Humor me for a second, Mets fans. I understand that there has been little to smile about and less to feel good about the past few years when it comes to your baseball team.
I recognize how miserable that Phillies-Yankees World Series was to endure, sort of like only having two channels on your TV and having to choose between “Jersey Shore” and “Brothers.” And I have listened to you stew endlessly the past few days about all the moves teams are making and all the moves the Mets aren’t making.
Still, let me ask you this:
If I could transport you to the beginning of May, before all the injuries, before all the banana peels, when we barely had a whiff of what was to come, and I told you that you could select one pitcher from any team in baseball and all it would cost you is around $85 million, whom would you pick?
Surely, depending on your taste, you would have thrown a batch of names at me. Roy Halladay. Cliff Lee, Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia, Josh Beckett, Tim Lincecum. Maybe you’d go young on me, choose Josh Johnson or Zack Greinke, Adam Wainwright or Felix Hernandez. There are others.
How many of you would have chosen John Lackey?
Similarly, if I gave you the same option and said you could have any hitter in the game, same rules, you just have to pay him around $15 million a year for five years, whom would you pick? I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it’s wise to simply save the newsprint from the two paragraphs of names that would fall in front of Jason Bay. (That includes Matt Holliday, by the way, but you’d get a good dozen or so names before you ever got around to Holliday, too, I guarantee it.)
And that brings me around to this point: How many times do you need to have anvils fall on your head before you take a step out of the way? Which is to say, how many times do you have to sign Kevin Appier and Bobby Bonilla before you recognize the difference between attracting the cream of a good free-agent class (see Sabathia, CC, and Teixeira, Mark) and the prettiest homecoming queens of Homely High?
And that’s what the Mets would be doing here. Bay is a better player than Bonilla, and we have to assume he’s unlikely to show anyone The Bronx (or British Columbia). Lackey is two years younger than Appier was when the Mets signed him to a three-year, $30 million deal after the 2000 season, but essentially they are the same pitcher; before ’01, Appier was 128-96 with one All-Star appearance and one place in the Cy Young voting (third in 1993) while Lackey is 102-71 with one All-Star and one place in the Cy Young (third in ’07).
It is one thing for a team with resources, such as the Mets, to muscle up for Mike Piazza or Carlos Beltran or Frankie Rodriguez, seminal players whose coveted gifts demand top dollar; it is another to throw money at players who would be second-tier free agents in other winters. Especially if signing someone this year precludes you from diving into next year’s much deeper class — which could include Joe Mauer, Carl Crawford and Beckett, among others.
Several reports indicate the Mets are close to signing Bay, which might well keep angry fans at bay and provide the Mets with the illusion (if not the delusion) that they are indeed willing to flex and preen and dust off the wallet. But please do not mistake Bay for Vlad Guerrero circa 2003, a free agent the Mets should have pursued and didn’t.
If anything, he is Bonilla circa 1992, whom the Mets paid like a franchise player, thereby forcing them to bypass Barry Bonds — a real one — the next year. And signing Appier in 2000 may have kept them from pursuing the likes of John Smoltz and David Wells in 2002.
If the Mets truly believe Bay is worth $75 million and five years, by all means, they should sign him at once. If they’re doing it to satisfy the baying bloodhounds, then they ain’t heard nothing yet.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com