Quick – who comes in for the Mets next season after Pedro Martinez is lifted for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the seventh inning in a one-run game? For that matter, who is the pinch-hitter?

The answers to these questions are more important than they seem. Right now, it looks like the Mets have been so busy chasing after Martinez and Carlos Beltran that they’ve forgotten to put together a full ball club.

This year won’t be as bad as the past two, when many of the Mets’ problems were caused by a lack of competent reserves the likes of which can be plucked from Triple-A or the waiver wire. Eric Valent and Victor Diaz will be able to step in credibly this year while Mike Cameron misses the first month of the year following wrist surgery and Cliff Floyd spends his inevitable month on the disabled list.

Signing former Blue Jays shortstop Chris Woodward to a minor-league deal was a shrewd hedge against continued injury problems for Jose Reyes. Using decent bench players like these in key roles rather than the likes of Todd Zeile and Gerald Williams is worth several wins over the course of a season, and it’s good to see the team valuing ballplayers rather than washed-up former stars.

Keeping serviceable players like Diaz and Woodward around, though, hardly takes any special brilliance, and only looks good in comparison to what was on hand during the last two disastrous years. It says a lot about how inept the club has been that it can now be lauded for things like gathering the rudiments of a vaguely acceptable bench, even if it lacks a clear power threat, a good baserunner or, with apologies to Jason Phillips, an acceptable backup for Mike Piazza.

While the reserves hardly call to mind last year’s Red Sox, it does look like the pieces are there to put something decent together. The same cannot be said of the bullpen. As of right now, either Mike DeJean or Felix Heredia will be on call for the scenario described above. DeJean hasn’t posted an ERA below 4.00 since 2002; Heredia is just a random, average reliever, one whose ERA was 6.28 last year.

The Mets do have half a dozen young guys around – Heath Bell, Royce Ring, Jose Parra, Tyler Yates, and their ilk – but none seem to have much chance to be more than a DeJean-type.

While a quality bullpen is a good thing in its own right, the lack of one raises questions about the strategy being used to build this team. What exactly is the point of signing an ace pitcher with Pedro’s limitations if he’s just going to hand the ball to Royce Ring?

This haphazard approach to constructing a team – bidding top dollar for the best talent on the market while neglecting less glamorous but still important role players- is the biggest indicator that the Omar Minaya administration may not be all that different from Jim Duquette’s. The Mets, if nothing else, should have learned from the last two years that the contributions of front-line talent can be made irrelevant by the lack of an adequate supporting cast.

The lesson is not being applied here. That Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran are vastly better than past free agent targets like Tom Glavine and Cliff Floyd doesn’t mean that the Mets’ approach has changed for the better; their strategy is still geared to chasing names and making headlines, not to building a coherent baseball team.

It’s not at all clear, for instance, why Beltran is more desirable than Carlos Delgado for the organization in its present circumstances. First base is the most obvious cavity for the team to fill. The team’s first basemen hit .234 BA/.326 OBA/.368 SLG last year, with beyond atrocious fielding. Even acquiring an average player for the position would improve the Mets by five wins; a star like Delgado would mean something near a 10-game swing in the standings.

Beltran doesn’t represent anywhere near so great an improvement. His acquisition would come with the hidden cost of displacing Mike Cameron, who is a much better player than he gets credit for.

Much of Cameron’s value is in his defense, which would make far less of an impact in right field, and while he’s a good hitter for center, he’s average for a right fielder. Instead of average production from right and good production from center, which is what they got last year, the Mets would be getting average production from right and very good production from center. Essentially, rather than replacing Richard Hidalgo and co., Beltran would be replacing Cameron- a difference, at absolute best, of maybe four wins.

Aside from that, there’s cost and commitment. Delgado’s demands are unknown, but he’s unlikely to get more than a three-year deal. Beltran wants at least seven years, at top dollar. The kicker is, he’s not a great player, just a very good one.

Despite playing most of his career in the AL’s best hitter’s park, he has a career average of .284 and reached the 30-homer and 75-walk marks for the first time last year. He’s a good, but not great, fielder. The best aspect of his game is his incredible base running. Because he’s young, this year might represent a new peak for him – he may be a 40-homer, 90-walk man from now on. Then again, he may not.

Is it worth gambling $112 million to find out the answer? No one will think so if he and Cameron both play at their established levels and the difference is fewer than two wins per season. For the same money, the Mets could pay for Delgado and a real bullpen, and pick up Sammy Sosa, with the Cubs footing much of the bill. That would make the team a real contender for this year, and preserve flexibility for 2006 and beyond.

It’s hard to criticize the Mets for wanting to spend on a young star in his prime, but it’s also hard to see how signing Beltran is a great baseball move for them. And there are no other grounds on which the deal can be justified. Wanting a Latin star or a marketable franchise talent are stupid reasons to pay for Beltran, especially when the Mets already have Martinez, the biggest Latin star in the game, and David Wright, the most valuable young player.

Signing Beltran – or anyone – as a way of positioning the team against the Yankees is even more inane. People don’t care about winter press conferences; they care about winning baseball. If there’s any way to compete with the Yankees right now, it’s by angling the Mets as young, brash, and hungry, a natural counterpoint to the old mercenaries in the Bronx – not by having Fred Wilpon play poorman’s Steinbrenner.

To see that, though, or to see that Beltran, good as he is, doesn’t really make $100 million worth of sense for the Mets, would take a bit of imagination and confidence. None of those traits have ever been in great supply in Flushing. It’s yet to be seen how the winter plays out, but right now it doesn’t look like the Mets have changed much at all.