By almost any definition, the 2009 New York Mets were an abysmal failure.

But what would they have to do to be successful in 2010?

I’m not asking if they need to sign Matt Holliday or trade for Roy Halladay, though I suppose those moves could be part of the answer. Rather, I’m asking what kind of results do the Mets need to achieve on the field for you to consider them a success.

Do they need to make the playoffs? Win their division? Go to the World Series? Or is anything less than a ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes going to be a disappointment?

I know how the other New York team has viewed that question for at least the past 15 years or so – World Series or bust. And really, if you’re spending enough money on your team to pay both the Mets and the Twins, I suppose it has to be that way.

But the Yankees are a special case. Ask somebody who’s not really a baseball fan to name a baseball player. I bet they’ll name a Yankee – whether it’s Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra or Derek Jeter, it doeesn’t really matter. There have been some bumps along the way, but the Yankees have been building their brand forever. Nothing is going to stop them from being able to outspend everyone unless baseball decides to implement full revenue sharing to level the playing field.

The Red Sox, for all their success in marketing to “Red Sox Nation,” don’t spend like the Yankees. Their 2009 payroll was “just” $122.6 million — nearly $80 million less than the Yankees. (You would have to add the entire payrolls of the Florida Marlins and San Diego Padres to Boston’s to equal what the Steinbrenners spent this season.)

So why does everybody think that the Mets can somehow keep up with the Yankees just because they play in the same city?

Yet that’s exactly what people are asking them to do.

Not that just spending money is enough anyway — three of the five teams with the highest payrolls watched the playoffs on TV this year.

Did the Phillies fail because they got to the World Series and lost?

Did the Angels, Dodgers, Twins, Rockies, Red Sox and Cardinals fail because they lost to one of the other playoff teams?

In some sense, yes. There can only be one champion each year. But what happens if you’re a fan of one of the other 29 teams?

Is there value in your team’s accomplishments?

The 2004 Mets’ season, which I alluded to the other day, was nearly as bad as this season. We got Shane Spencer and Karim Garcia instead of Vladimir Guerrero. The Victor Zambrano for Scott Kazmir trade. Art Howe working the phase “we battled” into every post game press conference. It was not a season to remember, except maybe as a cautionary tale.

So when the Mets managed to play exciting baseball in 2005 and stay in the race until around the first week of September, I  thought of it as a successful season. I doubt that level of improvement will be enough in 2010 — at least not for very many people.

I admit that I don’t see how a Pittsburgh Pirates fan can be happy with a team that hasn’t managed to have a winning season since 1992 and seems to be in a perpetual rebuilding mode. But there has to be some sort of middle ground.

I like to think I’d be happy if the Mets just played good baseball next year and showed that they had a plan for the future, no matter what the final win-loss record indicated.

But there’s also part of me that would be disappointed if I don’t see Roy Halladay and Matt Holliday join Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Jose Reyes and Johan Santana to get their own keys to New York City next fall.

How do you define success for your baseball team?