According to Adam Rubin, the Mets have an offer on the table to lefty Joe Beimel.

If the Mets are absolutely sure they need a second lefty specialist after Pedro Feliciano, Beimel’s a nice pickup. He has been, for the most part, brutal on lefties since returning to the National League in 2006 and, to boot, not absolutely terrible against righties.

Beimel actually yielded a slightly higher OPS against lefties last season than he did against righties, but since he held lefties to an on-base percentage below .300 in 2009, it was likely a blip caused by a few home runs and not any indication of a larger trend. It might be worth nothing, though, that Beimel’s fastball has been steadily losing velocity since 2006.

More importantly, Beimel is something of an Internet sensation. YouTube only yields two search results for Ron Mahay, but 91 for Joe Beimel, mostly because of this bit of West Virginian weirdness that started it all:

That video, as YouTube sensations often do, produced tons of responses, including this one that features a cameo from Joe Beimel himself:

And this catchy, weird song:

And perhaps most notably, Joe Beimel’s Wikipedia page says he warms up to Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” which is a pretty badass choice:

The big news out of Port St. Lucie this morning? Oliver Perez’s mustache. Steve Popper:

Ollie shaves beard – leaves porn mustache. Its 1986 again.

And David Lennon:

Good Ollie, Bad Ollie … Porn Ollie? Perez shaved his beard and left the mustache. Weird.

I’m going to go with “Utterly Awesome Ollie,” and hope he keeps the ‘stache around for a while.

But it’s important to note that this is not the first time Ollie has rocked a mustache, and I believe I may be one of the only reporters to have noted it before. Check it out.

Don’t bother with the first two minutes of this video from 2008. In the final few seconds, as I’m wrapping with Eddie Kunz (in an interview I’m pretty certain jinxed and ruined his career), Ollie steps into the frame with a bold, beautiful mustache. I try, in vain, to ask him about it, but he bounds off into the bowels of Shea Stadium. The mustache wouldn’t return until today.

Alex Remington, continuing his stats-based series of columns for Yahoo!’s Big League Stew, asks, “How many more wins will a healthy Reyes and Beltran bring the Mets?”

It’s a good writeup, but Remington is only trying to piece together two pieces of the giant puzzle that is attempting to project how the Mets will fare in 2010. Big pieces, mind you: The Mets’ success is certainly all wrapped up in the health of Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes.

But Remington neglects to include how many more wins they’ll gain from a fully healthy Johan Santana, John Maine and Oliver Perez, not to mention returns to form from David Wright and Mike Pelfrey and improvement from Daniel Murphy.

And who could blame him, really? That would require way more analysis than could fit in a 600-word piece, plus would probably be a fool’s errand anyway. None of those things is necessarily a safe bet to happen, though we can hope for all of them.

Remington’s big finish:

It’s a good bet that they’ll get back those six games that they lost with Reyes and Beltran out last year, if not a few more. And that’s pretty close to the prediction offered by Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA, which predicts the 2010 Mets to finish 78-84. And if they can get just three more wins above that, with Jason Bay’s help, they’d be a .500 ballclub. That’s a tall order, but a win total in the high 70s is eminently reasonable for a team with such pitching problems once you get past Johan Santana.

All of this assumes, of course, that Reyes and Beltran actually are healthy next year. And with the record of the Mets medical staff as of late, that’s a heck of an assumption.

Sounds pretty gloomy to Mets fans, I realize. PECOTA is generally among the most accurate projection systems in baseball — or heck, anything — but I find it difficult to believe that these Mets, if healthy, will only manage 78 wins in 2010.

Then again, I find it difficult to believe these Mets will stay healthy in 2010. Injuries to baseball players often seem to forebode more injuries, and it seems downright delusional to expect the Mets’ top 4 starters to produce 800 innings, as one “Mets higher-up” suggested recently.

Still, assuming Reyes, Wright and Santana break camp healthy and Beltran is on schedule, I’ll take the over on 78.

