OK, so it’s easy to go back and pick on some anonymous MLB scout now, with the Mets a game above .500, playing like offensive juggernauts, appearing extremely unlikely to wind up the worst team in baseball history. Tweets like this one and columns like this one were commonplace in April when the Mets looked terrible, and they seem awfully silly now that the Mets look decent.

But then that’s kind of the thing. The Mets looked horrible early in the season and they’ve looked downright amazing the last three games. In reality they’re something in between the two, and it’s kind of a scout’s job to recognize a team’s true ability. I imagine the conversation referenced above was a somewhat sarcastic one, and I hope if pressed any paid Major League scout would know better than to think a club that then had David Wright, Jose Reyes, Ike Davis and Carlos Beltran in its lineup was not, in fact, the worst ever. If he legitimately believed that, he should carefully consider a new field.

It’s a good lesson regardless. Eyeballs and small samples can deceive everyone — myself certainly included — and it’s easy to get caught up in thinking whatever we’ve seen happening over a handful or even a month’s worth of games represents something certainly meaningful, choosing to ignore the evidence we have that contradicts our conclusions.

I can point out right now that the Mets are 35-26 since their 5-13 start, and I suppose if I wanted I could chalk up those early-season struggles to a bad bullpen and a new manager and a variety of factors that all for some reason stopped weighing on the team on April 20. And if I run wild with it, I can say that if the Mets play just a couple games better than this new, post-April 20 clip for the rest of the season, well, hell, that’d be good enough to have them in the hunt for 90 wins and a playoff spot even despite the miserable start.

I hope that’s the case, because I’m a Mets fan. But that pesky 5-13 thing, that happened too. A lot of the faces have changed since then, but not all for the better. Some guys have played over their heads, some guys have underperformed. We have to look at the largest possible sample, and that shows a 40-39 team. That’s not the most thrilling or groundbreaking conclusion, I realize. But hey, at least they’re not the worst team ever.

I missed most of the goings-on in the Mets world last week, but it seems like the team is still playing around .500 baseball, the media is still producing a ton of speculative trade and contract nonsense with which bloggers and fans are running wild, and Jose Reyes is still awesome. So status quo.

And it sounds like there’s a growing, backlashy sentiment in some corners that says something along the lines of, “Well if the Mets are in fourth place with Jose Reyes, they could easily be in fourth place without him.”

Since plenty of it has come from reasonable Mets fans, let’s assume for the sake of this post that it is not the Blame-Beltran dreck obnoxiously attached to star players so frequently in the recent past. I don’t think it is — no one with even a mild feel for the rules of baseball could possibly argue that Reyes’ contributions have not massively improved the Mets’ chances of winning games in 2011.

I’m pretty sure the idea is more something like this: If the Mets can’t consistently play above .500 ball with Reyes in the midst of an MVP-caliber season, then they’ll need to do more than just bring back Reyes to compete in 2012 and beyond. And since Reyes appears likely to net a massive contract that would render the Mets incapable of bringing on many more players (assuming they can even afford him), they should consider trading him before the deadline because we see now that it will take more than Jose Reyes playing at his most awesome to make them a competitive team.

I think that’s generally it, at least. Is that generally it?

OK. Well first off, the Mets are also playing .500 ball without David Wright and Ike Davis. Players are always going to be hurt, but probably not always two of the team’s four best hitters. Who could say where the Mets would be in the standings today if they had enjoyed full health from their corner infielders? And so maybe an optimistic blogger could argue that with Reyes back next year, Davis and Wright playing every day, improvements from some of the young guys already contributing, some luck, some good roster management and a little bit of help from the farm system, the Mets might not be as far from contending as they currently seem.

But that’s besides the point. The point is, it has never been about Trade Reyes or Sign Reyes. The Mets’ front office is only one player in any scenario involving Reyes’ future, and Sandy Alderson’s best approach to the decision must be dictated by at least one other actor. If the Dodgers want to trade Clayton Kershaw — locked up under team control through 2014 — for the next three months of Jose Reyes, well then duh.

They don’t, obviously, but you see what I’m saying. Reyes has value to the Mets now and until the end of the season, both in terms of helping them win games and in helping them fill seats and put eyeballs on screens. He offers them some value in compensatory draft picks if he walks as a free agent, and — though I can’t say this for certain — he may be less likely to re-sign with the Mets in the offseason if they trade him beforehand. And he presents value to whatever team inks him to his next contract.

We don’t know how much. We don’t know what Reyes will return in a trade, we don’t know what he’ll get in free agency, and we don’t know what he’ll wind up being worth to the team that signs him. We can only guess. And there are tons of variables involved.

It’s something to talk about, I suppose, and maybe it’s fun to speculate about possible deals or a possible future with Reyes lighting up the Mets’ all-time record books. But with the money Reyes is going to cost, there’s no real obvious solution for the Mets, only a front office charged with an incredibly tough decision.

The way I see it, elite free-agent shortstops don’t often hit the open market at 28 years old. And since the Mets are still a big-market club that will always have a big payroll, if they’re going to open up the coffers for anyone, he’s the dude. Sure they’re only playing .500 ball with him at his best, but that’s hardly his fault, and he’s young enough and they’ve got enough decent pieces that they can reasonably hope to build a contending club while he’s well within his prime.

But there has got to be a limit, of course. If some GM wants to blow the Mets away with a deadline deal that could bring them a package of prospects Alderson believes will make up the core of a perennial pennant-winner, or if another team wants to offer Reyes a contract that makes Carl Crawford blush, then we might have to face the possibility of a future without Reyes. And truth is, we probably won’t know for years if whatever decision the Mets’ front office makes is the right one.

Until then, though, we can sit here and yell about it a lot.