One Question for Christmas Eve (and Beyond)

It's been 13 days since the Mets extended their 4-year ~$65mm offer to Jason Bay, and the prize remains unsigned.

The tabloids are restless, and they're going for the throat.

Look around, they implore, the Yankees are making moves, ditto the Red Sox, Phillies, and the Mariners, and my GOD, the Nationals!

What is wrong with Omar Minaya and company, they demand to know. Every day the chorus of dissent grows louder.

That's the question offered by the press; here's the one I want to offer: what does signing Jason Bay do for the prospects of this team?

Does adding Bay make the Mets favorites for the division in 2010? I don't think anyone seriously believes that, not with the holes in our rotation.

Does it position us better for 2011? Possible, but not likely. What's likely is that Bay's 30-35 home runs becomes more like 25-30 at Citi Field, and that his defense is exposed in our spacious outfield.

I realize you can play the "glass half empty" game to discount any potential free agent, but for some players it's different.

It was different for Carlos Beltran, a young, five-tool talent from whom we doled out a 7-year, $119mm contract, or $17mm per season. Is Jason Bay the same caliber of player? With a standing offer of $16.25mm per season, that's what we're paying him to be.

We've offered to pay him to be something he's not. He's NOT a difference maker. He'd be a nice addition, a nice piece; but at $16.25, he's not a piece, he's a centerpiece. That's an important distinction when you can only afford so many "centerpiece" type contracts.

Maybe I'm wrong about the team's finances. Maybe they can sign Bay and have the financial flexibility next offseason to sign the players they'll need.

And maybe I'm wrong about Bay; maybe he is the missing link, the guy who's going to push us over the top (though I suspect if you ask Mets fans, few would believe he is that player).

But I'm tired of the press painting this as some sort of referendum on the state of the Mets.

An old definition of insanity is the inclination to continue doing the same things over and over again in spite of past failures.

Each offseason we do this exact same dance. We flirt with the top free agent on the market in what's portrayed as a do-or-die negotiation that will make or break the team's fortunes.

Every now and then it gets you to 2006; more often, though, it gets you to to 1992 or 2003 or 2007-2009. Some of those teams were disasters, others were near misses.

It's the near misses that interest me. To me, signing Bay is a one-way ticket to another near miss. We'd capitulate to the tabloids and the talk radio in December and suffer in September.

That's a trade we've made too many times.

It's time to change the way we do business, because the old way hasn't worked for much of the team's near 50 years of existence.

The only imperative is to field a team that can get you to the postseason. If adding Bay gives the Mets that team, they should sign him.

But if all adding Bay does is appease the crazies out there and land us in second place (at best), that's not good enough.

You'd think the fans would have figured that out by now. Let's just hope the front office has.

- A.F.O.M.G.