I kind of figured Bengie Molina and the Mets had agreed on something by now and were just holding off on announcing it, but according to Buster Olney, Bengie Molina rejected the team’s latest offer.

So if you’re a pessimist, you think this makes the Mets more likely to up the amount of dollars or years in their offer to Molina. If you’re an optimist, you think this makes the Mets more likely to sign someone else or use some combination of the catchers they already have.

Unless, of course, you’re hoping the Mets sign Molina, in which case, reverse all that.

But only a small fraction of Mets fans appear to think the Mets could actually benefit from adding Molina, and, of those, few seem particularly excited about the possibility.

My favorite argument for signing Molina was summed up well recently in a FoxSports.com blog entry:

Beltran’s unavailability for Opening Day places a greater emphasis on adding a player who can hit in the middle of the order. And Molina batted cleanup for the Giants through most of the 2009 season.

While it’s true that Molina hit cleanup for the Giants in 2009, it’s also true that the Giants had the worst offense in the Major Leagues last year. Signing Bengie Molina to hit in the middle of your order just because he hit in the middle of the 2009 Giants’ order is like signing Luis Ayala to be your closer because he finished out games for the 2008 Mets.

Anyway, until Molina signs elsewhere, the Mets sign a different catcher, or someone on the team comes out and confirms that some combination of Henry Blanco, Chris Coste, Josh Thole and Omir Santos will start behind the plate in 2010, we can only assume that the world’s slowest game of chicken is still underway and that all that happened today was Molina announcing his intention not to flinch.