Most expensive Mets outfielders no longer with the team

PORT ST. LUCIE — So you were looking for a little outfield help? Well, here is where you find it: Just swing open the doors of the home-team clubhouse at Tradition Field, weed your way through all the other outfielders in the room, all of them making south of a halfmillion bucks this year.

And extend your hand to greet the one man with extensive outfield experience on the front of his resume and the back of his baseball card who will be making north of that number, who will, in fact, earn the tidy sum of $1,193,248.20 from the Mets this season.

“Welcome,” you say.

“Good to see you,” Bobby Bonilla says.

The highest-paid outfielder in the room wears a green polo shirt, blue slacks, white cross-trainers and about 40 or so pounds from his last listed playing weight. Retirement seems to be agreeing with Bobby Bo, who last played for the Mets in 1999 (both baseball and, somewhat more famously, clubhouse cards) and who last played for anyone in 2001 and now works for the Players Association.

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OK, most people who care about the Mets long since have come to terms with the fact that one of the forever reminders of the Madoff Scandal will be the deferred package the Wilpons gave Bonilla, one that will allow him to collect that lovely annuity of $1,193,248.20 this year and every year from now until 2035.

This really won’t be as much of an issue when the Mets hire an active outfielder in the future for more than $1,193,248.20. It might not have been an issue at all if Michael Bourn were sitting in a locker elsewhere in the room pulling down $10 million a year (though the Mets will be glad when they aren’t writing off Bourn’s dead money in a few years, the way they’re paying off the $18 million still on the books for Jason Bay).

Someday, if Fred Wilpon is accurate about his club’s rosy financial future, the Mets may actually have a fourth outfielder in their employ who will clear more than $1,193,248.20. The problem is, for now and for the foreseeable future, they have a roster exclusively comprised of fourth outfielders.

Unless a few of them prove us all wrong, of course.

“They’re not impervious to all of this,” Mets manager Terry Collins said yesterday with quintessential Collinsian honesty. “They read the newspapers. They see the sports shows on TV. They know what people are saying about them. They’re fully aware of all of it.”

There are things to like about just about everyone lining up to patrol Citi Field (whose vast lawns offer firm proof that there will indeed be an outfield to play on, no matter who is chosen to play in it).

Lucas Duda has shown he can hit the baseball a long, long way, and Collins said he believes Duda has corrected a flaw in his stroke. Kirk Nieuwenhuis was a fleeting find for a while last year, and Collin Cowgill has stolen as many as 30 bases in a half-season at Triple-A.

It is impossible not to root for Mike Baxter, the Queens kid who sacrificed half a season last year to preserve Johan Santana’s no-hitter. Marlon Byrd was an All-Star just three years ago.

All of them believe they are better than they have been perceived.

All of them would be wise to heed the advice Collins gave Duda last year after Duda had been sent out to Buffalo for a time, after he had returned with — Collins’ words — “a genuine chip on his shoulder” — and after he had impressed Collins with a confident rant about how much he belonged in the big leagues, how he was never going back to the bushes ever again.

“I like that,” Collins said. “Now go out and show it.”

Collins wants to see, wants them to prove us all wrong, play like a million bucks even if it isn’t reflected on payday. This is a contract year for Collins; of course he would rather have better options. But what? The Mets’ Florida facility has a unit crammed between Fields 2 and 3 that is a truncated park, where the “outfield” fence is ringed around the back of the infield. No need for an outfield at all if you played there.

Although it also doesn’t have a third base. And that would present an entirely different set of problems.

Priced out

The Mets are paying more to two outfielders who no longer are on the team than they are the four youngsters competing for three starting spots: