LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Jose Reyes is not going to be with the Mets next year.
This is not credited to sources or people familiar with the situation. Just to common sense.
OK, perhaps there is a 5-percent chance Reyes will return, but that probably would take both a new owner who could afford to pay him and a new general manager who values to a higher degree what Reyes does best.
Pretty much any other scenario makes Reyes the new Carmelo Anthony: He either is going to be moved before the trade deadline or sign somewhere else as a free agent. I spoke to five non-Mets executives and asked where they thought Reyes would be in 2012, and not one said the Mets. An NL GM synthesized the group’s thinking, saying Reyes staying “would be a huge shock.”
Mets GM Sandy Alderson said it is a decision that has yet to be made. But what else can he say? “My owners do not have the money to pay Reyes market value.” Or “I do not prioritize what Reyes does best.”
Alderson’s belief system is pretty clear. He thinks stolen bases are exciting, but not an efficient way to score runs. Yes, he obtained Rickey Henderson twice while serving as A’s GM. But it was the .400-plus on-base percentages of Henderson that seduced Alderson, not the thievery.
“It is going to be a composite picture [of who Jose Reyes is],” Alderson said. “But there is no doubt I put a premium on certain elements of the game over others.”
Even in Reyes’ peak years, 2006-08, his on-base percentage was .355, or 61 points lower than what Henderson produced in parts of two seasons with the Mets (2000-01) — at ages 40 and 41. Despite Reyes’ ordinary on-base percentage (it was 83rd in the majors for players with 1,000 plate appearances from 2006-08), he still was third in runs scored.
But two major contributors to that total — Reyes’ durability and speed — will be eyed by Alderson with dubiety. Alderson is from the cold-hearted actuary school. I suspect he will value the numbers and logic over, say, the emotional pull of keeping a homegrown, popular player. So Alderson will calculate declining speed and increasing brittleness for the already fragile Reyes during the life of a long-term deal.
“If you know Sandy and connect the dots, he will not keep Reyes,” said an executive who used to work with Alderson.
The last dots connect to the Wilpons. It is hard to imagine this ownership group approving a substantial commitment considering its precarious finances and the recent long-term nightmares with Carlos Beltran, Oliver Perez, Johan Santana, Jason Bay and Luis Castillo, to name a few.
If Reyes has a vintage season, a case could be made that his comparable is Carl Crawford, another on-base-challenged speedster who got a seven-year, $142 million deal from the Red Sox. And Reyes plays a more premium position (shortstop compared to left field), switch hits (Crawford bats lefty) and will enter free agency a year younger than Crawford did.
Does anyone think the Wilpons are getting anywhere near a seven-year, $142 million contract for Jose Reyes? There is a better chance of Snooki hosting “Masterpiece Theater.”
Alderson says this “will be a baseball decision,” not one tied to ownership finances. Still, do you see Alderson going to the Wilpons and making his first significant request for dollars as Mets GM to pay a speed-based player into at least his mid-30s?
Which puts the Mets in a strange spot: They need Reyes to play well to become more attractive in the trade market, yet the better he plays the harder it will be to sell already disillusioned fans that trading Reyes is the best long-term strategy for the franchise. Also, when Reyes was an elite catalyst from 2006-08, the Mets won the most games in the NL (274).
“If Reyes is at the top of his game, we will compete [for the playoffs],” manager Terry Collins said.
Imagine Reyes being good enough to start in the All-Star Game on July 12 and the Mets actually being in contention, and yet Reyes getting traded shortly thereafter because the Mets did not want to get nothing for him after the season. In other words, exactly what the contending Nuggets just did shortly after Anthony started the All-Star Game.
“Right now, I don’t want to think about any of that,” Reyes said. “Let’s just see what happens.”
joel.sherman@nypost.com