In case you somehow missed it, the latest from the Daily News says the Mets have offered David Wright a seven-year extension on top of his 2013 option for a total of around $140 million for the next eight seasons. If that’s true, it seems like a lot for a player who’ll be 38 at the conclusion of the deal.

Toby Hyde has more:

If David Wright is a 5+ win player for most of his contract, he would be well worth any of the range of potential outcomes from ~$16-20 million annually, that have been kicked around the press. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Wright has been that player once in the last four years and three times in the last six.

One of the areas of volatility in Wright’s performance has been defensive, bouncing from -1.4 dWAR in 2010 to 2.1 dWAR in 2012, a swing of roughly 35 runs over full seasons of action….

Where the WAR graph of David Wright’s career resembled a roller coaster, his offensive production merely looks like a bumpy road. It is this, Wright’s relatively more consistent production offensively, that make a six, seven or even eight-year contract less scary.

Wright’s list of most similar batters on baseball-reference, for whatever that’s worth, paints a picture that can be interpreted in various lights. If you want to spy the beautiful woman, you could point to Carl Yastrzemski, Chipper Jones and George Brett, Hall of Famers who enjoyed years of success on the long side of 30. If you’re certain the image is an old hag, you could point to Eric Chavez, who has struggled with injuries and mustered barely more than season’s worth of mostly disappointing at-bats in the five years since he turned 30.

But, of course, both the beautiful woman and the old hag are there, so optimists and pessimists must both see how the deal could play out in a variety of ways. Plus, comps are just comps and Wright’s his own snowflake and we won’t really know whether the contract — assuming it’s for real, and should he sign it — is an overpay or adequate retribution for Wright’s services until those services are all rendered.

Consider also that contracts and the general baseball marketplace appear to be defying our expectations more and more these days (that’s a hunch of course; I have no way to measure it) as teams cash in on inflating TV deals. That all seems at least a bit tenuous, but really I have no idea how it’ll all play out and how it’ll ultimately impact player salaries.

It could be there’s a bubble that bursts, and in five or 10 or 20 or — pertinent here — eight years, players can’t expect as much money on the open market. Or, perhaps more likely, teams will figure more and better ways to reap our constant and desperate need for baseball and the salaries keep growing. Or maybe an asteroid destroys the earth in 2015 and none of this matters so much. Point is, eight years is a long way away, and a hell of a lot can happen to Wright, to the Mets, to baseball, to the economy and to everything in that time.

So, really, who knows? Today, without knowing many of the specific terms of the deal, eight years and $140 million for 30-year-old David Wright seems like at least a mild overpay, especially considering the Mets’ growing needs and finite resources. If the team’s financial situation doesn’t clear up soon, within a few seasons we could easily be lamenting the way they’re allotting so much of their payroll to a now-only-pretty-good David Wright.

Still, Wright — even at 30, at 31, 32, 33 and 34 — represents the Mets’ safest bet to be an elite offensive player, and they will need to score runs to win games. So maybe even beyond all the face-of-the-franchise stuff he’s worth a bit more to the Mets, with no obvious offensive stars on the horizon, than he would be to a team with lesser but still adequate replacement options in the clubhouse or on the farm.

Also, and most importantly, he’s David Wright. By definition, overpaying a guy means giving him more than he deserves, and on principle I don’t think teams should be rewarding players for past performances. But I’m not sure I can think of a baseball player I’d rather see overpaid than Wright, given all he’s put up with the last few seasons and how unspeakably cool he’s been about it throughout. Admitting as much forfeits my right to whine about the contract seven years from now, but that’s OK by me. These pages are not for decrying the best position player in Mets’ history.

Per request:

The Mets offered Wright a six-year, $100 million contract extension on Monday, according to major-league sources.

It is an offer that Wright is certain to refuse.

Wright, who is under contract for $16 million in 2013, prefers a deal of seven years or longer, sources say.

– Ken Rosenthal, FoxSports.com.

OK, here’s the thing: Our boredom with the baseball offseason shouldn’t have any impact on the way the Mets approach contract extensions with David Wright and R.A. Dickey. Luckily, the Mets don’t seem to operate that way. If they did, and they rushed to get deals done to appease impatient fans, we’d have something to talk about for, like, two days. But then we’ll have something else to talk about three or four or seven years from now when we realize the Mets promised far too much money to players too late in their careers because the Jets sucked and the offseason is long and everyone just got antsy.

