Craig Calcaterra points out that rumors of Pedro Martinez’s comeback were probably just rumors, as Pedro sure sounds like a happily retired man.

Too bad.

My 200-word post about why I think the Mets should sign Pedro Martinez inspired a shocking amount of vitriol, considering the content. I thought I explained pretty explicitly how the Mets don’t make a ton of sense for Pedro and Pedro doesn’t make a ton of sense for the Mets, and that I just really like Pedro Martinez so I want to see him back. It’s an emotional thing, not a rational thing.

When Pedro was Pedro — from his last year with the Expos through his first year with the Mets — his performance was about as special as anything we’ll ever see on a baseball field in our lifetimes. Do you remember it? Lineups of meatheaded mashers, muscles testing the constraints of their uniforms, terrified at the hands of a tiny little jheri-curled righty.

It was nuts. He put any pitch anywhere he wanted it. Guys ducked out of the way of his curveball before it fell into the zone. They couldn’t catch his fastball and couldn’t wait on his changeup. Crazytime. It looked unfair.

And Pedro brought a certain joy to his dominance, or at least I read it that way. Not just the weird and hilarious off-the-field stuff. Even when he was staring guys down, posturing like he did, there was something in his countenance that suggested he knew exactly the magnitude of his accomplishment. You can see the same thing in Orson Welles if you watch Citizen Kane close enough, like he was thinking throughout the filming, “I am absolutely killing this s@#!.”

That’s why I want Pedro back on the Mets; I want to watch him pitch again, and to try to remember how amazing it was to watch the first time.

Yeah, I said it.

Rumor says Pedro is open to pitching again in the 2011 season. I have no idea how much he’ll cost, and last time he pulled this all the reports said he was prohibitively expensive. Plus if he’s coming back he’s probably going to want to come back to a team likely to win, and that conservatively puts about 10-15 teams in better position than the Mets. Also, he’s 39 now and hasn’t pitched a full season since his first in Flushing in 2005. And he doesn’t seem any more apt to stay healthy and contribute to the Mets in 2011 than Jeff Francis or Chris Young.

But every single time Pedro makes noise about a comeback, I will argue that the Mets should oblige him. Pedro Martinez is one of my favorite pitchers and humans of all time, and though I recognize that any future Major League incarnation of Pedro would likely appear a shell of his former self, I’d be thrilled to watch the shell again.

Plus, not for nothing, he was pretty good in his small-sample return for the Phillies in 2009, and it’s not like the Mets have a glut of starting pitching.

Fun fact: If you asked me yesterday to predict the 2011 NL East winner, I would have said the Braves. They have a bunch of good young hitters and a strong, durable front of the rotation.

Then last night, the Phillies signed Cliff Lee to a reported five-year, $120 million deal with a vesting option. Today, the Phillies stand as the obvious favorites to repeat as division champs. And I hate the Phillies even more than I hate the Braves, so that sucks.

On Twitter this morning, someone asked me if I still thought the Mets shouldn’t have pursued Lee this offseason.

What? Of course I still think that. As a Mets fan, my foremost concern is that the Mets get better for the short- and long-term, and if I didn’t believe signing Lee was the best way for the team to do that yesterday or in September I’m not about to change my mind just because the Phillies signed him. That’d be some weird, Freudian approach to roster construction, and not a good one.

Besides, if Cliff Lee supposedly rejected the Yankees’ six-year, $132 million offer with a vesting option for the seventh year, that means the Mets would have had to beat that to lock up Lee. And I mean, hey, it’s not my money. But it sure seems like handing a 32-year-old pitcher $140 million over six years is a great way to get the Mets right back into the inflexible mess they’re in right now.

And just on a plain visceral level, do you really want a guy who apparently loves Philadelphia so much? What type of judgment is that? C’mon.

The Phillies will be awesome next year. They’ll have Lee, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels in their rotation. That’s unreal. Unreal. You can pencil them into the playoffs for 2011. Even if one of those fellows goes down, they’ll have the best starting pitching in baseball.

