Obviously, the latest news about Jose Reyes is not good. I find it disturbing how many of the local media are using this for endless speculation on whether Reyes' condition is due to HGH without a shred of evidence other than a connection to that Canadian doctor. Newspapers used to report news that was back by solid reporting and some evidence -- not anymore.

If Reyes really does have involvement with HGH, do some real reporting and find some actual evidence. If Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds weren't able to dodge the truth of their own PED usage, I doubt somehow that Jose Reyes is more diabolically clever if he had HGH use to hide.

Lacking that, I wish the media would go back to some actual ethics system based on the fact that they are reporting on real people with real lives -- these athletes don't exist merely as topics to fill a lazy column.

As for the Mets, I'm tired of reading how snakebit they are. I've been through a rough few years in my own life, and I know that when I start to feel that way about myself things only get worse. Determination to get past obstacles always works better than self-pity.

Off to work. More when time permits this weekend.

Sure, at first we actually were impressed that Perez was pitching with better balance and throwing strikes. We were also happy that he was hitting the low 90s on the radar gun and thought he was showing some progress with his changeup -- a pitch that will be vital to any hopes of Ollie improving his splits against right-handed hitters.

Indeed, I have to confess to you that I actually was feeling decent about Perez' 3 innings against the Nats on Sunday after it was over, especially since it was only his first official outing of the spring. The combination of common sense and four decades of being a baseball fan had lulled me into a false sense of belief that spring training was about working on things that will help you win games when they count.

I want to thank the local media for waking me up and showing me the error of my ways. Already in midseason form with predictions of gloom and metaphoric Armageddon, particularly the New York Post, I promise to spend the rest of spring training living and dying on every pitch, batted ball and play in the field.

If a rookie gets a couple of hits one day, I will demand a roster spot for the kid. Of course, if he goes 0-10 later in the spring I will with equal force insist that Minaya trade him before his value plummets to nothing. I'm confident that heavy consumption of alcohol will get me past any misgivings my rational mind may have about such irrational thinking.

Bill Madden, who is certainly old enough to know better, has taken a precious day away from his endless Yankees coverage to remind Mets fans like myself that we have no reason for optimism, and who am I to argue with such a venerable representative of the local fourth estate?

Fortunately, I feel if I can make harsh judgments about Perez based on so little, I can allow myself to indulge in some Hisanori-mania based on the Japanese southpaw's impressive 3 innings in relief of Ollie.

If we take Mr. Takahashi's stat line and project it out over 200 innings, we can expect him to allow only 67 hits while striking out an amazing 400 batters and walking none. Now I know what you're thinking, it's probably unreasonable to expect him to not allow an earned run all season, but I'm confident that very, very few of those 67 baserunners will ever reach home plate.

Obviously, the Mets have now found the number two starter they have been looking for -- Johan Santana. With him slotting in behind his fellow southpaw Takahashi, the Mets are now the unmistakable favorite to represent the National League in this season's fall classic.

This should also get Santana off the hook for allegedly answering "Johan" when posed the question who was the best pitcher in the NL east. Clearly he had answered "Hisanori" and the reporters misquoted him.

If any of you think me rash for basing the preceding four paragraphs on only 3 innings of pitching, I would have to point out that the guys at the Post felt they could make their pronouncements about Perez based on the same amount of data.

For now, I think the only way forward is for the Mets to cut their losses with Ollie and release him immediately. Meanwhile, let's make sure to schedule upcoming spring starts so that Takahashi will be in line to pitch opening day against the Fish and Johan is ready for his start two days later.

Of course, I reserve the right to absolutely and completely about face on all of this if Perez pitches well next time out and Mr. Takahashi returns to earth. After all, that's what spring training is all about -- not the players preparing for the season, but for the local media and some fans to make snap judgments on anything that fits the narrative they're trying to create.

I have something that I've been working on that I expect to get posted this weekend. While I probably won't be able to post daily during the month of March I do have reasonable hopes of being able to post 3-4 times a week. I promise not to disappear again. This week was just truly insane.

If anyone has any thoughts on the first week of spring training games leave a comment below.

It seemed to me that there was something strangely cynical when Mets management is insisting to fans that the team was going to go all out to win in 2010 and then failing to make at least a couple of relatively low cost moves to address starting pitching and bullpen concerns. Because of that, most of what I wrote in February had a more negative tone than my typical blogging over the years. I was even accused by one commenter of not being a "true Mets fan" and (for some reason) borrowing my thoughts from the negative stuff others were writing.

The plagiarizing thing was fairly ridiculous. I have many faults as a person, but one of them most decidedly isn't an inability to form my own opinions and then express them. I spend a lot of time thinking about the Mets, even during periods like last year when I didn't have much time to blog.

There was a lot the Mets did (and didn't do) this winter that would lead anyone following the club to come to certain logical conclusions, and I think many of us who blog or write or talk about this team came to many of the same conclusions, and had many of the same questions about what happened. Still, any opinions expressed by me on this blog are most decidedly my own.

I do think there is some tendency in segments of the Mets blogosphere and especially the local media to embrace a style and tone that is cynical and sarcastic and critical of everything. Maybe that's why over the years my tendency is to lean towards the optimistic and find something good to write about. I know a lot of my regular readers appreciate that, and I appreciate that my writing contributes even a minute amount to your fandom of the Mets and baseball.

My primary purpose for anything I write, however, is not to set a certain tone but to share a truth as I see it. I've always considered one of the biggest insults to a reader's intelligence is to tell you what I think you want to hear, either positively or negatively, or write something that I didn't absolutely believe to be true just to elicit a reaction and artificially build my readership.