Which is to say that I just don’t care at all about the sausage-factory stuff in the Mets’ negotiations with either player. I don’t fault Rosenthal for reporting it, obviously. I just don’t think it’s particularly productive or necessary to freak out about reports of the Mets’ first offer to Wright, since nowhere in the report did Rosenthal suggest it’s the Mets’ final offer to Wright.

We will know if the Mets and Wright (and Dickey) can come to mutually agreeable terms when they announce the contract extension. If it becomes clear it’s never happening, or if the Mets trade either or both of their stars, then we can all something something. But it’s still November. November.

By my count, the Mets have acquired eight players this offseason. It’s an odd lot: pitchers Greg Burke, Wanel Mesa, Scott Rice and Carlos Torres, infielders Brandon Hicks and Brian Bixler, catcher Anthony Recker and outfielder Jamie Hoffman.

If you squint, you can envision the ways most of them might help the Mets at the fringes of their 2013 roster. Burke is a reliever who had a lot of success in Triple-A in 2012. Rice throws left-handed. Torres has a history of decent strikeout rates. Bixler can play practically every position. Recker is a righty-hitting catcher who has hit some in the Minors. Hoffman and Hicks have shown power from the right side at different Minor League stops.

The odd signing — on paper at least — is Mesa’s, as the 25-year-old righty has not pitched in affiliated ball since 2010 and has never had any success above Rookie ball. He has struck out more than a batter an inning everywhere he’s gone, so — though I can find precious little information about him online — I’m assuming he throws gas and the Mets figured it worth taking a flyer on him and trying to adjust his mechanics.

The other mildly (or not at all) interesting thing about the signings is that every guy besides Mesa has recent experience in the Pacific Coast League, home to the Mets’ new Triple-A affiliate in Las Vegas. Bixler, Hicks, Recker, Rice and Torres all spent some time in the PCL in 2012, and Burke and Hoffman both played there from 2009-2011.

That could easily be a coincidence: Most of these guys, after all, have been bouncing around Triple-A for a few years, and half the Triple-A teams play in the Pacific Coast League. Or they could all have come to the organization on the recommendation of one particularly adamant West Coast scout.

Or it could be that Sandy Alderson and the SABRos feel there’s some value in bringing in guys who understand the particulars of PCL play — the light air, the hard ground, the massive offensive output — to a Triple-A club set to feature some prized prospects with only International League experience on their resumes.

Just something I noticed, is all.

Via email, Sean writes:

The reference to Wright’s acts of leadership behind the scenes of 2012 was interesting. I completely understand there is a line about what you can discuss in public forums, given your access.

Maybe you can share though how you find that line in your position, when you’re both a fan but it’s also your job and have some privileged access. Must be especially tough to police yourself given all the forums available for people to express any thought these days.

It’s not all that tough, honestly. Though I have a season credential to Mets home games and some level of access, I’m not a beat writer and I don’t typically travel with the team, so I don’t get nearly the type of privileged information those guys might. On the rare occasion I do, it’s tempting to go nuts and plaster it everywhere because EXCLUSIVE TEDQUARTERS EXCLUSIVE.

But I’ve done far too much trolling of vaguely written and anonymously sourced baseball scoopsmanship to do it myself as soon as I stumble on to any sort of inside information. Typically, I use whatever I learn to inform my writing, and a good conversation with someone inside the organization can provide months’ worth of context about roster moves and the like. But I don’t think it adds much to an argument to cite the nebulous authority that some seem to think comes along with credentials, so I do my best to avoid it.

https://twitter.com/metsthoughts/status/271292969255063552

I don’t know that there’s a good comp, for a couple of reasons. It seems like Jack Taylor’s indisputably impressive accomplishment did come in part due to Grinnell’s offensive system, which I don’t know much about. The previous D-3 single-game scoring record was held by another guy on Grinnell, who scored 89 in a game last year and came off the bench for seven last night.

