By now, most “experts” and observers predicted that the Mets: A) would have lost 100+ games; B) in bankruptcy court and ready to be auctioned off or sold; C) traded off any and all players who had value for the “future”.

Now because none of that happened, the goalposts are being moved again from how bad is this team was going to be and who was going to be the new owner, to repeated questions as to what they’re going to do after 2013 with David Wright and R.A. Dickey. Here’s the simple answer: we don’t know and nor do the “insiders”. Their collective agendas have gone from blatant to embarrassing.

The Mets have surpassed expectations, shown to have a better farm system than initially thought, and they won around 15-20 more games than the most dire projections said. Consequentially, something else has to be tossed into the ring to attack them. Rather than admit that this is a rebuild that is relatively on or close to schedule and that they’re better than anticipated, it’s evolved into cryptic suggestions straight out of a formulatic horror movie implying, “Yeah, they’re not that bad this year, but they still have money problems and won’t be able to sign Wright or Dickey.”

The Mets are the designated punching bag. Editors know this and take steps to have their reporters treat the team as such with an alarming and obvious redundancy that few admit exists. So it’s changed from the lack of money and poor attendance issues to Wright, Dickey, and how the Mets are going to improve for 2013 given their reportedly limited resources.

First, with Dickey, no one is saying he owes the Mets a heavy discount, but he does owe them a discount. The Mets were the one team that gave him a legitimate chance to use his knuckleball, develop it at the big league level, and they paid him relatively lucratively when they didn’t have to. If Dickey is going to practice what he preaches about spirituality and existentialism, then he can’t try to hold hostage the one team that gave him his opportunity.

With Wright, the question is asked again, and again, and again, and again as to whether he’s going to stay after 2013. As polite as he is, he answers as best he can while maintaining a necessary negotiating ambiguity, and doesn’t say he wants to stay or leave. How is he supposed to answer the question? He can’t win no matter what he says. If he says he wants to test free agency, that’s tantamount to demanding a trade because the Mets aren’t going to sit and wait to see if they can sign Wright knowing that someone is probably going to go crazy with a big money offer. If he says he wants to stay, period, he’d be under pressure to meet the front office at a reasonable number that would be agreeable to them and to him.

Wright’s reply in this piece by Adam Rubin on ESPN, “No idea,” is robotic and designed to make the question and questioner go away; that he’s tired of it and he’d like it to stop.

Wright’s not stupid and he’s been very careful during his time with the Mets in not criticizing anyone openly. He’s not controversial and the media isn’t going to get anything of use from him of the “pay me or trade me” variety. Therefore what he doesn’t say gets magnified and extrapolated into reading between nonexistent lines. Rather than taking Wright at face value when he says he’d like to stay and factoring in that he has a contract for 2013 and that with Jason Bay and Johan Santana coming off the books after next season the Mets will have the money available to sign him, it turns into a bout of uninformed, twisted speculation similar to the pre-settlement Madoff guarantees of bankruptcy and messy ownership change; the preseason projections of 100+ losses—both of which were completely wrong.

Here are the facts: Wright has a contract option with the Mets for 2013 at $16 million that is going to be exercised. He mentioned Jose Reyes in the linked piece as missing his friend and surprised that he left, but Wright, as smart as he is, can look at Reyes and what he’s now dealing with and understand that getting paid his $100+ million may not be all it was cracked up to be as Reyes is trapped in a far more dysfunctional circumstance with the Marlins than he ever saw with the Mets and is facing the reality of being traded next year to a location he may not like because he didn’t get a no-trade clause as part of that contract.

Teams that have spent recklessly and have the large payrolls as a result of it are, by and large, disappointing in 2012 with limited flexibility for the future. The Yankees are fighting for their division and with their own newly stated financial limits, may not have the money available to sign Wright. The Red Sox have a third baseman in Will Middlebrooks. The Phillies are old and on the downslide. The Angels are on the verge of missing the playoffs and badly miscalculated how important cohesion on and off the field had been. The Rangers have a third baseman, Adrian Beltre.

Barring teams making financial maneuvers to free up money through trades or getting Wright to agree to move to first base, the one place he could possibly go right now is the Dodgers.

Unless a team offers 2-3 top, big league-ready prospects, the Mets aren’t trading him this winter, so these ridiculous notions of saying “goodbye” are crafted fiction to—guess what?—bash the Mets!! If he’s traded, the only way it happens is if the Mets are far out of contention in July of 2013, and they haven’t signed him to an extension, and if he quietly asks out. With the way surprising teams like the A’s and Orioles have improved, it can’t be said that the Mets aren’t going to contend in 2013.

Here are the real questions to ask and the actual answers:

Is Wright going to be traded this winter? No.

Could the Mets offer a viable extension and will Wright sign it? Yes.

Will it happen? Maybe.

Does he want to stay? Presumably.

Is it a story now? Not unless members of the media and their editors are trying to make it one in an effort to feed the monster and tear apart the Mets. It’s a plot with no substance to achieve desired results. If it’s not Wright, it will be something else in the ever-expanding circle without end.

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