The Internet is abuzz with talk of the Mets’ payroll for 2011 and how it will limit the team’s ability to pursue free agents. And it’s true: The Mets have nearly as much as their entire 2010 payroll committed to players for 2011, plus they’ll have arbitration raises to hand out to players like Mike Pelfrey and Angel Pagan.

I’m not here to tell you it’s a good thing. It’s not a good thing.

Granted, the Mets won’t ever say they have no more money to spend,  so we have no idea if they’ll be able to expand their budget in the offseason. But given the way they’re playing it’s hard to expect them to make a whole lot of money in the remainder of the 2010 season. I’m not entirely clear on how a team builds and sets its budget, but I’m sure that an uncompetitive team and a mostly empty stadium are bad ways to bring in more cash to spend on free agents.

That said, there’s a failure in logic, I think, inherent in a lot of the backlash about the Mets’ spending.

The Mets don’t have a lot of money to spend on free agents because of all the money they’ve dished out to free agents. So we may bristle now that they don’t have enough money to pursue Cliff Lee. But if they did have the cash and they signed Cliff Lee, we’d most likely be bristling four years from now about Lee’s crippling contract.

Too often, fans — myself included — forget all the ramifications of free-agent deals. Contracts that seem reasonable in their first years seldom do in their last.

Carlos Beltran, playing like he is, looks like an albatross at $18.5 million for 2011. No matter that he was well worth his contract for most of the past five seasons. Johan Santana, awesome though he has been, seems real expensive at three years and $77.5 moving forward.

This is what happens when you traffic in long-term deals to top-flight talent.

Which is not to say, of course, that teams should never pursue the top-flight talent. They can shoulder the last couple expensive years of a player’s huge contract if they have enough cost-controlled contributors on their roster. Unless they have an infinite payroll, teams cannot sustain themselves if they rely on free agents everywhere.

And that’s, well, that’s what a lot of people have been railing about for a lot of Omar Minaya’s tenure.

I’m not out to defend the Mets for what they’re doing now because it seems very likely that it happened by accident and it hasn’t exactly been rife with shrewd decisions. But what they’re doing now is (sort of, at least) what they should be doing: They are developing and assessing young players who might become deserving Major Leaguers, the type that will prevent them from having to fill out their entire roster with free agents.

As I’ve said, it’s not clear Ruben Tejada or Fernando Martinez should be on the Major League team, and some have argued — perhaps rightfully — that other, closer-to-ready players could have been added to the 40- and 25-man roster in their stead.

But in that pair, plus Josh Thole, Ike Davis, Jon Niese and even less exciting players like Chris Carter and Bobby Parnell, the Mets have a crop of guys who just might help them fill important roster spots on the cheap for the next several seasons. That’s good.

There are bargains to be found in free agency, plus it’s the easiest way to find a total stud for the middle of your lineup or front of your rotation. But due to the way the Mets have played the market over the past few years, they might not be able to play it this year. More on that as it develops, of course.

But for what it’s worth — and I’m just throwing this out there — the Phillies already have $143 million committed for 2011.