If you find something useful from what I do here you will continue to come back and read my words. In turn, having a decent sized audience does provide a little more incentive to do what I do as well as I can, which satisfies me. I do appreciate you giving me some of your valuable time to read what I have to say. The reason I'm back at all is because of you guys.

On the other hand, if you're that (unfortunately) not uncommon reader who gets mad and likes to toss accusations around when someone isn't telling you what you want to hear, why don't you just move on? There are many different voices in the Mets blogosphere.

Anyway, now that we have taken what I believe to have been a fair look at what went down this winter, we stand at the start of spring training games and just over a month away from real games. As a fan, my natural instinct is to look to the positive now and to root for my team.

I'm not going to pretend that the Mets are favorites to win the series, and I'm not going to credit ownership or manager Jerry Manuel with genius every time they don't do something stupid. But I'm also not going to spend a spring and summer alternately whining about and making snarky remarks over everything that happens. I think it's possible to be honest without being overbearingly down on everything.

When I was a kid in the early 70s I rooted for some Mets teams that were inept offensively. They had no power, couldn't get on base and couldn't score any runs. Other than that, they were great.

Yet somehow, thanks to the optimism of youth, I could convince myself that guys like Dave Schneck, Teddy Martinez, Benny Ayala and Bruce Boisclair were on the verge of breaking out as superstars. I believed in a team where Ken Boswell managed to earn almost 250 plate appearances in 1974 with a batting line of .216/.277/.279. You could cheat and add all three numbers together and barely come up with an acceptable OPS.

The kind of optimism it took to believe in such miracles is long gone, so I'm thankful that I root for a Mets team that, despite all of its flaws, requires much less self-delusion on my part to picture a happy outcome to the season.

This is the time of year that I am happy to put aside much of my skepticism. In a baseball season, March and April are always about hope, at least to me. Even in years where the team isn't very good you hope that they will play hard, acquit themselves well and maybe even win a few more games than expected. You hope a young player comes along that you can root for, and your team takes a step closer to being a real competitor.

For all of the flaws of this 2010 edition of the Mets, they are a team with a real chance to compete for something. David Wright and Jose Reyes are two of the finest position players the Mets have ever developed and Johan Santana is as good as any pitcher not named Seaver the Mets have had. If they can stay healthy and be as productive as they were in 2008, who knows?

John Maine and Oliver Perez are question marks, but they both have managed to put together seasons in a Mets uniform that are what I would hope for this year. Let them both win 15 games and stay fairly consistent as they did in 2007 and this team has a chance.

For all the questions about the bullpen, there were at least as many going into the 2006 season, and that bullpen held up fine.

If I was to put forward my own definition of a "true Mets fan", it wouldn't be someone who blindly believes because he or she is somehow "supposed to", but rather someone who chooses to believe because that's part of the fun of being a baseball fan.

Yesterday was the first day in over a week where I live that the temperature got over 40 and the sun shone for most of the day. Jose Reyes hit a triple in his first AB in the intersquad game. This afternoon there is a game on tv. That feels like spring, and spring feels like hope. My head may not be totally buying into this, but I'm looking for 90 wins and the playoffs.

Play ball.

By the way, if you're looking for tickets for a game that sells out early (like vs. the Yankees or those "other" NL east teams), remember my friends at Ticket Solutions have single-game Mets Tickets available for virtually any game.

I've been using Movable Type's built-in anti-spam plugins for quite a while, and they do a good job weeding out most of the hundreds of attempted spam comments every day. Still, I'm spending too much time manually removing the ones that get through each day. That obviously cuts into my blogging time, and that's unacceptable.

As of today any comment with a link in it will be held for moderation, which means that it won't show up live on the site until I approve it. This will include web links in either the URL field or directly in the Comment itself.

Sorry for the need to do this. I'm on the site a few times most days, so I promise to approve all comments ASAP. If I can figure out another way to do this I will, but for now please bear with me.

This will not affect comments that contain no links.

Back in high school there were always a few people who liked to instigate fights. They would go up to a guy and ask, "Did you hear what Jimmy is saying about you?" He'd say something back, which of course would get back to the other guy, and eventually this would escalate into a fight on the back field after school.

The thing that strikes me most about those fights looking back on them was they rarely were over anything of substance. Also, as I recall, the guys who most often instigated the fights never seemed to get into fights of their own.

As I read about the somewhat manufactured controversy over who exactly is the best pitcher in the NL east, I can't help but thinking how very "high school" this is getting. When reporters asked Johan Santana the loaded question of who was the best, and he picked himself, these guys couldn't wait to get over to Phillies camp and try to make the story have some legs.

But Roy Halladay is a few years out of high school now, and had no interest in participating in this "story".

At that point you might hope that the silliness would be allowed to die, but somehow you know better. The local dailies were counting the seconds until Jimmy Rollins, who enjoys the sound of his own voice more than anyone, reported to camp.

Even Rollins seems kind of bored with the same old, same old, though. His response was pretty mild, and you might hope that the high school stuff could die quickly this year. It really is getting old.

There seems to me so much of interest this year. People are fighting for jobs, guys trying to prove they're healthy, other guys trying to prove they belong here.

Some springs are boring with almost no jobs up for grabs, no farmhands generating excitement and managers and GMs that are fairly secure. Whatever else you can say about the 2010 Mets, you can't say that.

With so much that is real to talk about, I can only hope that the contrived high school controversies between the Mets and Phillies go away. Let's talk about some real stuff. Please.