The bottom line is that projection systems are only that, and though I don’t pretend to understand the mechanics of PECOTA or any other system, I imagine the 2010 Mets are about as hard a club to project as any in history, given the amount of uncertainty.

We can hem and haw all we want about what could go wrong and what might go right, but we won’t know if they’re any good until they start playing games.

Jeff Francoeur said this to Kevin Kernan of the Post yesterday:

“One of my big goals is to have better pitch recognition…. Sometimes you try to say it doesn’t bother you to swing at a bad pitch, but it does. I’m human. I want to get better because I know if I can get better at that the rest of my game will follow. If I can mix in 50-60 walks, I become a totally different guy.”

Sounds awesome, right? Better pitch recognition seems like exactly what Frenchy needs to maintain the level of production he posted in his half season as a Met and avoid slipping back to the sub-replacement level player he was for his final season and a half with the Braves. After all, there’s no doubt he can crush the ball when it’s thrown over the plate.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution doesn’t have a great archive, but thanks to commenter named “Kyle S at work” at Baseball Think Factory, we can find evidence (most pointing to AJC articles) that Francoeur has actually set out to better recognize pitches in each of the last four offseasons:

2006. 2007. 2008. 2009.

His career walk rates:

2005: 4.0%; 2006: 3.4%; 2007: 6.0%; 2008: 6.0%; 2009: 3.6%.

It’s great that Francoeur knows he needs to walk more. The problem is, there’s no evidence he has the ability to do so. He’s still only 26 — which is sort of amazing given how long it seems like he’s been around — so there’s hope he can finally pull everything together and starts recognizing pitches the way he apparently hopes to.

He’s a Met, so I’ll be rooting for him.

Reading David Waldstein’s feature for the Times about the Mets’ heavy Venezuelan presence in camp this year got me thinking.

Of the guys near-certain to make the 25-man roster, several, as Waldstein notes, are from Venezuela. More are from the United States. Jose Reyes, Luis Castillo and Fernando Tatis are from the Dominican Republic. Ryota Igarashi is from Japan. Oliver Perez is from Mexico. Jason Bay is from Canada.

Not counting Puerto Rico — the birthplace of Carlos Beltran, Alex Cora, Pedro Feliciano and Angel Pagan — since it’s technically a United States territory, that means the Mets are one country shy of potentially fielding a seven-nation army and being able to employ the totally sweet (and eminently coverable) White Stripes song of the same name as a rallying cry.

Longshot roster candidate Tobi Stoner, though he grew up in Maryland, was born in West Germany. Reports all offseason said the Mets could sign Cuban defector Yuniesky Maya.

One non-roster invite, veteran infielder Jolbert Cabrera, is from Colombia. Another, lefty pitcher Travis Blackley, is Australian. Infield prospect Ruben Tejada — who certainly shouldn’t break camp with the big club barring another massive and terrifying run of injuries — is from Panama.

I don’t think any of those guys is likely to make the squad, but this has to happen. I don’t love the White Stripes, but Seven Nation Army is an awesome song, and probably as good a justification for carrying somebody who doesn’t deserve the 25th spot on the roster as any of the others the Mets have had in the past few years.

Do it, Omar.

A few people have alerted to Bob Klapisch’s piece for Fox Sports last week, weighing in on confident statements from David Wright and Johan Santana suggesting that the Mets expect to win the World Series in 2010.

I appreciate the tips; I’m certainly not above taking writers to the mat when I feel the need arises and I reserve the right to call out members of the media for fallacious things they write in the future, but I’m having trouble mustering up enough to get too upset over this one.

There are plenty of fundamental arguments in the column I disagree with — most notably that no team in the league has “the guts” to take down the Phillies in 2010 and that Carlos Beltran is “hardly Winston Churchill” — but outside of the headline, there’s not much in Klapisch’s piece that’s too incendiary.

