The pen is mightier than... very few others.

Today's Jayson Stark column includes a section of "Mets Grumblings". Though the subheading is a standard one for his "Rumblings and Grumblings" column, it's actually a good description of the commentary he presents. Well, not Stark exactly, but the smattering of insider observations that he has access to, provided he not refer to his sources by name. I've always found anonymous sourcing in baseball to be a little silly, but I digress.

One mystery Assistant GM identified the team's "biggest offseason need" as the bullpen, which of course has gone neglected in the pursuit of the well-covered SP/CF duo. I will readily agree that the pen is far from loaded. I had never been a Braden Looper fan, and was surprised when upon joining the Amazin's he posted a career best 3.75 K/BB ratio. He seems to have quit walking batters cold turkey, and I applaud him for it. What will Willie Randolph have to work with as far as setup men go?

• DeJean (R): 61 IP, 60 K, 33 BB, 2 HR, 4.57 ERA (BAL and NYM)
• Fortunato (R): 26 IP, 25 K, 15 BB, 3 HR, 3.81 ERA (TB and NYM)
• Bell (R): 24 1/3 IP, 27 K, 6 BB, 5 HR, 3.33 ERA
• Feliciano (L): 18 1/3 IP, 14 K, 12 BB, 2 HR, 5.40 ERA
• Heredia (L): 38 2/3 IP, 25 K, 20 BB, 5HR, 6.28 ERA

Heredia was brought in to face a lot of right-handed batters last year, which goes some ways to explaining his truly horrendous line. He's not a good reliever, by any means, but as a left-handed specialist he'll do. Feliciano bounced between Norfolk and the big club last year, but at 28 he should be primed for a career season!

Okay fine, Masked Executive, the bullpen is none too sweet, but it has enough live arms (all of them right handed) to protect its share of leads. What would you have Omar do? Crawl back into the 39 year-old arms of Mark Guthrie for a half million or so? Try to "win" the Troy Percival sweepstakes with a 2yr/$14MM contract offer? It's true that "somebody's got to pitch the seventh and the eighth", but some bodies is exactly what the Mets have, thank you very much. As nice as it is, you don't have to be Angels-deep in the bullpen to compete.