I'm going to preface what I say next by noting that I am not a "quick trigger" guy when it comes to managers and coaches. Too many get fired simply for the sake of making a change, and usually any improvement in the team's performance that comes as a result of these firings inevitably proves to be short-lived.

Count me among those that believe that managers don't make a huge difference in baseball. The vast majority of the games are won by players on the field, with in-game strategy counting for a tiny percentage of all decisions. I'll take a very good team with a mediocre manager any time over a mediocre team with a top manager.

That being said, managers tend to outlive their usefulness at a rate inversely proportional to whatever skills they bring to the table. That's why Davey Johnson was here for so many more years than Jeff Torborg or Art Howe.

I'll give Jerry Manuel credit for lightening the mood of this team when he took over for Willie Randolph, but there was always a question of how much of that was due to Manuel's talent as a manager and how much was simply the pressure released when Mets management finally made a decision on Randolph.

When Manuel took over in June of 2008, the Mets did start playing a lot better not very long afterwards. While the club's ultimate failure to make the playoffs was mainly due to a bullpen that suffered from a little too much wishful thinking and the loss of its closer for the last two months, I felt Manuel's inartful management of that 'pen contributed to its ultimate failure.

There was no doubt that Manuel was playing a bad hand with that bullpen down the stretch, but his "playing the hot hand" and quick trigger led to an exhausted bullpen that compounded its own inadequacies.

Manuel had a much better bullpen to at least start 2009, but some of the same tendencies were there. For instance, when Bobby Parnell got off to a strong start he was out there almost every day, and I believe that contributed to Parnell's later struggles.

While it is a fair argument to give Jerry some slack for all of the injuries the Mets suffered, the Mets didn't exactly exude the aura of a team that came to play every night once the bottom started falling out. In that respect, I can't give him a complete pass based on injuries.

So, essentially in a season and a half at the helm, Manuel has demonstrated to me below average skills in managing a bullpen, a tendency to overuse some players while practically forgetting others, and no particular ability to get the most out of the players he has.

He's made some strange statements to the press about some of his current and former players. If these statements were for motivational purposes they've failed and, in the case of former Met Ryan Church, have come across as weirdly spiteful and purposeless.

Other than the fact that he can be very funny and personable most of the time with the media, I can't really think of one skill that Manuel has demonstrated that have earned him one last shot as a manager this season. What I fear is that, as with Willie Randolph before him, Manuel will be fired at some point this season and we'll all be wondering why so much time and energy was wasted before the inevitable became reality. Jerry comes across as a nice guy, but so did Art Howe.

The Mets would have been better off with a clean slate and a new manager who wasn't forced to try to win this season with a team that doesn't really look like it's built to win this year.

Even if things go really well -- say Pelfrey, Maine and Perez pitch well, the bullpen performs and the Mets get enough offense to truly contend -- how much more I'd hope for a stronger and more capable hand on the tiller.

I suspect the real reason Manuel was brought back was to provide Minaya and the Wilpons with some cover. If things get ugly they could buy themselves some time by firing Jerry, then if they don't turn around the Wilpons will still have Minaya's head to offer to the angry mob.

For all appearances, the Mets operated this past winter without a real plan. Despite claiming that they were putting together a team that would contend for the division title in 2010, management did little to address their starting pitching concerns. Indeed, other than Jason Bay there was not a single addition to the roster this winter that is likely to have a major impact on the Mets' fortunes.

As I have stated in part 1 of this piece, I was not a believer that the Mets could add a couple of pieces and be assured of contending for the title. Even if they had traded for Roy Halladay or signed John Lackey, I thought their bullpen questions and other weaknesses made them anything but a slam dunk to compete against a Phillies team that was more intelligently put together -- and this was before we got the "good news" on Beltran.

Had the Mets had identified 2010 as a regrouping/rebuilding year, I would have been fine with it. As far as being truly legit contenders this season, however, I can only feel that upper management and ownership is deluding themselves.

If the plan was to compete in 2010, come hell or high water, here's where I believe the Mets missed the boat:

Failure to sign a dependable starter
John Lackey was the best available one out there, but I would have had reservations about the Mets giving a 5-year contract to a 31 year old who has failed to notch 200 IP in his previous two seasons. But there were a lot of guys under Lackey who wound up signing fairly reasonable contracts.

The Mets could have taken some pressure off Pelfrey, Perez and Maine by signing someone dependable to slot behind Santana in the rotation. They would have also had some real depth for a change with Jon Niese and Fernando Nieve ready to fill in. Now it's likely one will be the fifth starter.

Failure to sign a right handed hitting 1B with some pop
I like Fernando Tatis as a PH on the bench who you give just enough starts to keep him sharp. I don't like his offense for anything other than an occasional spot start as a corner infielder. The Mets missed a chance to pair Daniel Murphy with someone who could give them a power boost. In 104 AB vs. lefties in the majors Murph has put up a .240/.289/.442 batting line, so he needs some help.

Some people really like Mike Jacobs to step in an win the 1B job. I don't really see it, but if it did happen it's even more imperative to have a RH first baseman to share the load as Jacobs has a .221/.269/.374 batting line in 420 career AB vs. southpaws.

Failure to replace J.J. Putz
According to Baseball Reference, the 2008 Mets bullpen blew 29 of 72 save opportunities and lost 28 games. They finished 3 games behind the Phillies in the division and a game behind the Brewers for the wild card.

