If the Mets and David Wright can finalize their long-term extension, giving the Mets their most positive news in quite a while, the team’s management should send a lovely bouquet of flowers to Evan Longoria.
Wright, meanwhile, should buy Johan Santana a nice meal in Manhattan to thank him for his role in what would be an eight-year arrangement worth about $140 million — right around where the Post’s Joel Sherman predicted last month it would wind up.
Last night, Wright reached out to the website MLB Trade Rumors and expressed disappointment with reports he described as “inaccurate” — he declined to be more specific when he responded to an email from The Post — and Wright’s agent Seth Levinson added, “We don’t anticipate a deal any time soon.”
Eh. While the amount of deferred money could be an issue, it sure appears there is sufficient positive momentum to reach the conclusion both sides profess to desire.
Longoria and Santana have become two of the primary markers in the efforts to make Wright a Met for life. Their existences, and their differing views on the importance of a player’s salary, have framed these negotiations.
Throw in some sage projection by Omar Minaya back in his prime of 2006, and you have the parameters of an agreement that, on the surface, seems to be as win-win as one of these monstrosities can be.
The Mets and Wright already were deep into talks when word broke Monday that Wright’s fellow third baseman Longoria, at 27 nearly three years younger than Wright, had signed a six-year, $100 million extension with the small-market Rays that would start in 2017 and go through 2022. That’s an average of $16.67 million for Longoria’s age 31 through 36 seasons.
As coincidence would have it, Wright, signed for next year at $16 million, and the Mets are talking about an extension that would cover his age 31 through 37 seasons and pay him an average of more than $17 million from 2014 through 2020.
Since Longoria is a superior player to Wright, there’s only so much higher Wright should expect to go if his preference truly is to stay with the Mets. He gets a few more bucks than Longoria because he’s just a year away from free agency and a few more for all of the pain and suffering he has endured over the last four years.
Longoria signed one of the most team-friendly contracts in baseball history in April 2008, a six-year, $17.5 million deal that will wind up being nine years and $44.5 million. This extension rewards him more handsomely, yet it still doesn’t come close to matching what he’d get on the open market. Nor does it raise the bar for his fellow third basemen.
That’s fine; Players Association executive director Michael Weiner stresses to his constituents that they should prioritize happiness over dollars. Some players take it upon themselves to set new peaks, though, and Santana was such a player. When he signed a six-year, $137.5 million contract to join the Mets in a trade from Minnesota, the left-hander established a new precedent for starting pitchers’ annual average value ($22.9 million) on a multiple-year deal, blowing away Carlos Zambrano’s $18.3 million per year for five years with the Cubs.
You can understand why, as the Post’s Mike Puma reported, Wright and his agents Sam and Seth Levinson, fueled by pride, would want to surpass Santana’s $137.5 million figure, albeit over eight years rather than six, to make this the most lucrative deal in Mets history.
It’s in this calculation where we slip a compliment to Minaya, who during his magical 2006 campaign finalized an extension with Wright that would pay him $16 million in 2013. That’s less than Wright would acquire on the open market, yet it’s enough to require only a modest raise going forward in order to leap over Santana.
A contract in this neighborhood wouldn’t represent a significant overpay for the Mets. Nor would Wright be settling for too little. It’s the sweet spot, the genesis to what the Mets hope will be very sweet news before Christmas.
kdavidoff@nypost.com