Wright and Santana said exactly what anyone should expect them to say. They’re professional athletes and they set their goals high. Sure, it might sound a little crazy given the way things went for the Mets in 2009, but “we expect to win the World Series” is a much more reasonable thing for a ballplayer to say than, “yeah, we suck. We’ll be lucky to win 80 games.”

Klapisch must realize that, and it actually comes out in his piece. He concludes by writing, “So Wright and Santana can be forgiven for the over-heated imagery. Call it the audacity of hope.”

Besides, it’s hard to kill the guy for killing the Mets because, frankly, who isn’t killing the Mets right now? Whether the front office could not or simply stubbornly chose not to overhaul the 2009 roster, they did not. The Mets return much the same team they trotted out last year, with all the same warts and without an additional starting pitcher.

Do I think there’s a chance they’ll be a whole lot better than they were last season? Of course. I have to be optimistic because I’m a Mets fan. And half the team was injured in 2009, anyway.

But for better or worse, the Mets did nothing to change the dialogue around their club this offseason and so, for the time being, they’re stuck with it. Rex Ryan has not walked through that door. This is the bed that they’ve made. They’ll lie in it until the season starts. If they win some games, the talk will change. If they lose some, it will grow louder.

The truth is, I imagine Klapisch was writing on deadline — from Tampa, no less, as per his dateline — and there wasn’t much else to write about. Until the games start up and the positional battles become a bit more clear, the only storylines to go on are these nebulous ones: leadership, confidence, delusion.

Players express confidence, columnists express doubt, and the wheels keep turning. Until the things that matter start happening, all we’ve got is talk: idle words and speculation and bandwidth.

It’s gray in New York today, cold and rainy and gloomy, and the best we’ve got to get us through our workdays are hazy columns about cloudy concepts. But things will clear up soon. We’ll have a sharper picture of what’s happening in Port St. Lucie and, in short time, a better sense of where to direct the thunder of our rage.

The big talk in Mets camp today is that Jason Bay showed up. Adam Rubin has a full recap of the outfielder’s Q&A with reporters. Some highlights:

What happened to the Canadian hockey team?

“I knew that was coming. That stung a little bit. They beat us. We were almost kind of out-hearted a little bit. I mean that last goal, that empty-netter by Kessler, kind of proved it right there. Outshot, what, 45 to 19 or 20 or something like that? If this were a medal game we were talking about, I’d probably hang my head a little lower. Being as we have a pretty good shot to get in tonight, I’d still take our chances.”

But you became a U.S. citizen. Root for USA?

“No way. I can’t do that. And I’d never be able to go back home. I’m still a Canadian through and through.”

You have MEDIUM EST NUNTIUS written on your T-shirt. What’s that mean?

“I have no idea. I bought it at Nordstrom’s before I came. I needed some T-shirts for the spring.”

You’re really into curling?

“I played a couple of years when I was in high school. They needed an extra guy. I wasn’t any good. It’s more of an excuse to go out on the ice and sweep around for a couple of hours and get a little exercise, and then drink a couple of beers afterward. I don’t have high school baseball where I’m at.”

OK, so let’s recap: A bunch of hockey info teeming with optimism, followed by the very redundant “I’m a Canadian through and through” quote, and then, of course, the admission that in high school he liked to “go out on the ice and sweep around” then “drink a couple of beers” afterward. Molsons, I assume.

My favorite part, buried among all the righteous Canucking, is the note about his t-shirt. Jason Bay had to buy a bunch of t-shirts right before Spring Training, presumably because his lumberjack wear was inappropriate for the Florida humidity.

Anyway, the Internet tells me that “MEDIUM EST NUNTIUS” actually is Latin for “the common good is the message,” which sounds a bit socialist to me. Even when haphazardly picking out t-shirts, Jason Bay is drawn to vaguely Canadian ideals.

Jason Bay: He’s your guy, buddy.

