drive the opposite way and putting the Marlins ahead for good.

Luckily, it doesn’t matter even a little bit.

So I’ve written a whole bunch about how I don’t think Jenrry Mejia should be in the Major League bullpen this year without having ever really seen the guy pitch.

Now that’s changed, and whoa, nelly.

Mejia just finished off 2 1/3 perfect innings in a meaningless game against the Marlins. He struck out four batters and yielded two grounders to short and a lazy fly ball to left.

By my count, Mejia threw 19 fastballs, topping out at 96 miles per hour on SNY’s gun. Most of them sat around 94 or 95, and I don’t think any were slower than 93. Of the 19 heaters, 17 were strikes — either swinging or called.

He threw two of what I think were changeups in the high 80s. One was a called strike, the other missed the inside corner.

He also threw four curveballs. They appeared to move a lot, but a couple of them missed pretty wildly. Three of them were balls, one was a called strike.

This is a tiny sample of course, and Mejia was hardly facing the Marlins’ Opening Day lineup, but, well, damn. I still obviously don’t think he should be anywhere near the Major League roster anytime soon, but when you see a 20-year-old rely mostly on one pitch to completely beguile big-league (or close to big-league) hitters, you can start to understand what all the fuss is about.

Fire up the hype machine.

So Jose Reyes’ blood test yesterday revealed a thyroid imbalance and he is traveling to New York for further testing.

This sucks.

This sucks for the Mets, it sucks for Mets fans, and it sucks, most of all, for Jose Reyes.

I don’t know anything about any thyroid imbalance beyond goiter, but I know plenty about undergoing medical testing when you feel more or less healthy, and I can attest that it’s awful. You feel fine, but you’re treated like a sickly person. They put you in a paper-thin gown and poke and prod at you with their instruments, then talk about you in a lingo you don’t understand as if you’re not standing right there. It’s humiliating and terrifying. And yesterday, Jose Reyes thought he’d be playing baseball today.

Maybe this is nothing, and for all I know it’s minor enough that it can be easily treated with medicine or therapy or something and this will just be a tiny little blip on Reyes’ MVP-caliber season in 2010.

But it sure does suck right now, because everything about Reyes since Mets’ camp opened had been so glimmering, so overwhelmingly positive. And now once again, due to no fault of anyone in particular, Reyes’ health is a big foggy mystery.

I’m still busy with actual work, and I haven’t figured out exactly how I want to handle games and recaps on TedQuarters, so for now, another stream of consciousness.

I’m struggling to find the origins of the expression “barnburner” to refer to a high-scoring sporting event. The Internet isn’t much help, though the Wikipedia tells me a barnburner is a member of the radical faction of the New York state Democratic party in the 19th century.

Near as I can tell, the expression comes from the way a barn actually burns. What with all the hay and wood, those suckers really go up in flames once they catch.

That’s what happened here. This was a barnburner.The Mets beat the Cardinals, 17-11.

The wind was blowing out hard to right. David Wright and Gary Matthews Jr. hit homers that way that probably would have been contained in normal conditions in Citi. Shawn Bowman hit a double off the top of the wall in left that probably would’ve been a home run just about anywhere else.

The big shot came from Ike Davis, a grand slam in the top of the ninth. It went out to right field and the wind made it look ridiculous, but he crushed it nonetheless.

It’s worth noting, though, that the guy he Davis it off was Francisco Samuel, who had a 5.66 ERA in Double-A last year. Of course, it’s also worth noting that Samuel’s only real bugaboo has been the walk, and he’s yielded merely seven home runs in 162 Minor League innings.

Davis did make an error in the field on a hard-hit grounder right at him. Daniel Murphy made a slick play moving to his right.

I have to get a better, longer look at his face to judge, but I think Kirk Nieuwenhuis may look like a little like a younger, bigger version of Toby Hyde. Captain Kirk had an impressive at-bat off knuckleballer Charlie Zink, fouling off a slew of pitches with a 2-2 count before lining a single to center. He walked on four pitches in his second time up.

