Following a full year and most of a second offseason on the job, I think I have detected a bias to Omar Minaya's player procurement. It's not about where you're from — it's about how far you've come, how much farther you're likely to go and how much you're due.

We've seen the man has no problem doling out megabucks to megastars or those players who are the closest available to that level. He expects them to perform at a high plane, so he doesn't mind the high prices they command and, as we've seen, he isn't shy about letting go of unproven youngsters (Mike Jacobs among them) in whom he's not fully invested.

It's the guys who have likely maxed out for whom he seems to have little use, particularly if he has to pay them for what they have done rather than what he believes they will actually do.

That may sound like GM 101, but think about how Minaya's predecessors let various bundles of, to use an unkind term, dead wood lie around and gather dust. A Lenny Harris here, a Joe McEwing there, that kind of player. They both did lovely things in 2000 but were rewarded beyond their usefulness in the coming year or years with contracts that were longer than necessary. Omar seems to understand that certain cogs are more replaceable than others and he isn't shy about replacing them.

It's not exactly Moneyball, but it's at least a second cousin.

The roster decisions that have been made in the Minaya regime reflect a fairly cool (you might say cold) approach in such matters, particularly if the players in question weren't acquired on his watch.

Mike Cameron? Several factors (recovery and position most prominently) at work, but the bottom line was he was overpriced at $7 million-plus owed for '06. Omar decided he could make right field work much cheaper and not all that much less efficiently between Xavier Nady, Victor Diaz and whoever else he might pick up along the way.

Kris Benson? Ditto on there being extenuating circumstances, but double-ditto on the price tag. Yes, Benson was one of Omar's first pieces of business in the fall of 2004, but think about the corner the Mets were in. They were still taking flak for Kazmir, sent away the same day Kris showed up. To be left with nothing but Victor Zambrano following what some think of as the July 30 Massacre wasn't going to cut it. Benson had the Mets over a barrel and got a moderately ridiculous $22.5 million three-year deal. One so-so year in, he wasn't showing scads of progress. Omar cut his losses, not to mention a spousal headache. Benson was by no means worthless (I certainly didn't think so when this trade was made), but I doubt he's the difference-maker for 2006.

Roberto Hernandez and Marlon Anderson? Two very pleasant surprises from spring training 2005. Also two journeymen who aren't getting any younger and could be judged to have peaked. Based on what they did last year, they were within their rights to seek multiple years and nice increases. Omar was within his rights to think if you can pull a middle relief lifesaver and a utility wiz out of your cap in '05, why not try it again in '06?

Miguel Cairo? He didn't rate a return, but when did that stop the Mets in the past? We would've heard about his versatility and his good character and he'd have been signed for two more years for more than a million per. Omar saw through that. Same for all those other not-offered-arbitration fringies who dare not speak their names.

Jae Seo? The money thing doesn't work here. Seo's been up and down between here and Norfolk since 2002, accumulating only one full MLB season in '03. The fact that Seo was as down as up in '05 is the tipoff that Omar didn't trust him from start to start. The GM certainly knew of him from his first stint in the Met front office and from his time with Montreal (I recall an abominable meltdown versus the Expos on Fireworks Night three years ago). Remember that Seo had a beautiful start in May and couldn't displace Kaz Ishii until August. There's an obvious disconnect between this general manager and this pitcher. The Mets have fallen head over heels for marginal players who have impressed for a spell only to take the fall themselves when those players were penciled in the following spring. Jason Phillips, anyone?

Mike Piazza? Perfect world, he finishes here and gets an authentic sendoff, not the juryrigged “yeah, he's leaving, but…” halfassery to which we were party last October 2. But this isn't the A.L. where a deteriorating Bernie Williams can bat four times a game and stand around in the outfield once a week while praying no one hits it to him. Mike Piazza's downslide was too apparent to pretend he's a force at or behind the plate and Mike Piazza's presence is too heavy to imagine he could just recede into the woodwork as a part-time catcher/pinch-hitter deluxe and that everybody concerned would be happy. If he really wanted to stay a Met, a way (a relatively inexpensive one) would've been found. I don't think he did. Let him go, as Omar did.

What's the net on all these deletions?

• A realpolitik worldview that says starters who were (in his estimation) never going to break through beyond their current state are worth the price of a fortified bullpen. Duaner Sanchez every other day is hence judged more valuable than Jae Seo every fifth.