That bullpen had some major problems. Billy Wagner went down for the season early in August, and blew 7 saves even when he was pitching. Neither Aaron Heilman or Duaner Sanchez could solidify the eighth inning early on, and both failed as emergency closers when Wagner went down.

The failure of the 2008 Mets bullpen cost them a division title and playoff appearance. The primary reason for that failure was having relievers in roles for which they weren't suited.

Acquiring J.J. Putz was supposed to solidify the bullpen for 2009. We know how that worked out, but the underlying thinking was correct. It's impossible to mix and match your way through 3 or 4 innings every night and expect your bullpen to hold up over a 162 game season.

Yet the Mets were willing to go into 2010 with the top candidates for the eighth inning as Kelvim Escobar (who has missed most of the last two seasons with shoulder injuries), Bobby Parnell (yet to develop a reliable second pitch) and Jenrry Mejia (20 years old with only 210 minor league IP and control issues).

Even if Frankie Rodriguez shakes off his struggles of the second half of last year, the question of who will get the ball to him in the ninth inning looms as a huge question, with the bullpen looking a lot like 2008 rather than 2006.

So there you have what I consider to be formidable obstacles that the Mets will have to overcome thanks to a winter where these issues were ignored or inadequately addressed. An awful lot is going to have to go right for the Mets to contend for anything.

To make it even tougher, you are going into the season with a manager who almost undoubtedly has to win to keep his job. Moreover, said manager seems over his head in this job, with a penchant for dubious decision making.

Here are just a couple of things that I fear for with Jerry Manuel trying to win (and save his ass) with a team that isn't really equipped to win:

• Gary Matthews gets off to a less-than-putrid start and Manuel decides to go with the "proven veteran".

  Any reputation that Matthews has as an offensively capable major league OF is built almost entirely on his 2006 season in Texas. In the 3 seasons since then, all with the Angels, Matthews combined batting line is .248/.325/.383. At 35 years old he's not the fielder he once was, either.

  I'd rather see Angel Pagan get the chance while Beltran is out. He's younger, has some upside and is a better player right now.
  
  

• Kelvim Escobar's shoulder blows up and Jenrry Mejia pitches well enough this spring to earn a bullpen spot.

  Mejia is a terrific young pitcher who has a legitimate chance to be a top of the rotation starter someday. Leave him alone in AA to work on his control and his secondary stuff. As a major league reliever he will have to rely almost completely on his fastball as Bobby Parnell had to last season.

  If you have a young minor leaguer who already has command and reasonable off-speed pitches he might benefit from getting his feet wet in the bullpen in the majors. The Dodgers have done this a lot over the years with their young pitchers. However, taking an unfinished arm like Mejia's and asking him to get out major league hitters with the game on the line is more likely to retard his development.

  Even if Mejia eventually profiles more like a late inning reliever than a starter, he'll only benefit from better control and dependable secondary pitches.

It's no secret that the Red Sox are the best run team in baseball right now. They've done this by building the strongest player development system in baseball that has allowed them to bring up quality players (Youkilis, Pedroia, Ellsbury, Lester, Buchholz, Papelbon) and make trades for missing pieces (Beckett, Lowell, Victor Martinez). This also allows them to be a little picky when going after free agents.

Moreover, they are smart at identifying players to fill their needs whether they come from within the organization, via trade or free agent signing. They're honest about where they are as a team and what they need to do to be better. They make some mistakes (Julio Lugo, Eric Gagne), but when most of your moves are smart you can overcome the ones that aren't.

The Phillies have built a strong team to a great extent by emulating what the Red Sox have done. They've used their farm system both to supply the big league club with talent and make important deals.

I like some of the moves the Mets have made since letting Tony Bernazard take his shirt and go home. Still, their lack of aggressive drafting and signing along with some questionable deals have them playing from behind when it comes to being able to use their system to fuel a championship run.

It seems to me that they are at somewhat of a crossroads once again with the 2006 campaign fading into memory. Rather than trying to delude themselves and their fans that they are a team with a real shot to win I'd love to see them do some of the smart things that build winners.

As previously stated, there are so many things that have to go right for them to get around the 90 win mark and really compete for the playoffs. It could happen, but it's going to take luck.

What the Mets really need to do going forward is to change their thinking and the way they run this franchise. They need to come up with a solid game plan and then stick with it long enough for the plan to succeed. The goal is to win championships, and it isn't wishful thinking that gets it done.

I understand there is a lot of pressure on this franchise to win back the fans after the 2007 collapse, the 2008 bullpen fiasco, and last year's 92-loss season. Unfortunately, Mets management seems to be living in some gray nether zone between really going for it in 2010 and taking the more deliberate, farsighted approach that I'd like to see. Regrettably for us all, halfway usually proves to be half-assed.

Read part 1 of this post

One big mistake I kept making last year when I tried to pick up blogging again was to try to catch up on all of the things I felt that I should have been doing while I was gone.

This time around I have put the blogging first, and I think it would be a good idea to keep it that way.

I have a really large amount of email backed up from all of the time I was dealing with my Mom's problems. It would take me weeks to even attempt to catch up on it, during which time I would, of course, fall behind on all of the current email.

I've attempted to go back and answer what I could, however, if you haven't heard from me please email me again. Barring any further life disasters coming down the pipe I promise to get back to you fairly quickly. And, of course, I apologize for the unintended rudeness of not answering your original emails.

I know I've had some people ask about link exchanges with their blogs over the last few months, but I can't find those emails. If you have asked me for a link and I have not obliged, please email me again.

I'm very liberal in my policy towards linking to sites. There isn't some "test" you have to pass where I have to deem you "worthy" for a link. All I ask is that your blog really is about the Mets (or general baseball for a link from my baseball links).

