As awful as 2009 was for the Mets, at least it went out on a high note; the Mets signed Jason bay to a long term deal and appeared to be making some headway this offseason.

But as fate would have it, Beltran required untimely surgery, Molina turned down our higher offer and signed with the Giants, and Piniero chose LA over us all within the span of 9 days. As it turns out, with only a month remaining until Spring Training commences, the Mets are arguably worse off now than they were when the offseason began! Omar has to act and he has to act fast, because we cannot afford to let even more of the limited options slip off the table.

The baseball dieties have once again conspired to ruin the Mets chances. But never fear, Mets Nation; assuming the rest of the team can stay relatively healthy (at least as healthy as the Phillies do) the Mets can still win the NL East in 2010, or at least make the playoffs as a wildcard. Here’s how Omar can help that happen.

1. Sign Orlando Hudson. Forget Castillo, last year is about as good as I can imagine him being in 2010 and while he did hit .300 his slugging percentage was abominable. He has no pop, youth, or durability on a team that needs all three things. Furthermore, Orlando Hudson has publicly said that HE WANTS TO BE A MET for 2 consecutive offseasons. Grant his wish and give the mets an exciting, fast, powerful, slick-feilding 2B who will thrive in big-market NY and complete a rather impressive IF to the left of Reyes and Wright. Omar wants to do this, but he hasn’t been able to find a dumping spot for Castillo, so i say just keep him and use him off the bench in case of injury! If a player is so bad that you can’t even sell him at discount price because nobody wants him, it only proves that we need the upgrade all the more! And with the Molina deal falling through and Beltran injured, we need more reliable bats in our lineup than we did 2 weeks ago.

2. Sign one or more of the following: Ben Sheets, Chein-Ming-Wang, or Eric Bedard. I’m confident our rotation will be better this year than it was last, health providing, but we need it to be a lot better if we’re to make/succeed in the playoffs. Piniero is safer but more expensive and with less upside than the other 3, each of which have been Cy Young candidates at one point in their career. A return to anything near that output, at the small price each would charge, would be exactly what the mets need to compete with the impressive rotation the Phillies will have this year. Jon garland is ok as a back-of-the-rotation guy, but we need a #2 starter moreso than any other hole on this team, and only Sheets, Wang, or Bedard are good enough to fill that. Sheets through for lots of scouts, the Mets included, on Tuesday and was a dominant strikeout machine for a long stretch of time. He is asking for 10 million a year, which is a lot for someone so injury prone, but considering all the other options are either no good or just as injury prone it's a risk we have to take.

3. Sign Carlos Delgado to a low contract, but make it clear that he is competing with Murphy for the starting job. With Beltran’s injury we really do need more pop, especially from the left side, and Delgado clearly has that. When he was last healthy he was playing like an all-star, but that was over a year ago. I like Murphy’s chances to be a solid pro in the long term, but Delgado has more talent and mroe experience and could probably help us more short term. At a cheap price, it can’t hurt to have him along.

4. Sign a durable OF. It doesn’t need to be anyone excellent, but just a stopgap for the first 2 months so that when Angel Pagan inevitably gets hurt, we don’t need to call up F-mart again to patrol CF. Andruw Jones, anyone? he hit 20+ homers last year in a limited role, and who knows maybe he could have a Sheffeild-esque contribution in a cinch. Xavier Nady, Rick Ankeil, and Garrett Anderson, all come to mind.

Notice that all 5 of those suggestions begin with the word “sign.” I realize that signing all of those guys would take a lot of money, and I don’t imagine that all of them will happen (I listed them in order of importance). but the more that do, the better our team will be in 09. All of those proposed signings are relatively cheap, so look at it this way, Omar; no signing you can make can hurt our team anymore than not signing him would! There’s no downside, and we need all the help we can get to finally outduel the Baseball Gods (oh yeah, and the Phillies too!). So put that pen to work!