The Cardinals have a catcher named Matt Pagnozzi, Tom Pagnozzi’s nephew. The Cardinals should always have a catcher named Pagnozzi. I was in a band named “Pagnozzi” once, but on the way to our only gig we changed our name to “The Lewis Effect” for reasons I’m still not clear on.

R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball moves a lot faster than Zink’s, and a lot faster than most knuckleballs I’ve ever seen.

Sean Green is apparently still adjusting to the newer, lower arm slot.

Clint Everts’ breaking stuff moves a whole lot, but he didn’t appear to have a ton of control over it today.

I already weighed in on this once but it hasn’t quite gone away. Now Darryl Strawberry, too, has compared Mets’ top prospect Jenrry Mejia to Mariano Rivera and suggested he be given a place in the Major League bullpen post haste.

Everyone in the baseball world needs to agree to some giant pact to stop comparing people — especially 20-year-olds with 45 innings of experience beyond Single-A ball — to Mariano Rivera. Mariano Rivera is about the most dominant pitcher of all-time. Probably not the most valuable — that honor should go to a starter — but, inning for inning, the most dominant.

Check out the historical ERA+ leaderboard. Stare. Gape. Look at where Rivera is, then look at the pack.

Now tell me that some 20-year-old kid, an impressive prospect no doubt, compares somehow to Mariano Rivera. No one compares to Mariano Rivera. Mariano Rivera is incomparable.

Hey, guess what? Ike Davis is the next Lou Gehrig. Fernando Martinez? Babe Ruth.

And I know no one has quite said Mejia is the next Rivera, only compared their pitches. But the frustrating thing about the comparison, I guess, is that it would take Mejia becoming Rivera — or something close — for moving him to the bullpen to be a worthwhile decision.

Human, non-Rivera closers aren’t worth nearly as much as good or great starting pitchers. And if Mejia’s stuff is electric as everyone seems to say it is, and his arm is strong and the Mets are careful with him, he has a chance to be a front-of-the-rotation Major League starter in a couple of years.

But to do that — and I touched on this the last time around — he’ll have to develop his secondary stuff. And he won’t have that opportunity relying mostly on his cutting fastball in a Major League bullpen. Plus, spending a season in the bullpen would prevent Mejia from approaching an innings target above the 109 he threw between the Minors and the Arizona Fall League in 2009. That complicates a transition to a starting role down the road.

You can point to recent examples of now-successful starting pitchers who broke into the Majors as relievers, like Johan Santana and Adam Wainwright, but the situations are not the same. Wainwright had excellent breaking stuff in 2006 and enough confidence in it to throw it in big spots — Mets fans know that all too well.

Santana spent 2000 mostly getting torched in the Twins’ bullpen because he had been a Rule 5 draft pick. He didn’t become the Johan Santana we know until 2002, after a stint in the Minors. From the Wikipedia:

In 2002, the Twins sent Santana to the minors for 2 months to work almost exclusively on perfecting his changeup. He did this for 10 starts and came back up to the majors with a terrific changeup to complement his very good fastball. While in the minors, pitching coach Bobby Cuellar made Santana throw at least one changeup to every batter. According to Cuellar, Santana would sometimes throw 20 in a row during games.

You can’t throw 20 changeups in a row in Major League games. It would be very, very bad.

Naturally, Mejia is not Santana, just like he’s not Wainwright and he’s not Rivera and he’s not Doc Gooden, either. I’m as excited as everyone else is about his potential, which is why I’m hoping that, for once, the Mets can be patient and allow his ability to match his hype before they elevate him to the big-league level.

Y’all know I don’t spend too much time shilling for SNY programming here, but this is awesome. The picture of young Johan with Clark Kent glasses alone makes it worth watching.

The show, Going Home: Johan Santana airs tonight at 9:30 p.m.

Santana comes from Tovar, Venezuela, a small coffee-growing town in the Andes, but descended from the mountains to share his awesomeness with the world.

Some of the people working on the show happen to sit right near me here, so I’ve seen a bunch of it. It features a whole lot of Johan Santana doing stuff, and talking about himself doing stuff, and so is predictably amazing.