They’ll also be one of the very oldest teams in baseball, quite likely the oldest. They were the oldest team in baseball last year, and now they’re all a year older — you probably know how that works. Chase Utley missed 40-odd games with injuries. Ryan Howard suffered the lowest OPS of his career. Jimmy Rollins hasn’t been good since 2008.

As Mets fans, we think of the Phillies as invincible because the Phillies are the bad guys, and the ones that so often victimize our favorite team. But the cracks are starting to show. Probably not enough to slow them in 2011, but don’t go writing off 2012 for the Mets. Have you been watching baseball? Do you not realize how quickly things can go south for old players?

For a variety of reasons, the Mets could not sign Cliff Lee. They didn’t have the money and he didn’t seem particularly eager to pitch in New York. That’s fine, because the Mets should not have signed Cliff Lee. The Phillies’ decision is perhaps defensible since they’ve got an old team and an opportunity to win now and flags fly forever. They can worry about how they’ve got $80 million committed in 2013 to four players who are 33 and older in 2013.

And Mets fans, what we need to worry about most is that the Mets do the right things to make the Mets better. The Mets seem to be doing that. Hold it together.

Carl Crawford is a very nice baseball player. He gets on base at a solid rate, hits a few home runs, steals bases at an excellent clip, and plays fantastic defense in left field. Due to his all-around contributions, Crawford probably ranks among the top 20 position players in baseball.

When he signed a seven-year, $142 million deal with the Red Sox last night, Crawford became the seventh-highest paid player in baseball. It should be noted that of the six players ahead of him — Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Howard, Joe Mauer, C.C. Sabathia, Johan Santana and Mark Teixeira — at least half of their contracts already appear to be overpays and potential long-term albatrosses.

Based on Fangraphs’ WAR — which heavily values Crawford’s defense — the newest Red Sox has been worth between $25 and $28 million the last two seasons, meaning he’ll likely be worth his contract for at least the next couple of years. But since much of Crawford’s game is based on his legs, it’s no sure thing he’ll be providing ample return on his contract in its waning years, when he’ll be in his mid-30s.

The Red Sox’ position is defensible. They managed 89 wins in baseball’s toughest division despite a rash of injuries in 2010, and they traded for Adrian Gonzalez earlier this offseason. Boston must capitalize on the years it has with one of baseball’s most valuable assets — a duo of excellent young pitchers in Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz. The additions of Crawford and Gonzalez make the team obvious favorites for postseason play in the next few years, and flags fly forever and all that.

Matt Cerrone suggested recently — in a post I can’t currently dig up — that top free agents this offseason could be getting such huge contracts because of teams’ recent trend toward locking up young players to long-term deals. That creates more competition for the few top-flight players that do hit the market, so contracts become more expensive. Supply and demand and whatnot.

So by that rationale, Crawford and Jayson Werth are not wild overpays, teams just know that the new price of free agents is high, and teams have more flexibility to sign free agents to fill holes because they’ve got many of their homegrown players locked down to reasonably team-friendly deals. The Sox, for example, have Lester, Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia under contract for several years at below-market rates.

Anyway, if that’s true, it would stand to reason that at some point the market should start turning back around. If Mike Stanton or Jason Heyward sees the type of money that Werth and Crawford are getting on the open market, he could opt to wait out free agency instead of letting his team buy out his arbitration years and the few seasons beyond. That means less money in the near-term and significantly more risk to the player, of course — one injury could jeopardize a life’s worth of money — but as the reward grows greater, it’s hard to imagine more players not taking that risk.

And then eventually, I guess, the cycle repeats itself.

In the here and now, I wonder how Crawford’s contract affects Jose Reyes’ status with the Mets. From 2006-2008, Reyes was a very comparable player to Crawford, only playing a premium position. He always says he loves New York and he wants to be a Met, but if he returns to form in 2011, he will likely stand to make a ton of money on the open market.

The team should probably work to lock up Reyes to an extension as soon as it determines he’s healthy and productive and apt to be the shortstop in Flushing for the long-term. If he’s playing well, Reyes will likely become more expensive as he approaches free agency and as he and his agent begin to consider the offseason payoffs to players like Crawford and Werth.