If you are a commercial site, however, you will need to purchase text link advertising for a link. This includes ticket brokers, betting sites and sites selling baseball memorabilia.

One thing I might still attempt to catch up on is some of the starting pitching stats which I abandoned early in May. I updated Johan Santana's stats for the full season last week and will try to get final stats done for Pelfrey, Maine and Perez, too. When I get one done I'll post info on it.

In the meantime, I've had a few emails asking me what I thought about the latest news with Jerry Manuel considering batting Reyes third in the lineup.

I could honestly see Reyes batting third, and can make a case for it. He won't hit 35 homers, but he has plenty of pop and always has driven in a fair number of runs.

Moreover, for all his speed and the energy that Reyes brings to the leadoff spot, I've always felt that Reyes was lacking something when it comes to the ability to really read pitchers compared to truly great baserunners like Rickey Henderson. Reyes gets by on great athletic ability, but some of the baserunning blunders he's famous for happen when he seems to be guessing rather than having a definitive read.

Reyes will probably improve somewhat as he gets older, but he'll also lose a few steps along the way. So yeah, it doesn't shock me at all to contemplate Jose not batting leadoff.

I can also understand the pressure on Manuel with Beltran out for at least a month. He's lost a middle of the order bat, leaving him only with David Wright and Jason Bay as legit mid-order guys.

This is going to force Manuel to slot in guys like Daniel Murphy, Angel Pagan and Jeff Francoeur into key lineup slots where they really don't belong. Reyes batting third would be a better fit than any of those guys batting 3, 4 or 5.

On the other hand, the best candidates for leadoff besides Reyes are Pagan and Luis Castillo. Pagan won't even have a spot when Beltran starts playing regularly again and with Castillo there are constant health issues.

Moving Reyes to beef up the middle of the order would likely have the undesirable effect of weakening the top of the order. There just isn't a better choice for leadoff over the long haul of this upcoming campaign than Jose.

Another factor in favor of leaving him in leadoff is comfort level in a year where he is coming back from an injury. I want him as comfortable as possible because the Mets desperately need him to play well. I can't see where moving him around in the order helps that.

If the Mets groom or acquire a player who is a legitimate leadoff man, then this move would make a lot more sense. In the meantime, though, right now there is no better candidate for leadoff than Reyes, or anyone even close. I just don't think it makes sense to move him this season. I'm not dead set against it, but I don't think the right pieces are in place for this to work in 2010.

There were some pundits and fans who thought the Mets could obtain a pitcher and a power bat and be solid contenders for 2010. Others, such as ESPN.com's Jayson Stark, felt like the Mets had to tear it all down and start over.

Personally, I thought a realistic approach for the Mets to take going into this winter would be a 2-year plan to regain contending status. They could have used 2010 as a year get some answers to those questions and while allowing some of their young players another year to mature. I do think there were a significant amount of questions which I will summarize below.

Question Marks for 2010

Starting Pitching
The rotation from one to five is nothing but questions: Can Santana bounce back? Can Mike Pelfrey finally put it all together? Is John Maine the promising mid-rotation starter we saw in 2007 or are chronic shoulder issues going to derail him? Can you count on Oliver Perez? Who is the fifth starter?

Bullpen
Which K-Rod will we see in 2010 -- the dominating pitcher of the first half or the post-All Star break arsonist? Who will set him up?

Position Players
Can Daniel Murphy hit enough to justify a position traditionally reserved for power hitters? Can Luis Castillo milk another year from those gimpy knees? Can Jose bounce back and rediscover the durability he displayed from 2005-2008? Can David Wright rediscover his power stroke? How many games will Carlos Beltran be able to play? Who's the starting catcher?

Do I believe that the Mets can contend in 2010 if things fall together just right? Sure. But there sure are a lot of things that need to work out, and this team hasn't exactly been long on good luck of late.

If the Mets management viewed the upcoming season as I do then their lack of big moves beyond the Jason Bay signing would make some sense, but that's really not what they communicated to the fans. They pledged to aggressively pursue all options, which made it inexplicable to the fan base when purported targets signed relatively modest contracts with other teams.

Whatever the truth might be, the whole of the Mets off-season moves and non-moves gave off the vibe that there was no underlying master plan at all. The team looked indecisive and rudderless, earning it yet another in a series of public relations nightmares. They claim that they will contend in 2010 with what they have, but there aren't many believers among the fans or in the media.

For instance, Baseball Prospectus came out with their NL East PECOTA projections yesterday and have the Mets finishing fourth with a 79-83 record. While I think that might be a bit harsh, it's certainly possible if things don't go right. Conversely, I would be somewhat hard-put to make a reasonable case for 90 wins at this point. It could happen, but a lot would have to go right.

Let's take a quick look at what the Mets did and didn't do this winter:

Major Departures:
Carlos Delgado, Gary Sheffield, Tim Redding, J.J. Putz, Brian Stokes, Cory Sullivan, Jeremy Reed, Brian Schneider.

Major Additions:
Jason Bay, Kelvim Escobar, Ryota Igarashi, Gary Matthews, Henry Blanco, Chris Coste, Josh Fogg, Hisanori Takahashi, Shawn Riggans, Mike Jacobs.

The Mets did the right thing by letting Delgado go, but he leaves a big hole in the middle of the order. Bay will be a solid addition if his shoulder and knee holds up. Still, Delgado's departure changes the dynamic of the Mets batting order.