• A bench that will reflect the disposability of bench players (save for Chris Woodward and Ramon Castro who earned their raises) and the idea that there are bargains (perhaps Bret Boone) to be had and even kids (perhaps Jeff Keppinger) to be played. Roberto Hernandez exits, Chad Bradford enters. It could work.

• A budget that digs out the change between the proverbial couch cushions to put toward big-ticket items like Delgado, Wagner and Lo Duca, buying quality in the quest to win now, his fairly obvious charge from the Wilpons.

• A healthy impatience that doesn't cross its fingers that a Cameron or Benson or Cairo will perform at his best instead of his more likely mediocre.

• An unsentimental manner of building a ballclub.

Not everything fits the model. Omar liked the cut of Julio Franco's jib enough to give him two years that will leave the ageful wonder one year shy of his 50th birthday. It was probably excessive, but let's allow the general manager one or two whims. Rules need exceptions.

Matsui's still here, but that's the market at work. Zambrano's still here, but there's talent there and it's worth another shot at tapping. Jorge Julio bears some definite scars, but those are what they pay Rick Peterson to remove.

Meanwhile, until further notice, Aaron Heilman remains. Lastings Milledge remains. Mike Pelfrey is in the fold. Jose Reyes wasn't packaged for Miguel Tejada. Sammy Sosa's nowhere in sight.

Putting aside the downright silly Hispanic Quotient stuff (yes, it's a bummer having a GM who might see in certain players what other GMs may be prone to overlook), what I think we have working on our behalf is a very confident baseball executive. He has put himself on the line and he doesn't mind operating out there.

Omar has seemed bent on quickly remaking the Mets to his own specifications in the best tradition of Leo Durocher when he took over the Giants and Whitey Herzog after gaining control of the Cardinals. Everybody wants to bring in his own guys, but Omar's been particularly diligent about purging every non-core Met — and a few who were core — brought in by Steve Phillips or Jim Duquette. Even with MLB turnover being what it is, Minaya's Mets have run through existing personnel like Reyes sprints from home to third.

Granted, the pre-Omar regime wasn't in the midst of a dynasty, but his actions indicate to me a GM who is sure of what it will take to compete and win. He doesn't seem to have much use for the vast swath of players who play at a level between useful part and star attraction. Benson, Cameron and Seo (taken as a whole) had revealed themselves to be, at best, pretty good, and Omar has no patience for pretty good players who make very good money. I sense he'd rather get by with those who project a notch below, like Nady, until he can do something more (the elusive Manny, et al) rather than hope that he'll get an abnormally good year from a Cameron, a guy who wasn't his signing.

Omar, I'm thinking, doesn't trust anybody's judgment other than Omar's. That's a good thing if you don't like management by committee and particularly if Omar has spectacular judgment.

We shall see.

On the off chance anybody out there is thinking about the Super Bowl, evidence that football isn't that big a deal is offered at Gotham Baseball.

To our affiliates along the New York Mets blogging network:

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It's dangerous to attempt to piece together a 25-man roster even at this late stage of the winter, but I'm going to give it a try.

The catcher will be a Metropolitan-American.

Around the infield we'll see four Metropolitan-Americans.

Each of the three outfield spots will be occupied by a Metropolitan-American.

The bench? All Metropolitan-Americans.

Five Metropolitan-Americans will fill out the rotation. The bullpen, from the long man to the closer, will have nothing but Metropolitan-Americans.

You can really root for a team that's made up of Metropolitan-Americans. Taken as a unit, it should be a pretty good group we can all get behind.

And the man who put it together? I think we'll eventually look at him as a credit to his race.

The pennant race.

One more curtain call for Mike Piazza! He signed with the Padres. Last week's rumors about him and the Skanks proved hollow. For that alone, he rates a standing ovation.

One now, two later. He's scheduled to compete against us in seven separate games, four in April in San Diego, three in August at Shea. I will go clap-happy in front of the television when the Mets are at Petco and have just now made plans to do it again from a seat in Queens.

Not that I'll be using the seat when he comes to bat. Never had much use for it before, why start now?

Mike could have done us some real good by going to the Blue Jays and exterminating certain A.L. East bacteria, but then we wouldn't get to see him in his old house. By August 8, I may not be terribly enthused at the prospect of watching him take one of his old batterymates deep, but right now I wouldn't forsake him that pleasure.

Mets 10 Padres 1 — yeah, that's doable.

