As you’ve probably heard by now, the Mets have opted not to offer arbitration to John Maine and Sean Green and not to even offer a contract to Chris Carter, meaning, in all likelihood, none of them will be back with the Mets in 2011.

The departures of Green and Carter serve mostly to further indict the Omar Minaya Administration. I defended the trade of Billy Wagner for Carter at the time, arguing that since it was unclear that Wagner would a) remain healthy coming back from surgery and b) decline arbitration, the Mets only opted for a sure thing and a potentially valuable spare part instead over the potential for draft picks. Of course, at the time I hadn’t seen Carter throw.

For their part in the deal, the Sox got 13 2/3 innings out of Wagner during their stretch run in 2009, plus prospects Kolbrin Vitek and Bryce Brentz — the players they drafted and signed for slot money with the compensation picks for Wagner.

The Mets got a few million dollars in salary relief, plus 180 plate appearances, a .706 OPS and some woeful defense out of Carter. Plus perhaps a series of lessons in stem-cell research. (Incredibly intense stem-cell research.) Hindsight is always 20/20, but, well, oof.

Green came over with J.J. Putz and Jeremy Reed in a deal with the Mariners that assured Omar Minaya could go out for bagels without having to hear about the Mets’ awful bullpen. To date, Minaya’s series of quiet breakfast runs in the latter part of the 2008-09 offseason stands as the Mets’ biggest gain from the deal.

In their tenures with the Mets, Green, Putz and Reed combined for a -1.2 WAR (per baseball-reference.com). For that, the Mets traded seven players, most of them young. Joe Smith, though he’s been injured for parts of both seasons since, has been a much better reliever than either Green or Putz was for the Mets.

Of the three, Maine will be remembered most fondly by Mets fans, certainly not for his pitching in 2009 and 2010, but for his contributions to the team in 2006 and 2007, especially on the second-to-last day of the latter campaign (the day, of course, that Lastings Milledge and/or Jose Reyes “woke up” the long-dormant Marlins). Plus, Maine always seemed like a  decent and likable dude — a guy who managed to convince Marty Noble that he had never been to the Internet, who went on the record with his choice of closer music and who earned praise from Smith and Mike Pelfrey for his prowess in Call of Duty.

Maine’s last two years with the Mets stand as a lesson to fans — to this one, at least — that pitchers cannot be counted on to return from shoulder injuries. I hoped all along that Maine would turn it around and again become the pitcher he was in 2007, but clearly he physically could not.

Maine is still young enough that he’ll likely surface somewhere. Since he always had a limited arsenal even when he was effective, I imagine he might make for a decent reliever (though there was always talk that he took too long to get warmed up). In any case, he’s not going to get anyone out throwing 85, so he’ll have to strengthen his shoulder first. Good luck to him.

The folks at Amazin’ Avenue put up a good John Maine farewell thread, so check that out if you’re feeling sentimental for his departure. We will remember him whenever we see the Verizon Fios guy.