By Lara Holmes

The Mets began with Jon Rauch who is 6-10 and 33, and from 2008 to 2010, he was a pretty decent reliever. Last season, he regressed a bit and suddenly became quite good at hitting home runs. His 1.90 HR/nine was his highest since 2002. The Mets will pay him $3.5 million for his services.

Then they proceeded to get rid of their maligned center fielder for another maligned fielder – and received another solid reliever in the process. Farewell to Angel Pagan. Hello to Andres Torres, and Ramon Ramirez. Ramirez is a little walk-prone, but he still managed a 2.54 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

After that they had to find a closer for the right price. You can argue the merits of giving Frank Francisco $12 million for two seasons of work. According to the fine researchers at FanGraphs, for example, he was worth $6.1 million total these past two seasons.

So it goes. For 2011, Sandy Alderson attempted to assemble on the cheap– but the on-field results were disastrous. This time, they spent more (an estimate of about $10 million), but still managed to avoid hamstringing the future payroll.

Only Francisco will be on the books for 2013. And he’s shown himself to be a quality reliever. From 2009 to 2011, for example, his strikeout-to-walk ratio was 3.33. During that same time period, Jonathan Papelbon posted a 3.85 mark. Papelbon is a better reliever, of course. And Francisco’s stuff appears to be declining somewhat. But he at least provides another viable option for manager Terry Collins in this rebuilt bullpen.

It remains to be seen if this bullpen will be a good call all around.