MLB

Communications confusion typical for the Mets

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — There is no such thing as a simple news cycle around the Mets, the home office for Velcro and glue and duct tape, where every story always feels like Freddie Biletnikoff’s fingertips, all of the dysfunction Stick-ummed together.

It wasn’t so long ago that this phenomenon referred solely to the stuff that happened on the field, when the gagging away of the 2006 NLCS begat the gagging away of the 2007 NL East begat the gagging away of a 2008 postseason berth. Failure breeding letdown breeding collapse.

This is how bad things have been over the last 12 months or so:

Those are considered the good old days.

FANTASY TRACKER DRAFT GUIDE

PROSPECT RANKINGS

MATTINGLY COULD TAKE OVER FROM TORRE

We all know how the Mets spent 2009 slipping on banana peels and suffering the resultant consequences of black eyes and bloody noses and banged-up knees and battered ankles, a relentless wave of bad luck and bad medicine and bad public perception. It was never enough that half the lineup seemed on loan from Buffalo and Binghamton all summer — it was the slapstick that accompanied it all that turned the team into a laughingstock.

The Mets swear they finally identified the biggest culprit of their nonstop tour of the comedic (and karmic) dark side. Bill Parcells would call him “the guy in the glass.” Pogo the comic-book possum would have cut to the chase even quicker: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

When last season mercifully ended, the Mets vowed to do things better, more properly, more professionally. Which is a good thing, or else there’s no telling just how badly the Carlos Beltran right knee surgery issue might have been botched. Or how Francisco Rodriguez’s three-day bout with pink eye could become a weeklong misadventure. Or how Kelvim Escobar could go from being the unclaimed jewel of the winter to auditioning for the role of the one-armed man in the “Fugitive” sequel.

And there’s no telling the kind of chaos that might now be enveloping the Mets as the laugh track for their latest medical sitcom is installed, tried out and unleashed on a weary public.

First, the good news: By all appearances, it seems Jose Reyes is going to be fine, despite all the whispers and rumors and angst-ridden worries that accompanied him north as he has submitted to batteries of tests on his thyroid.

“Elevated thyroid levels,” is how general manager Omar Minaya described it, which essentially was what a press release issued by the Mets declared Tuesday night. Sources both close to the Mets and within the medical community all indicate that Reyes likely will not even need a severe treatment in order to keep those levels in check, that it mostly will require a dietary shift. And yet . . .

There was Reyes, on ESPN Desportes Tuesday night, offering his own interpretation of the diagnosis: “The specialists who took care of me in New York have told me that I’m fine, and that there’s nothing wrong with my thyroid. The test showed that I’m fine.”

OK: We’ve all been to the doctor, heard him give us a diagnosis, focused on either the best-case or worst-case scenario. Maybe that’s what Reyes was doing. Or maybe that really is what the doctor told him. Only Reyes really knows that.

What we know is: That differs significantly from what the Mets put out there. And what the Mets put out there — in the words of Reyes’ agent, Peter Greenberg — “blindsided” Reyes.

“They sent out that press release that made it look worse than it was,” Greenberg told the Post. “Jose was a little upset.”

Is this a calamity? Not now, it isn’t, even if you grade the Mets against the enormous credibility curve they have established for themselves. And when Reyes finally does return to Port St. Lucie, and he finally resumes baseball activity, and he finally re-acclimates himself to the workaday grind of spring training, this all may barely register as a mini-blip. But that’s really beside the point, isn’t it?

The Mets want us to give them a mulligan on the catastrophe that was 2009, and most seem willing to at least think about it. But only if they have truly changed the way they do business, only if all the players are still on the same page. And right now, that seems every bit the work in progress that the ballclub is.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com