MLB

Wright no longer owes Mets owner allegiance

I love that Fred Wilpon portrayed Jose Reyes’ potential free-agent search for Carl Crawford money as delusional.

Perfect. That would be Fred Wilpon. Who received continuous double-digit-percent profits from Bernie Madoff for three decades without ever — if you believe his family’s cover story — questioning such a run of financial good fortune? This is the guy depicting someone else’s idea of his worth as delusional?

It would feel right at such a moment for David Wright to step forward and point out that the Mets do not exactly have superstar ownership.

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Or for Carlos Beltran to pontificate on how wonderful it would be if the Mets had just 65-70 percent of Mark Cuban running the team.

But of all the messages delivered by the normally reticent Mets patriarch, the most important was a not-too-subtle one that screamed from between the lines: Look out for No. 1 — just like me.

At this moment, for example, should Beltran or Reyes care about anything more than padding their free-agent resumes? They have an ownership that put pennies into a damaged product last offseason with the understanding that the payroll slashing will continue for next year. If anyone thinks that is changing with a new minority owner, David Einhorn, now on board (assuming approval), they are not paying attention. That new limited partner was brought aboard to save the Wilpons’ financial butts in the short term, and allow them to retain control of the team — looking out for No. 1 again.

So nothing changes on payroll strategy. So Beltran already knows he is gone and Reyes should recognize that he should keep his bags packed. Both have now heard from an owner not as good at his job as they are at theirs, that they are not as good as they think. Wow, which way is the wall to run through for that guy?

Since baseball is an individual game wrapped in a team concept, selfishness by Beltran and Reyes actually could be a good thing. I heard that with Wright and Ike Davis out of the lineup and Jason Bay still in freefall, Terry Collins actually went to Beltran recently and told the switch-hitter to get greedy in RBI situations. The Mets manager liberated Beltran to essentially become an RBI whore.

But the more important liberation could come for Wright. He should now excuse himself from the role of unofficial spokesman for this team — a thankless job that Wilpon made sure to keep that way.

Again, this could work out well for the Mets. Because to see Wright in recent years try to explain the horror movie directed and produced by Mets ownership was to see a young man appear old before his time. Wright was churned up by all of this. His fidelity to this franchise was not in question like, say, his level of stardom was.

He insisted that it did not corrode his game. But there was wear and tear on Wright’s visage late in the past three years that went beyond the drudgery of a long, losing season. He was carrying an extra responsibility of trying to put a hopeful countenance on an increasingly hopeless situation. That he internalized this spoke volumes about how team-oriented he has been — just like playing for a month recently with a broken back.

Now Wright has been given the perfect cover to unofficially resign from that unofficial position. He should do it now and avoid having to be the clubhouse voice that tries to spruce up the worsening dread that is coming to Citi Field. The already too-empty stadium is going to keep trending that way, unless Wilpon’s (word that rhymes with kitty) team surprisingly contends. And those that do show at Citi, I suspect, are going to be more openly hostile.

If my inbox is any kind of town hall for Mets fans, the response this week from ticket buyers is nothing short of fury. They feel they have been sold a defective product at full price, that the owner knows this,and that the owner plans on foisting more of the same on a tighter payroll in the near future to improve his financial status — looking out for No. 1.

I was shocked at how many of the emailers evoked the name of former owner M. Donald Grant in connection with Wilpon. In politics, the equivalent would be being described as Nixonian. You wouldn’t have wanted to be the spokesman for that White House. And it should dawn on Wright now that you don’t want to be the spokesman for this crumbling house either.

joel.sherman@nypost.com