The lineup, somewhat lefty dominated over the past few years, now finds most of the power coming from the right side with Bay, Wright and Jeff Francoeur. Switch hitting Carlos Beltran will likely provide the only real left-handed power in the lineup, and he's not due back until May. Perhaps that contributed to the thinking behind bringing in Mike Jacobs to compete for a spot on the bench. Switch hitter Angel Pagan and Daniel Murphy can help some if they produce, but neither seems likely to put up big power numbers.

Catcher Brian Schneider didn't do much in two years here, but it's really unclear who's taking his place right now. Henry Blanco will likely be the backup, while Chris Coste seems destined to tutor Josh Thole in Buffalo. Then again, Thole is in the mix for a big league job, and Riggans is supposed to be in the mix, too. The Mets talked a lot about stabilizing the catching situation, but really didn't. In fact, I'm hard put to remember a Mets team that had a chance to contend from years past that had as much uncertainty about who would do the bulk of the catching going into the season.

Another of the big stories of the addition and subtraction from the winter is the bullpen. With Putz gone the eighth inning setup job is wide open. Kelvim Escobar was an early favorite for the spot, but he's already nursing a sore shoulder, and there are even rumors that he is more seriously hurt. Whatever is the case, you're talking about a guy who is 34 and has missed most of the last two seasons with shoulder injuries.

Beyond Escobar there are holdovers Sean Green and Bobby Parnell. After dropping down his delivery Green seems better suited as a situational righty, while the hard-throwing Parnell was really up and down, and could use a dependable off-speed pitch to complement the fastball.

If Escobar can stay healthy and seize the eighth inning job this bullpen slots in respectably behind him. Right now, however, things seem fairly tenuous -- and that's not even counting the concerns about Frankie Rodriguez. I find myself flashing back to September of 2008 when Jerry Manuel was emptying the bullpen every night trying to get the game to Billy Wagner. I think the likeliest scenario for this bullpen to really be solid would involve a couple of unexpected guys to really step up as Darren Oliver and Pedro Feliciano did in 2006.

Of course the biggest (and likely only high-impact) signing of the winter was Jason Bay. If I was the GM and following my 2-year plan I probably would have passed on Bay. Still, I have no real problems with the deal.

I know there's been a lot of talk about the injury concerns that Boston had about him, but I take those with a small grain of salt. Supposedly Johnny Damon was going to fall apart when he signed with the Yankees, yet he exceeded 600 ABs in all 4 seasons with the Yankees. Sure, the option to DH helped, but he was only the DH 4 times last year.

That doesn't mean I have no concerns about Bay holding up for four years (and a possible fifth), but Bay has made over 150 OF starts the last two years, and I don't believe he is likely to fall apart immediately -- jokes about the Mets medical staff notwithstanding.

I still think that while they might be hoping for the best, the Mets have to be looking at 2010 as somewhat of a transition season. By the end of the year they should have a clearer idea of whether Mike Pelfrey, John Maine and Oliver Perez are part of the long-term solution or not. Ditto with Daniel Murphy and possibly Fernando Martinez and Josh Thole.

There are some prospects who have a chance of making an impact on this team as early as next year, depending on what progress they make this year. Some of the young pitchers might see their first taste of the bigs as part of the bullpen solution in 2011.

If Wright and Reyes can bounce back from their difficulties they are still part of a young, solid core going forward. Beltran is signed through 2011. Bay will play most of this coming season at age 31, which isn't all that old even in this post-steroid reality.

In Part 2 of this article we share our thoughts on what we expect for this coming season and beyond.

Read part 2 of this post

Actually, most of the piece was on Damon, with the following on Bay towards the end:

Mr. Bay, at your press conference, you stated that the Mets were on your "short list" and that you were here because you "wanted to be here" and that you "wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be or if I wasn't happy. That couldn't be further from the truth. You don't get a lot of chances to pick where you're going to go and ultimately Omar (Minaya) and Jeff (Wilpon) made it known from Day 1 that they were very interested, and their pursuit and their want for me was a big factor."

Really Jason? Do you expect us Average Joes to believe that bullshit as well? The Mets were the only team willing to pay you and you know it. Cut the crap.

There were articles out there all winter questioning Bay's desire to play for the Mets, both before and after he signed. Peter Gammons famously put Queens below Beirut on the slugger's wish list. While I believe some of this stuff was overblown and even over the top, I have little doubt that there were other teams that Bay would rather have signed with.

This whole thing reminds me a little of Carlos Beltran's reported desire to sign with the Yankees rather than the Mets, even reportedly offering them a last minute discount. That topic seemed to get quite a few folks worked up and has probably contributed to the ongoing mistrust of a small segment of the fan base towards Beltran.

Look, I consider myself an Average Joe type of guy like the above-quoted author. I don't make a ton of money and live in a small 50-year-old house on the outskirts of Waterbury, CT -- a blue collar city that, like me, is somewhat past its prime. I am also something the author didn't appear to be, an actual fan of the team that Bay did sign with this winter.

Despite the fact that I am both an Average Joe and a Mets fan, I have to confess that I'm not going to lose any sleep wondering about how high the Mets were on Jason Bay's wish list. I know this is something that's going to keep popping up in the local papers all summer and beyond, but I honestly believe that the question of how much a player want to play for the team he signs with is one of the most overhyped issues in modern baseball.

It's easy to look at the salaries that top players like Jason Bay makes and allow myself to get real bitter over it, but I don't see the point. If I had his skills I would try to make top dollar during the brief window of opportunity a baseball career affords, too. As far as baseball contract negotiations go it seems to me that Bay didn't do anything out of line or unprofessional.