I apologize to any Canadians who may be offended by this post. I actually love Canada. It’s beautiful and fun and the people are pleasant, and often themselves beautiful. And I’m sure curling is a fantastic sport if you understand the rules.

(Jason Bay image courtesy Patrick Flood.)

Carlos Beltran arrived in Port St. Lucie today, and HardballTalk’s typically excellent Craig Calcaterra writes that, though it’s great that Beltran’s knee and relationship with the Mets appear to be progressing nicely, his sense of style is lacking:

Less than hunky dory was Beltran’s fashion sense, as evidenced by these pictures by Howard Simmons of the Daily News.  Note the ugly shirt tucked into jeans! Behold the two-hole-deep white belt which was EXACTLY like one your old man had back in the 70s!  Note also that Beltran, not content to rock a mere trucker’s hat, rocks what appears to be a very expensive takeoff on a trucker’s hat.

Look: We here (by which I mean “me here”) at TedQuarters are not above judging professional athletes for their fashion choices. It is clearly my right; just look at Shane Victorino’s stupid suit.

But doubt Carlos Beltran at your own peril, Craig Calcaterra. I certainly don’t dress like Beltran does here — these clothes are not available at Old Navy — nor would I necessarily advocate doing so, but I’ve come to assume that whatever choices Carlos Beltran makes are the correct ones, even if they may seem wrong on some surface level.

So when Carlos Beltran elects not to slide into home plate, I like to assume he had some good damn good reason — like maybe somehow he instantly calculated that his chances of scoring would actually be lessened by sliding in some way we, mere mortals of baseball-understanding, could not possibly conceive. Or, perhaps more likely, he was playing injured and considered the possibility that a collision with the catcher could have hastened his inevitable trip to the disabled list.

Probably Beltran’s tucked-in t-shirt and white belt are so outrageously hip that folks like me and Craig Calcaterra can’t even process how awesome they are, and we’ll only begin to understand in several years, when the rest of the world stylistically catches up with Carlos Beltran.

And yeah, I recognize that the vaguely Affliction-style t-shirt and trucker-ish hat he’s wearing have already come into vogue, but you gotta understand: Beltran’s so far ahead of the curve that he’s actually wearing them for the next time they’re in fashion, in some much hipper way. It’s not something I can fully grasp because I am not Carlos Beltran.

OK, sorry about that. I’m pretty excited about Beltran, is all.

Here’s what Jerry Manuel had to say on Sunday, when asked if he saw Jenrry Mejia pitch:

“Oh, lord, did I see him. Don’t get me started on him. This press conference is over, Jay. Oh, it’s tough not to get excited about him. That’s real electric stuff.”

(Quote courtesy Matt Dunn of SNY.)

There’s been early talk, some of it stemming from Manuel himself, about Mejia breaking camp as the Mets’ 8th-inning guy.

That’d be exciting, for sure, and as a Mets fan I’m definitely psyched to see the electric stuff everyone keeps raving about.

I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, though.

Mejia’s only 20 years old, and since he walked 4.7 batters per nine innings in his stint at Double-A, it’s a safe bet he needs a little more work on his controlling his pitches before he’s unleashed on Major League hitters.

And, perhaps more importantly, he just needs to pitch more.

Mark this down: A good starter is more valuable than the best 8th-inning man in baseball. I promise. I could delve into way more detail, but just think of the difference in total innings: A good starter throws about 200 in a season. A good reliever throws about 80.

So ultimately, unless the Mets feel Mejia is no more than a late-inning reliever, they should want him to become a starter. And by all accounts, they do.

The so-called Verducci Effect states that young pitchers suffer regression after increasing his innings load by more than 30 from one season to another. There are inherent flaws in the notion, as my colleague Michael Salfino has been pointing out for years, and as Jeremy Greenhouse examined in detail at The Baseball Analysts last week.

