With only five days left until Christmas and 12 days until the start of 2010, the New York Mets still find themselves needing to address the same areas as they did on October 1st when the season ended for them.

The Mets did sign a backup catcher in Henry Blanco for a tidy sum of $750 K, and re-signed Alex Cora for more than twice that, but for a team that finished last in MLB in slugging percentage and homeruns, this will hardly make a dent… or a ding… or a smudge.

On the pitching side, the Mets imported Ryota Igarashi who they hope will fill a big role in the bullpen, but as is the case with all of these Japanese players, you don’t know what you have until the season is well underway and it’s mostly a crapshoot. Of course the Mets have yet to hit any pay dirt in this market and are still stinging from the Kaz Matsui blowup.

All told, the Mets shopping spree comes in under a thrifty $5 million dollars for 2010. Even Baltimore and Kansas City can boast that they’ve outspent the Mets for now.

The bottom line is that we still find ourselves short two starting pitchers, one starting catcher, one starting leftfielder, one lefthanded reliever, a righthanded bat off the bench who can play first bases, and if you want to get real technical, a second baseman.

That’s a pretty extensive shopping list considering the rest of the NL East teams are nearly done retooling for 2010.

Making matters worse is the fact that despite not having offers from any other teams, free agents Bengie Molina and Jason Bay both sit and wait for another team to give them a reason not to play for the Mets. Nobody will admit it, but I find it pretty embarrassing as well as indicative of how tinged the Mets have become.

Furthering the Mets futility this off season, is their reluctance to do anything unless the Bay and Molina situations sort themselves out. And even though the team needs at least three additional pitchers, nary an offer for the remaining bottom of the barrel starters that are still left in the market place.

Trading for help is practically a non-issue as the only teams finding any value or quality in Mets prospects, are the Mets themselves, and of course Mets fans who clutch these prospects to their chest in hopes of better days ahead. As for me, most prospects pan out at about a 40% success rate, and with the Mets it’s even less than half that, so move them for established talent whenever you can.

I don’t get this strategy of waiting for Molina and Bay before addressing the pitching concerns. Are we so incapable of working both sides of the fence at the same time?

Where is all this new help we hired for the front office?

Can’t they work the pitching market while Omar stays glued to the offensive side of things?

We’ve already seen John Lackey, Randy Wolf, Brad Penny and Rich Harden sign with other teams, and any of them would have been a significant upgrade over any starters not named Johan.

For a team that dished out more bases on balls than any other team in baseball sans the Nats, where is the urgency to rectify the situation?

For a team that had the worst power numbers in the game, where is the urgency to rectify that situation?

I don’t get it…

Pitchers and catchers report in one month and 22 days. Woo freaking hoo!