MLB

Mets’ failure to sign bargain players goes beyond Minaya

It is easy to demonize Omar Minaya for the Mets’ ills, and I am not here to praise him. I do think the job of Mets GM is too big for Minaya; that his deficits in areas of communication, organization and ability to creatively multi-task — in particular — outweigh his assets.

But I think it is fair to question now if any person from Pat Gillick to Billy Beane to the clone of Branch Rickey could succeed in the Mets’ current structure.

To further this thought, let’s play a game.

Let’s act like we can travel back to Nov. 1 before free agency has even begun. If we were sitting with Minaya, we certainly would have learned he badly wanted Bengie Molina for Molina’s power and ability to work with a pitching staff. We also would have learned he thought the Mets needed, at the least, a better version of Livan Hernandez: a workhorse starter who could provide no worse than league-average results to bolster a rotation full of fragility.

Minaya and his lieutenants circled pitchers such as Doug Davis and Jon Garland, and believed Joel Pineiro actually had graduated into being a quality starter.

Now say on that Nov. 1 date we would have made educated guesses on what each of those four players would receive in free agency. I bet even if we were conservative, we would have predicted more than one year at $4.5 million for Molina, one year at $5.25 million for Davis, one year at $5.3 million for Garland, and two years at $16 million for Pineiro.

But those are the actual prices, and yet none of them became a Met. Now are we supposed to believe Minaya — his job in peril — really advised ownership: “Look, I know these prices are falling to places we never even dreamed, but I would prefer we not spend because I want to go into spring training with only backup catchers and a rotation that is Johan Santana and The Yips?”

When I asked Minaya exactly this, he initially hesitated and said, “I could see how someone could see it that way.” But then he quickly shifted into good-soldier mode and said, “We checked in on some of those guys, but we just did not get them.”

But why? How could the Mets have encountered bargains for players they wanted and not ended up with a single one; outbid instead by, among others, the Brewers and Padres? San Diego officials actually were stunned the Mets did not jump on Garland at these prices.

Now we could argue if it is smart to crave players such as Molina with his low on-base percentage or Garland with his hardly overwhelming stuff. But that is a different discussion. This is about a GM wanting players, the prices for those players dropping to reasonable rates, and the Mets signing none of those players.

Jeff Wilpon declined a request to discuss the current state of the team, but he has insisted in the past that the Madoff debacle is not impacting the day-to-day operations and that Minaya

is making the baseball decisions. But officials from other teams and agents paint a different picture.

One AL official said the Mets do have money worries tied to Madoff. It is not that they lost in the Ponzi scheme, but that the government is seeking to recover funds from those who took out profits over the years as the Wilpons likely did.

“Is that $20 million, $100 million, $200 million?” the AL official asked. “If it is in the hundreds of millions and they actually have to pay that back, what does that mean for them even owning the team long-term?”

Nevertheless, Mets officials insist Madoff is never a factor in internal discussions, that the Wilpon family was well diversified and that the family will own the team for a long time. They point to the signing of Jason Bay (four years, $66 million) as a symbol of business as normal, with the team still expecting one of the majors’ top payrolls.

But even under that scenario, one veteran agent asked, “How can you have that payroll and still not have a starting catcher or first baseman, a second baseman you hate and no legitimate starters after Johan?”

Which leads back to the Mets essentially staying in neutral after the Bay signing. They refused to adjust offers upward to land Molina or Pineiro.

Is it because the Mets wanted to pretend to their fans that they were going after players while knowing they were offering too little to get them?

Is it that ownership emphasized not overpaying even slightly after the Bay signing rather than actually getting deals done?

Is it that the Mets are too comfortable finishing second in negotiations, taking more gratification from making an offer that, say, Bud Selig will appreciate for its conservative nature rather than actually winning for the player?

Or has the Mets’ disarray on matters such as health care for players become such a turnoff that they no longer are a destination place, so that a Pineiro may simply be getting the Mets to bid so he could shop it elsewhere; kind of an anywhere-but-Flushing philosophy?

Whatever the correct answers, the problems at Citi Field are bigger than Omar Minaya’s job title.

joel.sherman@nypost.com