Still, despite all that, no one would argue that teams should throw caution to the wind and haphazardly handle young pitchers. The Mets will — and should — want to be careful with Mejia’s workload. He threw only 94 2/3 innings last year in a season partly shortened due to a middle-finger injury.

The Mets will likely want to up that in 2010 to prepare him for the rigors of a full season as a Major League starter in 2011. Starting him out in the bullpen will not do that. Starting him out in the bullpen will push his innings count in the wrong direction.

Beyond that, hard-throwers like Mejia can rely mostly on their fastballs in relief roles, even at the big-league level. I don’t know how good Mejia’s secondary arsenal is currently, but I know that to succeed as a Major League starter, a pitcher needs more than one pitch. He should be given the opportunity to develop his full array of weapons as a starter in the Minors instead of risking letting them atrophy under the pressure to perform as a big-league reliever.

If, as Mejia approaches his 2010 innings limit later in the season, the Mets have a need in the bullpen, then sure, call him up and use him conservatively in late-inning work. Plenty of great starting pitchers have gotten their first taste of Major League action in bullpen roles.

But no matter how good Mejia looks this Spring, the Mets cannot afford to rush him into a big-league relief role to start the season. Simply put, it’s way easier to find a good 8th inning guy than a 20-year-old prospect with “electric stuff,” and there’s no reason to hinder the development of the latter for one season of the former.

Look: Rod Barajas isn’t all that good. I don’t mean to cut the guy down the day after he got a $1 million contract from the Mets, but he posted a .258 on-base percentage last year in 460 plate appearances. That’s abysmal.

Even allowing that he could have been a bit unlucky — his batting average on balls in play was .024 below his career average — his career .284 OBP is bad enough that it’s inappropriate to expect much from him at the plate, even if he’ll hit a few homers.

He’s a very good defensive catcher by almost all accounts though — something Omir Santos cannot quite boast — and, as bad as his offensive performance was in 2009 (look past the 19 home runs, folks: a .258 OBP is miserable), it was likely his floor. Barajas has been around long enough that we can be pretty certain he won’t be much worse a hitter this season than he was last season, even if he’s 34 and on the decline.

With Santos — whose paltry offensive numbers last season were actually better than his career Minor League lines would project — there’s some non-zero chance he totally collapses and hits like Tony Pena Jr., leaving the Mets to either rush Josh Thole or go with some combination of Henry Blanco, Chris Coste and Shawn Riggans.

So Barajas represents a defensive upgrade over Santos with a little more certainty — even if he’s certainly not good — on the offensive side. For $1 million with another $1 million in easily obtainable incentives, that’s probably worth it to the Mets, if only to buy Thole some more time for seasoning in Buffalo.

Barajas is not a great player, but it’s not a bad deal.

My only quibble with the move is, of course, that Felipe Lopez is still flopping around on the free-agent market. I’m convinced that the difference between Lopez and Luis Castillo is greater than the difference between Barajas and Santos, so the Mets — if forced to make only one move — would get a bigger upgrade over what they’ve already got by signing Lopez than by signing Barajas.

Still, it’s not something I’d cast in stone, because Lopez has been inconsistent across his career and because catching defense is so hard to quantify.

And signing Barajas should not preclude signing Lopez, and since the latter recently parted ways with Scott Boras, I’ll hold out hope that the Mets can swoop in and scoop him up on the cheap. I’m almost certain it won’t happen, since the Mets already have $8 million committed to lesser second basemen, but until he signs elsewhere, I can cross my fingers.

Finally, one last note on Barajas: Earlier this offseason, Sagiv Edelman — Twitter’s @FireJerryManuel — suggested referring to him as “Bod Rarajas.” I’m on board. Switching the first letters of the first and last names of defense-first backup catchers for comic effect has long been a hobby of mine.

So credit Sagiv for the idea, or, perhaps whoever wrote this SNL sketch, way back when. Long live Bod Rarajas.