When we Average Joes make career decisions we weigh a lot of factors -- money, working conditions, location, etc. -- in deciding who were going to work for. We often don't the job we want the most, but wind up settling for something that falls farther down the wish list.

What's really important to our employers isn't how much we wanted to work there as much as how we produce when take the job. They expect us to be professionals and simply do our jobs.

I'll get into evaluating the past winter more this coming week, but basically I believe Bay was a decent signing on the part of the Mets. I don't believe the fact that the Mets weren't his first choice will really matter that much. I think he's a pro and will be a good addition to the lineup. If I worry about anything it is simply that he holds up physically during the contract.

I knew I wasn't going to be paying $260 a year for the five minutes a day I spent on Newsday.com. I sincerely miss Ken Davidoff's baseball stuff and David Lennon's terrific beat coverage, but nothing that has happened in the last two months has caused me to reconsider for a second. The cost was far above the value I placed on a few minutes a week reading those guys.

Still, I recognize that other folks would make their own decision on the perceived value of accessing Newsday's online content, and I thought that Newsday.com would attract a fair amount of subscribers, particularly from among folks in the paper's coverage area who didn't have Newsday delivered nor cable internet.

Sure enough, in only 3 months the Dolans have managed to entice 35 people to part with 5 bucks a week for access to the site.

That's right -- 35.

Out of a local New York metropolitan area population of over $18 million -- about 1/16 of the population of the entire country -- and millions more who live elsewhere but maintain ties to the area, Newsday has managed to attract a paid subscriber base smaller than my old High School home room (good old 327).

I know some people out there are convinced that any newspaper looking to charge for its content is simply being greedy, but I'm not. Advertising -- whether in print or on-line -- isn't paying the cost of gathering and reporting news, and I doubt that there will be much professionally reported content available for free ten years down the road. Where the New York Times is heading next, all the others will almost undoubtedly follow in due time.

I think the Times' proposed pay for content model is better thought out than Newsday's was. They're going to allow visitors a certain amount of free articles every month, then beyond that they will have to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. The Times hopes that allowing a certain amount of free visits will preclude a drop in traffic and a subsequent loss of ad revenue.

Traffic to Newsday.com has dropped considerably since they began charging a fee. According to the same New York Observer article quoted above, the number of unique visitors to the site dropped from 2.2 million in October to 1.5 million in December -- roughly a 33% drop. I doubt if the $5 a week from the 35 subscribers will offset the advertising loss.

So the Times' model seems to make more sense, although it remains to be seen how many articles per month they are willing to serve up for free and how much they will charge beyond that.

I enjoy spending a few minutes a day reading the Times' Mets content, but I don't think it's good enough for me to pay for, especially considering that your only choice once the free content is passed is a one-size-fits-all charge similar to Newsweek. The price tag they choose to put on a subscribing might make sense to someone who spends a lot of time on the site, but I doubt that it will make sense for someone like me.

Again, I fully understand the need for major news gathering entities to figure out how to pay the bills going forward. It's simplistic just to say that I'll only frequent newspaper web sites that don't charge for content, because it's likely that everyone is going to have to charge eventually. Still, in a world that offers ever more flexible choices in how we obtain information, I doubt very much a one-size-fits-all pricing model will be workable for anyone.

Baseball is still be a couple of months off. In the meantime, don't forget our friends at Ticket Solutions for Knicks tickets, Nets tickets, Rangers Tickets, Islanders Tickets and Devils Tickets too.

I promise we'll get to some talk about the Mets off-season soon, but for my first official baseball posting since my return I'd like to make a point that occurred to me after Mark McGwire's interview with Bob Costas last month. I promise to tie this back into the Mets at the end.

As expected going into the interview, McGwire admitted to using steroids during his career. Equally as predictable, most people feel that the former slugger somewhat understated his use during his mea culpa. McGwire did confess to using PEDs "on occasion throughout the '90s", including his record-breaking HR year of 1998.

However, he told Costas that he only used PEDs to recover from injuries and didn't feet that steroids contributed to his home run production.

McGwire's comments were met with much skepticism on the part of the media as being both self-serving and not completely credible. It's still thought that the former great's hope of making it into the Hall of Fame is a long shot, and at the very least it will take many years for voters to forget that awful performance in front of the senate that devastated McGwire's image.

I've read many pundits who took McGwire apart for trying to make his steroid use seem unselfish, in that he only wanted to return from injuries and earn his salary. I find it somewhat ironic, however, that another ballplayer was able to claim virtually the same motivation while meeting with much less skepticism from the baseball media.

After being outed in the Mitchell Report as a PED user, the still-active Andy Pettitte admitted to using Human Growth Hormone twice -- but not, of course, for selfish personal reasons:

"In 2002 I was injured. I had heard that human growth hormone could promote faster healing for my elbow," Pettitte said in the statement released to The Associated Press by agent Randy Hendricks.

"I felt an obligation to get back to my team as soon as possible. For this reason, and only this reason, for two days I tried human growth hormone. Though it was not against baseball rules, I was not comfortable with what I was doing, so I stopped.

"This is it -- two days out of my life; two days out of my entire career, when I was injured and on the disabled list," he said. "I wasn't looking for an edge. I was looking to heal."

Pettitte was not linked to steroids in the report, and said he never had never [sic] used them.

"I have the utmost respect for baseball and have always tried to live my life in a way that would be honorable," he said. "If I have let down people that care about me, I am sorry, but I hope that you will listen to me carefully and understand that two days of perhaps bad judgment should not ruin a lifetime of hard work and dedication.

