Somewhat Less Than Amazin’

Pedro Martinez returns to the Dodger Stadium mound today as what General Manager Omar Minaya calls the new face of the New York Mets.

By any profile, Martinez has paid multiple dividends on the Mets’ four-year, $53-million investment, but can the rest of his team’s reconstructed body still round into postseason shape?

That task became more ominous when outfielders Carlos Beltran and Mike Cameron suffered serious injuries in a violent collision Thursday in San Diego. Cameron had facial surgery Friday night and could be lost for the season. Beltran isn’t expected to play until later this week at the earliest.

“We have the potential to do anything,” Martinez had said two days before. “We just need to get it together, get hot. It’s all about breaks and execution.”

Despite $282 million in free-agent roster commitments, the Mets have had trouble getting it together and keeping it together, especially on the road.

Now it is mid-August, and they are alive in their division and wild-card races despite a 59-57 record and last place in the National League East, 7 1/2 games out. But two-thirds of their starting outfield is injured, and the load becomes even heavier for Martinez, who has set a rotation tone at an inning-eating 12-4, picking up where he left off in that miracle October with the Boston Red Sox.

He’s 33 and it has been nearly 12 years since the Dodgers questioned his stamina and strength, the durability of his shoulder, and traded him to the Montreal Expos for second baseman Delino DeShields.

Three Cy Young Awards later, Martinez is headed for a seventh season of 200 or more innings, is among the major league leaders in strikeouts and is second in opponents’ batting average at .197. He has also trod that trade ground so often that he no longer has the desire to sling any verbal dirt.

“It’s over with,” he said. “I’ve had a great career, and it’s basically a totally different group of people there now. I always look forward to pitching in Dodger Stadium, but it’s not personal like it once was.”

Of course, Martinez’s mere presence is enough to reopen the Dodgers’ long-lingering wound, and now the Mets are in Los Angeles with a double dose of trade embarrassment for the home team.

Once young teammates in blue, Martinez and Mike Piazza -- representing two of the sorriest deals in L.A. Dodger history -- have been reunited as a New York battery, although it may be temporary in that they are probably at opposite ends of Minaya’s blueprint.

Martinez is in the first year of his contract, and Piazza is in the last year of a seven-year, $91-million deal.

Cooperstown beckons for the best hitting catcher in baseball history, but his immediate future is less certain.

The departures of Al Leiter and John Franco, for instance, underscore the suspicion that Minaya is intent on continuing to turn a page while expanding the new face.

Soon to be 37, Piazza has hit 14 homers and driven in 55 runs, and the Mets are likely to invest elsewhere, leaving Piazza to decide whether he wants to play at all in 2006 or pursue a coveted return to his onetime beach roots as a reduced-rate designated hitter for the Angels.

“I’d like to go out on my terms, but I’m not really there yet,” Piazza said, putting off any decision. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but l appreciate how great the fans in New York have been to me. Their reaction recently, in fact, has been overwhelming.”

Maybe it’s their way of saying goodbye, aware of Piazza’s probable departure, or a reaction to his improved hitting as the Mets pursue a measure of elusive consistency.

“This is the streakiest team I’ve ever been part of, good and bad,” veteran pitcher Tom Glavine said in San Diego, even before the loss of Beltran and Cameron. “Every time we make a run and figure, ‘OK, now we’re on track,’ we take just as big a step backward.

“I feel we have the talent to win this, whether it’s the division or wild card, but too often we’ve fallen prey to beating ourselves, and the good teams don’t do that. It’s frustrating, but it’s also the nature of the game. We have a lot of guys who haven’t been in a pennant race.”

The Mets have a pair of 22-year-olds, Jose Reyes and David Wright, on the left side of the infield, two major but disappointing investments in Beltran and Kaz Matsui, the tough task now of replacing Beltran and Cameron, and -- among other issues -- an ongoing struggle adjusting to Manager Willie Randolph’s desire that they focus on execution at the plate rather than a big-swing, big-ball approach.

Thirteen games over .500 at home, they are 11 under on the road, where the lack of execution -- in the batter’s box and field -- has been consistently fatal.

The image is that of a paradox: In the top third in the National League in team pitching but near the bottom in defense; first in stolen bases but near the bottom in strikeouts and on-base percentage.

“Imagine if we cut our strikeouts even in half how many more bases we’d steal and how many more runs we’d score,” Randolph said.

The paradox envelops Martinez.

He’d be at or approaching 20 wins already if the bullpen hadn’t blown four games in which he left with a lead and if he didn’t have seven no-decisions despite pitching six or more innings in 22 of 23 starts.

“Seven,” Randolph said, emphasizing disbelief. “That’s crazy considering he also has 12 wins.”

Perhaps as crazy, in view of Martinez’s continued effectiveness and 244 innings last year, including seven scoreless against St. Louis in Game 3 of the World Series, was Boston’s lack of aggressiveness in contract negotiations and failure to offer a fourth year.

For Martinez, it represented disrespect, and there was Minaya, also a native of the Dominican Republic, showing him the opposite, romancing him over dinner in their homeland.

Martinez has been everything Minaya expected and more. Attendance at Shea Stadium is up 25%, and Martinez pulls in about 6,000 above the average when he pitches.

“There was an indifference about the Mets, and in a big market that’s terrible,” Minaya said in the dugout at Petco Park. “By getting him on board, it gives the Mets a new face in the sense that it sends a message that we care about winning. He gives us what I call a brand that people want to associate with.

“You can’t quantify his signing only in terms of wins and losses. His signing speaks to a plan in which we’re trying to be at the forefront of signing and development, not only through the draft but in the international market as well.”

Minaya cites the recent signing of 16-year-old Dominican outfielder Fernando Martinez for $1.3 million. “Several clubs offered more,” Minaya said, “but he told us that he signed with the Mets because of Pedro. All of his starts are televised nationally in the Dominican.”

Martinez brings vibrancy to the clubhouse -- a quiet presence at times and orange-suited goofiness at others. He no longer dials it up to a consistent 95 mph on the mound, but he can get there if need be, and his dominance now, said Glavine, is built more on “pitch selection and pitch location. We feed off each other’s success and a lot of that starts with Pedro. Any time you’re around a guy who has his talent and reputation, there’s things you can watch and things you can learn.”

An artist, said Randolph.

“One of the toughest competitors I’ve been around and much more of a real student of baseball than I realized,” Randolph said.

Along with Piazza, Martinez also has been reunited in an extended comfort zone with Guy Conti, the Met bullpen coach. Conti was an instructor in the Dodger system when Martinez broke in and was instrumental in teaching him the curveball and helping with his cultural adjustment.

Martinez, in fact, has long called Conti his “white daddy,” and in this he isn’t kidding in regard to who his daddy is.

And in L.A. today, the Dodgers can only regret again that they have no family ties.