Twitter is exploding right now. Honestly, go to Twitter; it’s on fire. The whole Internet will soon be engulfed in flames.

Apparently the Red Sox have closed on a five-year, $85 million deal with John Lackey and the Phillies, Blue Jays and Mariners have agreed on a deal that will send Roy Halladay to the Phillies, Cliff Lee to the Mariners and to-be-determined prospects to the Mariners.

OK, Mets fans, here it is:

Don’t panic.

It’s probably best to wait until the dust settles to figure out exactly what happened today, but on the very surface, well, I dunno. On multiple occasions I wrote why the Mets shouldn’t trade for Roy Halladay, because one year of Roy Halladay and the opportunity to sign a 33-year-old pitcher to a longterm extension at market rate did not seem worth the cost in prospects.

We don’t know yet what exactly the cost in prospects will be for the Phillies — it should be mitigated by the inclusion of Lee — nor what deal Halladay will get, but it’s safe to assume they’ll still be committing a huge sum of money to an aging pitcher. Granted, Halladay’s been something of a horse, but no one is impervious to Father Time.

Look: I know the idea of Roy Halladay on the Phillies seems terrifying. I’m scared myself. That lineup, with Halladay and Cole Hamels at the front of the rotation in 2010? Yeah, that’s not going to be easy to compete with.

But how much better is Halladay, for 2010 alone, than Lee? I don’t know. And how much better will the Phillies be for the deal if it means they sign Halladay to a contract that could ultimately be crippling?

As for Lackey: Many Mets fans, myself included, way preferred Matt Holliday to Lackey at the offseason’s outset. I still do, for that matter. The movement for Lackey mostly developed, it seems, when news surfaced last week that the Mets had made an offer to Jason Bay.

But the Mets haven’t actually signed Bay yet, and no one has signed Holliday. So there’s more waiting to be done there. Let’s see what happens before we kill the team. Remember that they don’t play games in December.

Would I have committed five years and $85 million to Lackey? Probably not. Of course, as a sabermetrically inclined baseball fan I’m contractually obligated to assume what Theo Epstein does is correct, so maybe he knows something I don’t.

And since the market for pitchers was set by the three-year, $30 million contract Randy Wolf got from the Brewers, maybe Epstein saw Lackey as something of a bargain.

Still, it seems like an awful lot of cash to commit to a pitcher who hasn’t thrown over 200 innings since 2007, however minor his injuries were. And I don’t buy the argument that he deserves A.J. Burnett money simply by being better than A.J. Burnett; Burnett is wildly overpaid.

Again, and for the millionth time: I know you’re starting to feel impatient. I feel that way too. And, as pessimistic as I am about this front office’s ability to build a perennial contender, I’m certainly not saying, “just wait and see, the Mets will be fine.”

I don’t know that’s the case. But I also don’t know that they screwed anything up by not acquiring Lackey or Halladay.

According to Honkbalsite.com, the Mets have signed Dutch teenagers Kevin Weijgertse and Björn Hato. Both are expected to train at the Mets’ instructional facility in the Dominican Republic starting in April, but only one is expected to have an umlaut in his name.

The  Babelfish translation of the Honkbalsite.com article is predictably hilarious. Here’s what is has to say about Weijgertse:

The third limping man finished three games for the club head village. Weijgertse to Corendon Kinheim, moved at the end of the season, where he the fixed third limping man became. In service of the Haarlemse plough the binnenvelder 39 played games with 36 limping battle (.243), fifteen scored runs and seventeen binnengeslagen points.

It’s probably a bad sign that he’s already limping, but you have to be impressed by the seventeen binnengeslagen points.

As for Hato:

Also Björn Hato (18) ended up last season for head class serum Corendon Kinheim. The binnenvelder made one’s debut on Sunday 26 April in the head power then he in the eighth collection of the game against Mr. Cocker HCAW was used as pinchrunner.

I’ll say this much, it’s pretty impressive that Babelfish knows the Dutch word for “pinchrunner.” It’s less impressive that the Mets are signing guys who are only being used as pinch runners in Dutch baseball games.

Of course, for all I know “pinchrunner” here means he somehow hit seven home runs in a game and he’s actually the Dutch Babe Ruth.

Yorvit Torrealba’s grievance against the Mets is scheduled for Wednesday.

Regardless, the Mets may pursue Torrealba if they can’t land Bengie Molina.

This can only end well.

And by “well,” I mean, “with a weak-hitting catcher signed to a multi-year deal.”