As for the rest of the time, Mike Piazza will be up too late to be included in this edition. Something like half of his games will merit the ol' (n) in the next morning's papers. Damn you San Diego for your inconsiderate choice of time zone. Yes, the Internet is the Denny's of communications vehicles, open at all hours, but nobody Back Here really has much idea of what goes on Out There. As far as we know, Barry Bonds is six homers shy of 500 and two hat sizes short of gargantuan.

Distance notwithstanding, I'll do my best to keep tabs on our erstwhile catcher and heroic figure. I did the same for Fonzie when he crossed the continent. It took me a couple of years to not pay attention to Giants games for his performances. I don't know that Mike has a couple of years, but whatever he does, I hope he does it well and, if he can help it, not at our expense too much.

Spring is in the air!

Is it the weather? No, not really — New York's been experiencing the kind of weather one would normally expect to find in a videogame this winter, making such judgments utterly unreliable. (It was 49 degrees today, which pretty much ensures it'll be 29 tomorrow.)

Is it that the Super Bowl is a week from tonight? Well, kind of — everyone knows the Super Bowl exists primarily to reassure baseball fans that, yes, pitchers and catchers will soon report, and maybe they should reconsider clambering up the ladder with a noose. But while the Super Bowl marks the end of football, it isn't immediately followed by the beginning of baseball.

Is it the World Baseball Classic? Meh. I know when it actually arrives I'll be watching every minute, but in January and February that's true of winter-ball telecasts in which I can't understand the language, “The Bad News Bears Go to Japan” and most anything else that might include the sight of ball hitting bat, provided it isn't on YES or doesn't involve Fran Healy. I know I should get behind the WBC, but I can't help thinking I'd rather have those pitches it will demand from Pedro's arm in September, and the fact that there's an 0.00001% chance of David Wright getting Ray Fosse'ed makes me think it's perfectly obvious that no Met should play. (Yes, I am crazy, potentially unpatriotic and viewing this in a reprehensibly Steinbrenneresque manner. I'm also now frantically knocking wood for that Wright comment.)

No, I sense spring because of two happy discoveries. One came poring over the spring-training calendar; the other is right there on the regular one.

The Mets will play 30 spring-training games (not counting split-squad affairs and the possibility of shellacking, say, Hofstra for no apparent reason) and 18 of them will be on the air in one form or another — 11 on SNY and seven on the FAN. That sent me to my 2005 appointment book, ready to trumpet the fact that we're getting a much bigger slate of games than last year. Except we aren't: Last year there were 32 games, 16 of which were on some form of air. Five were on the radio and 11 were on one TV station or the other. So much for memory. (Obligatory caveat: The above paragraph combined Jason and math, meaning it's almost certainly wrong.)

Last year, though, we finished up in Florida with little to see: My old appointment book shows a televised game on March 27 and then nothing until April 1 — followed by nothing on April 2 and a final televised exhibition on April 3. (A day later Braden Looper would give us a teaser of his 2005 season with that appalling gag job in Cincy.) This year we should get to see the team come together in the final week: The Mets are off on March 20, and every game after that except the final exhibition (on April Fool's Day) is on — nine on SNY, two on the radio.

Bravo, SNY!

(Now all we need is for SNY to rethink this being so damned even-handed about covering all New York sports. At the very least, let's not sully the Land o' Mets with a bunch of Yankee doings. I don't care if Derek Jeter hits nine home runs, discovers cold fusion and forges nonproliferation agreements with Iran and North Korea — I don't want to know about it. If SNY must admit the presence of that other team, how about a Reverse Mrs. Payson approach: If there's a Yankee on my set, it means they lost, Steinbrenner sicced a German shepherd on poor Brian Cashman or somebody got nailed for steroids. But then I wanted to call it the NO network.)

Enough TV talk — 2006 has a wonderful harbinger of baseball season that'll be on everybody's calendar. Daylight savings time begins on Sunday, April 2 this year — and Opening Day is Monday, April 3. Which is so obviously the way the world ought to work that it leaves me with a basic question: Why haven't they done it this way every year? I mean, what's the point of extra daylight if it's not used for playing baseball?

It's not for the reason (make that word plural if you're feeling dirty-minded) you might think. But before we get to Anna, some other business.

