[Pedro Feliciano] was abused. It’s a thin market when you’re looking for lefties, and he’s one of the better ones out there. But you don’t typically go after a guy who’s been used like that. The use pattern was abusive.

– Brian Cashman.

Mets fans seem ticked off about Cashman’s comment, though I can hardly see why. I suppose it’s unprofessional to call out another organization for your mistake, but I’ve never been much one for professionalism. And to me it’s hard to see how the goat here is anyone but Cashman.

The Mets did overwork Feliciano. He led the National League in appearances three years running, and who can count how many times Jerry Manuel got Feliciano warmed up only to not use him — “dry-humping,” in the parlance of our times.

But — as Dan Warthen joked to reporters today — the Yankees probably should have known about that when they signed Until Recently Perpetual Pedro. Hard to really kill the Mets for using him so often, either: He never got hurt on their watch, so they got everything they could out of him and moved on at (apparently) the right time. That doesn’t seem very fair to Feliciano, but then he’s the one who got rewarded with a two-year $8 million deal this offseason, and the guy who reportedly asked for the ball every day.

About that: I get that Feliciano wanted to pitch every day. I’ve even read the reports that he claimed to pitch better when worked heavily. But just because a professional athlete says he can play doesn’t mean the team should always do so. The Mets probably got lucky to enjoy three full healthy seasons of Feliciano throwing in more than half their games. Next time they try that, it’ll probably catch up with them — not the Yankees.

Of course we have no evidence yet that Terry Collins will manage that way.

The most interesting part about this to me is that Cashman seems to have carried his bizarre new habit of saying all sorts of things he probably shouldn’t into the regular season.