"I have tried to do things the right way my entire life, and, again, ask that you put those two days in the proper context. People that know me will know that what I say is true," he said.

Now maybe I'm just the evil, skeptical sort, but I didn't feel at the time -- and still don't -- that there was any reason to swallow everything Pettite was saying. For one thing, he didn't confess to anything until he was "outed" in the Mitchell Report, and even when he confessed he put himself in the best possible light in his non-apology apology.

While McGwire gets skewered for his own hypocrisy, Pettitte mostly gets a pass these days. By all accounts he's a good guy who gets along well with the media, and that seems to have bought for him a whole boatload of credulity.

I think this is why I get such a headache when folks start screaming about punishing steroid users. It seems to me that the more likeable you are as a person, the more likely you are to be receiving the all-important benefit of the doubt.

To me, Andy Pettitte is every bit as much of a liar and a cheater as McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens or any of the other favorite scapegoats from that era. There's no justice in any true sense of the word when the relative likeability of the player seems to count for so much. When Andy Pettitte and McGwire are treated exactly the same by the press for their self-serving, dubious claims, that's when I'll start taking this nonsense seriously.

And now, finally, back to the Mets. The aforementioned benefit of the doubt is something this franchise desperately craves. Just about every move they make or don't make gets absolutely skewered by the press. The fans are unhappy and somewhat confused by a winter full of conflicting signals and free agents who seemed to be a good fit signing elsewhere for seemingly quite reasonable contracts.

On one hand, two disappointing seasons followed by one utter disaster have created a track record that doesn't lend itself to receiving the benefit of the doubt. Falling into the same dismal patterns of behavior as an organization that have contributed to so many losing seasons doesn't help.

But on the other hand, the constant negativity of the coverage of this team has become tiresome to me. To me it has all the nuance of those old-timey melodramas with evil villains twirling their handlebar moustaches.

Certainly mistakes have been made in the way this franchise has been run, but it isn't all darkness and misery. If we're to take a realistic look going forward at the state of this franchise, we'll need to avoid the hyperbole and the temptation to oversimplify everything to fit a certain story line.

If your past three seasons of watching this team have embittered you to the point where your only motivation for getting out of bed each morning is your burning of Luis Castillo and/or Omar Minaya and/or Jerry Manuel, this probably isn't going to be the blog that provides the emotional catharsis you so desperately crave. No hard feelings.

On the other hand, hopefully we can take a more measured and realistic look at things than the mainstream coverage has been providing going forward. Thanks for sticking around.

However, words that once seemed to come fairly easily to me during most of my years writing this blog have lately refused to dance off my keyboard onto the virtual page. To be honest with you, it got to the point where I felt my time as a blogger had run its course.

I am in the midst of a number of changes in my life. At 51 years old I am not quite as quick to adapt as I once was, and I'm sure that has played a part in this. I'm getting out of the business that's paid my bills for more than a decade and trying to figure out where I'm going there. My Mom's situation is still complicated and time-consuming and, at times, mentally exhausting.

Anyway, those are my problems, not yours, but as 2009 rolled over into 2010 and the words continued not to come I felt that I was at a crossroads not only as a Mets blogger but even as a Mets fan.

I can't recall a winter in recent memory where I felt less invested in what the Mets were doing, and it really had nothing to do with the moves that they were and were not making. I guess that given everything else that was going on in my life, baseball just seemed trivial in comparison.

This was quite a contrast from where I was heading into the season. In February and March I felt energized and on top of my game writing for this blog. I committed myself to trying to blog daily again, and for the most part was accomplishing that. I felt like I was doing my best stuff in a couple of years and was looking forward to the season.

My Mom's problems began before the season did, however, and consumed most of my time going into the early summer. By that point the Mets season had essentially fallen apart, too, and I found myself expending whatever energy I had to spare in a last ditch effort to resurrect my business. There never seemed to be much time or energy left over for blogging.

The season came to its inglorious end, leading into an off-season that featured little of consequence beyond the Jason Bay signing. As the holiday season and then January slipped by and I still wasn't posting, I thought it was time to realistically confront the possibility that I didn't have the drive to do this anymore.

If I wasn't going to keep the blog going, however, I still had three books that I had accepted review copies of and hadn't produced the reviews: Ron Darling's The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball, Pitching, and Life on the Mound, Greg Prince's Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, and Dana Brand's The Last Days of Shea: Delight and Despair in the Life of a Mets Fan.

When you're given a review copy of a book, the deal on your part is that you will give the book a fair read and an honest review. I certainly hadn't lived up to my part of the bargain. So I felt that I couldn't end my blogging career without doing the reviews.

Since it had been a while since I had read the books, particularly Darling's and Greg Prince's, I sat down and read them again in the order I had originally received them.

I've finished rereading both Darling's and Greg Prince's books and am just starting Dana's. They're all excellent books, and well worth the effort. I'd like to get all three reviews posted before the end of this month.

An unexpected consequence of my effort came partway through my encore read of Greg's book. I remembered why I love baseball and even the Mets so much. I remembered why obsessing over the ups and downs of this franchise somehow made sense despite its relative triviality compared to the real meat and potatoes problems that life throws at us.

We're going to give this thing one more shot -- returning to where we were a year ago when I committed to trying to post daily, starting today. As we wait for spring training to get underway we'll talk a little bit about things that happened this winter and where we think the club needs to go moving forward.

Let's talk some baseball. (And thanks, Greg and Dana.)