My own overreaction will come if they trade Lastings Milledge for Barry Zito. I know prospects turn into suspects all the time, but I'd like to see us take a page from two much more successful organizations (I'm thinking of the Braves and the Yankees, and yes, I'm grinding my teeth to powder to type that) that always seem to have at least one prospect coming to the big-league level. We've got the money to play the closely related games of filling with free agents and trading away prospects for salary dumps, but without a certain contribution from the prospect pipeline things inevitably go wrong that way — pretty soon the machine is blasting out smoke and shedding parts and the margin for error has shrunk to zero and if things go the slightest bit awry, the whole contraption blows itself to Kingdom Come. (This, I hope, is the tale of the 2006 New York Yankees.) I'm not shedding tears for Mike Jacobs or Gaby Hernandez or Yusmeiro Petit, but given that people have questions about Brian Bannister, Philip Humber's rehabbing and Mike Pelfrey just got here, let's please not strip the entire system bare. Give us one Binghamtom Met or Norfolk Tide we're ready to see and the rest of the baseball establishment thinks is worthy of the hype. Give us a young, cheap core player to go with Wright and Reyes. Give us Lastings Milledge. (And then we'll all pray that “Lastings Milledge” turns out to mean what we hope it will.)

Assuming Lastings' tenure here is lasting, I've little quarrel with Benson for Julio and Maine. Jorge Julio's young, has great stuff and has been successful in the big leagues. My faith in Good Doctor Peterson has taken some dips since his arrival from Nirvana, but Julio seems like the kind of pitcher that really could be fixed — for one thing, he'll immediately look a whole lot better in a pitcher's park. As for the young and anonymous Mr. Maine, my cursory investigations show he's always struggled moving up a level and then righted himself. Besides, do the Orioles strike you as a smart organization?

Speaking of which, if the O's expect Kris Benson to be their #1 starter, they'd best beware. He's not close to that. He's…average. Kris Benson was like a bath that took 20 minutes to fill at the end of an exhausting day and was lukewarm the second you got into it — not so cold that you pulled the plug, but not warm enough to keep you from repeatedly dunking your knees until you realized you were enduring what you thought you'd be enjoying. He's injury-prone, seemed to hit the finish line early despite not having thrown very many innings, and he's 31, so I doubt his oft-heralded renaissance is coming. Will Leo Mazzone fix him? Maybe — but with a flyball, low-K pitcher moving to Camden Yards, he'll have more to fix.

Having bid Kris a not terribly fond farewell, I really will miss Anna. Part of it is that I was raised on tales of plucky Met wives: It started with reading about Nancy Seaver in her tam o'shanter, and the tale of the Miracle Mets looking up in Game 2 at Memorial Stadium to see four pretty women carrying a LET'S GO METS banner and being pelted with peanut shells. They were Mrs. Seaver, Ruth Ryan, Lynn Dyer and Melanie Pfeil. Heck, George Weiss wound up as our first GM because his wife booted him out of retirement, declaring that “I married George for better or worse, but not for lunch.”

Sure, Anna's Web site's kinda scary (Guns! Dogs! Michael Moore!), her comments on Delgado were unhelpful, and the feud with Adam Rubin was ridiculous, but she had more interesting things to say in one interview than your average clubhouse full of Mets did in a year. A year ago Anna did an interview with ESPN's Jason McIntyre in which she dismissed New Year's resolutions (“I don't believe in that crap”) and, after good-naturedly revisiting her famous Howard Stern comment about sleeping with the whole team if Kris cheated on her, put the endless sex talk in amusing, world-weary perspective when McIntyre asked if she got tired of the sex questions: “Everybody knows sex sells. And I'm mostly interviewed by men, and that's what they want to know about.” (Points to McIntyre for letting his article end with himself getting zinged.)

But what really won me over was her matter-of-fact discussion of being a teenage mother and a stripper: “I had my first child at 17, and it was a mistake, but I got a beautiful child out of it. Things are different down south. A lot of girls get pregnant and married young, and I did that. And if I had to go out and dance, I would do it tomorrow if I had to. I'll do whatever I have to do to feed my kids. I don't give a (expletive). I don't care what anyone else thinks. I didn't want to do it, but I'm a tough broad because of it. Not a lot of people mess with me. I'm rough and tumble.”

Indeed. Anna's a classic American type — the grab-your-own-bootstraps climber who makes her own luck by being shrewd and opportunistic and well aware of where the klieg lights are, but whose real rocket to the top is her own indomitable will. What made me like her was that in riding that rocket, it never occurred to Anna to waste a lot of time and effort trying to reinvent herself — there's an unbroken line between who she was then, who she is now and who'll she'll be when she's finished, if she ever is. She's not the slightest bit embarrassed by her humbler-than-humble early days — in fact, God help you if she ever catches a hint that you're embarrassed by them or by her. Because if she does, she'll show you what embarrassed really is. (Welcome to the 2005 Mets Christmas Party, Mr. Minaya!)

