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Regarding the team's decision to spend money, Jason Bay certainly didn't come cheap. The team brought back Jeff Francoeur for $5 million and John Maine for a little more than $3 million. All in all, the team has nearly $121 million in salary obligations for 2010. Those don't include several remaining roster spots, so it is impossible to say the team is constructed on the cheap.

But the two-part frustration Mets fans are justified in their anger comes from a sharp decline in salary spending relative to 2009 -- that team made $149 million -- despite a clear understanding across baseball that this Mets roster, even should everyone return to good health, had a number of glaring holes.

The bigger irritant has to be the contracts signed recently by Erik Bedard, Yorvit Torrealba and Adam Kennedy, however. Bedard is guaranteed $1.5 million, Torrealba $1.25 million and Kennedy $1.25 million. In other words, for $4 million, the Mets could have upgraded their rotation options and at second base and catcher.

Now, it is important to point out, the Mets may not have gotten these players for the same money they signed for. But let's unpack that a bit. Why should that be? Is it because the Mets have a poor reputation right now due to alack of success? Well, the only plausible way to combat that reputation is with, well, success.

In other words, spending a bit more to get these players would not only have helped with 2010 on the field, it likely would have aided the bottom line in 2011 and beyond, since the Mets wouldn't be saddled with the failure handicap in free agency.

The other half of that equation is evaluating just how much of a financial hardship blowing other offers for these three out of the water would have been. Let's say the Mets wanted to double every offer these three signed for. That's a combined $8 million in total. You're still talking about roughly what they'd have been willing to pay for a season of Joel Pineiro. That's also less than the combined contracts of Alex Cora, Gary Matthews Jr., and the offer they made to Bengie Molina.

It would still put the overall salary obligation for 2010 around $130 million, or around $20 million less than 2009. And none of the three would have been a contract that hampered 2011 or beyond. Bedard has a relatively expensive option that, should he succeed in 2010, the Mets would certainly pick up. Kennedy and Torrealba have similar options to their contracts that the Mets could evaluate next fall, along with the other possibilities.

And what would they have gotten for their $4-$8 million? In Bedard, the Mets would have added a pitcher who has upside that none of their non-Santana pitchers can boast -- a combined 3.24 ERA and 8.9 strikeouts per nine innings in 2008-2009. The estimates are that Bedard isn't likely to pitch until May. But it's a long, long time from May to September, and with Bedard in the fold, October would have been a far more likely possibility.

In Kennedy, the Mets would have had a second baseman whose offense was superior to Luis Castillo's in 2009, and also far less one-dimensional. His UZR numbers suffered a bit defensively-albeit in only 50 games-but unlike Castillo, his defensive stats have been far less uniform in their clear downward directional trend. Moreover, should Castillo be unable to attend to his duties at second base for any reason, Kennedy represents a far more plausible solution to the position than Alex Cora. Leaving aside defense, where Kennedy also appears to have an edge, the OPS+ numbers say it all: 101 for Kennedy in 2009, 69 for Cora. That's a vast difference. Yet, incredibly, Cora will make $750,000 more than Kennedy in 2010.

As for Torrealba, he's not an All-Star, don't get me wrong. But for $1.25 million in 2010, he'll be a .705 OPS hitter and decent defender (last season's below-average caught stealing numbers notwithstanding). And apparently, he wasn't so turned off to the Mets -- his agent reached out to the team, but it wasn't interested.

Compare those numbers -- .705 OPS career -- to the likely starter, Omir Santos. He posted a .671 OPS last season, and far more disturbingly, has a career .652 OPS in the minor leagues over the course of his career. Even if you simply take Torrealba's career .681 road OPS, the chances Santos is better than Torrealba in 2010 have to be considered extremely slim.

So it isn't necessary to be frustrated that the Mets don't spend like the Yankees to come to the conclusion that this offseason could have been far better spent. And to be clear, none of these three players are silver bullets, or even particularly special. Felipe Lopez is still out there, and likely a better option than Kennedy at second base. Rod Barajas is roughly worth what Torrealba was worth. And John Smoltz is a less-rewarding but more versatile pitcher still on the market.

But there are no indications that the Mets will get any of those three. And for strikingly little money, all three of the problems could have already been addressed -- just last week. The Mets don't need to find the most expensive solutions to their problems. They simply do need to actually solve them.