Also, there’s almost no way a basketball player can score 138 points without taking better scoring opportunities away from his teammates. Look at that article: Even Carmelo Anthony appears to be taken aback. That can’t really happen in baseball.

All that said, I’m going with seven home runs. Our Internet is spotty today and I can’t draw up a more direct comp statistically, but it feels like seven home runs in a game at pretty much any level would be as remarkable and improbable as scoring 138 points.

https://twitter.com/tpgMets/status/271297458053713920

I’ll guess Josh Thole. When we did the Furious Five stuff last year, most of the players had to think a bit to determine their favorite sandwiches. That’s understandable; professional athletes don’t all interact with food in the same way professional sandwich bloggers do. But Thole was on it: Not only could he name a specific sandwich when asked his favorite — a Lobster Roll from Luke’s Lobster — but he said that the first thing he did when he came to New York was get sushi at Tao. So based on that little bit of evidence, I’m going to guess Thole is pretty dedicated to eating well. Lucas Duda is another obvious candidate but that’s purely based on his size.

https://twitter.com/TheSeanKenny/status/271310245781962753

I don’t know if Sean’s referencing something specific that I haven’t read or some particular item of misinformation. I know much has been made over what Jeff Wilpon said about R.A. Dickey and David Wright yesterday. It seems people are understandably pretty fired up that Wilpon said he’d rather keep Dickey and Wright through 2013 without extensions than trade them, since that’s pretty demonstrably not in the Mets’ best long-term baseball interests. But the counter — and I’m reluctant to even mention it, because I realize I’ll now inevitably be accused of shillery — is that it makes no sense for Jeff Wilpon to say, “Yeah, if we can’t get extensions done, we’re definitely trading them.”

Those of you reading regularly probably know I’m not the type to get too bent out of shape or sanctimonious over things people say. I’d happily abide misinformation from the Mets if I could be confident they were operating optimally and on behalf of becoming the best possible baseball team. For now I can only hope for that, though. The way they handle Dickey and Wright will tell us a lot more about what the Mets are doing than the way they say they’ll handle Dickey and Wright.

Finally, via email, Chris writes:

Have you realized the only year the Giants didn’t win the World Series in the past 3 years was when they had Carlos Beltran? Similarly, the only year the Cardinals haven’t won it in the past two years was with Carlos Beltran!

Typical Beltran. For all his “best postseason OPS in baseball history,” he’s never won the World Series, and that’s obviously his fault.

Bedbugs destroyed our great dumpster-diving tradition, I think. It wasn’t long ago you could reliably find good stuff left up for grabs on street corners and figure someone just discarded it because they were moving and didn’t have the space or they were redecorating and going with a different color scheme. I still use a desk lamp I found in the lobby of my old apartment building about seven years ago. But if I saw that same lamp available in any public space today, I’d assume it was positively riddled with bedbugs desperate for a ticket inside my apartment to nest in my bookcase and breed under my pillow.

The Tigers cut Ryan Raburn today, which was not unexpected after his miserable 2012 campaign. Whatever happened to Raburn this season appears to be the baseball equivalent of a bedbug infestation: He went from being a good hitter in 2009 and 2010, to a slightly below average one in 2011, to sub-Jason Bay levels in 2012.

With Bay now gone, the Mets’ best righty-hitting outfielder currently in house is either Juan Lagares or Cory Vaughn, neither of whom has yet played above Double-A. If there’s any hope Raburn can return even to his 2011 form, it can’t hurt the Mets much to act on it. He’s hardly Scott Hairston in his ability to hit lefties, but presumably bringing in Raburn would not preclude Hairston’s return, given the organizational dearth of outfielders. Plus, Raburn’s not just an outfielder: He’s logged considerable time at second base in the Majors, with stints in the infield corners as well.

At 32, he looks like a reasonable low-risk option to fill a platoon or bench role in Flushing in 2013. If it pays off, Raburn would be a very useful guy to have: Depending on how the outfield shakes out, he could split time with Mike Baxter or Lucas Duda in a corner and/or spell Daniel Murphy and Ike Davis when they need days off, especially against tough lefties.

I know, I know. LOLMets. But it is what it is, and Raburn looks like a particularly good fit for the Mets, given their needs.

Hat tip to Eno Sarris.