I can't say that I'll miss her husband, but I will miss Miss Rough and Tumble. She was genuine to a fault, but there are worse faults. And Baltimore just became a much more interesting place.

I turned on WFAN this afternoon and learned that the Mets had traded Kris Benson to the Orioles for Jorge Julio and John Maine.

Then I turned off WFAN and switched to WTF?

What the fudge is Omar doing now? Why are we trading a reasonably reliable mid-rotation starter for a reliever who reportedly gets worse every year and a kid who if he was all that would be of some use to the Orioles?

I've been a Minaya enabler this winter. I wasn't jumping the couch for Xavier Nady, but I figured that was a Cameron salary dump and I could live with it. I loved Delgado and Wagner and rather liked Lo Duca. I was fine with Franco. I even rationalized away the acquisition of Duaner Sanchez and Steve Schmoll for Jae Seo as necessary bullpen-bolstering.

But that last trade was predicated on starting pitching being a source of strength and abundance. It doesn't seem to be anymore.

Pedro (toe), Glavine (age), Trachsel (rust), Zambrano (Zambrano) and…Heilman?

Why not? He's all things to all people. In less than a year's time he's been a total washout, a last-ditch option, a surefire starter, an arm with no role, an underused middle reliever, a dominant closer, a prospective lights-out setup man, a chip deluxe to bring Manny Ramirez or Barry Zito or Danys Baez and, if we wait a couple of months, a fusion candidate for governor.

Aaron Heilman is Chauncey Gardiner. He's the man who, by his simple act of Being There, has become the empty vessel into which we project our hopes and dreams.

Aaron Heilman is also Aaron Heilman. He's 27 years old and has started 25 games in the big leagues. He threw a scintillating one-hitter last April. He threw a couple of other pretty to very good games in May as a starter. And then he was submerged into the bullpen where he eventually found his niche in the eighth and ninth. Now he is expected to revert to his one-hit form of last spring, ignoring his spotty (to be kind) history as a starter the two previous seasons.

Maybe he's been getting his innings on in the Winter Leagues, though I have to admit I don't put any stock into that stuff since getting excited over Rey Ordoñez nearly winning a batting title one December. It was as a starter that he was drafted No. 1 and it was as a starter that he lived most of his life. Maybe that Don Drysdale arm angle thing will give him the endurance he needs. I liked him as a reliever.

Jorge Julio? Isn't that the guy who gives up lots of hits to the Yankees? I've heard him compared to Armando Benitez. Not so much compared favorably, just compared. The other guy, Maine, I just heard about two or three hours ago.

I'm all for a fortified bullpen. If Julio can be the 1999 first-half Benitez and Sanchez, Bradford and Padilla (remember him?) have their acts together, then Wagner should receive some leads in pretty good condition. But how soon will the Tomato Patch Boys have to start tossing their salads? With a rotation that has gotten both older and less proven these last few weeks, should Omar think about trading Lastings Milledge for a fifth-inning specialist?

I don't mean to elevate Kris Benson to Kris Mathewson just because he's no longer here. I had middling hopes for him when we got him and he pretty much delivered. Benson's dead-arm period lasted about a month last summer. Just about the time his stepping up would've helped matters, he stepped back. He wasn't ever going to be, long-term, what he looked like in the final start of his rookie season, but I felt not totally unconfident with him on the mound.

Not the heartiest endorsement, but he was a No. 3 starter, younger than Pedro, Glavine and Trachsel, less Zambranoey than Zambrano. Without a No. 3 starter, as Casey liked to say, you've got a long wait between your second and fourth pitchers.

Anna's gone, too. No great losses there.

Maybe there's something more. The name Barry Zito continues to float. Surely Rick Peterson must be good for something besides luring Chad Bradford to town. Maybe Maine will find himself in New York. Maybe Pelfrey will be here sooner than expected or the rotation will turn into a Soler system. Maybe Jeff Weaver…ah, I don't wanna think about that. Maybe this is just indicative of the way baseball is run these days, scraping salary from the middle of your rotation and rotating relievers around until you feel relatively confident that enough of them will get the job done.

Also, maybe we should remember that this trade comes almost 22 years to the day Frank Cashen blundered Tom Seaver to the White Sox and that seemed like the end of the world. It was 1984, and it was only the beginning.