A bunch of people have asked me, via a bunch of different media, what I think the Mets should do about the forthcoming Jose Reyes decision. Reyes, as you know, is slated to be a free agent after this season. Now Jon Heyman has tweeted that the Mets will let him play the full season to prove he’s healthy before they extend him another contract.

This is a tough call. If Reyes stays healthy for the full the season and plays as he is capable of — as he did from 2006-2008 — he’ll have little motivation to rejoin the Mets beyond what he always says (and what most players always say) about loving the organization and the city and everything else. And if all that happens, he can count on a massive payday.

If the Mets work to extend Reyes before he demonstrates he can stay on the field and be productive, they risk paying him big money to stay on the disabled list or put up the underwhelming numbers he did in 2010.

Sandy Alderson has said that “stolen bases are a footnote” to winning baseball, a quote many construed to mean Reyes is a goner after the season. But even if Reyes stole no bases at all from 2006-2008, he would still rank among the premier shortstops in the Majors. In fact, since 2006, Reyes has been third among all shortstops in OPS, behind only Derek Jeter and Hanley Ramirez. And he does steal bases at a high enough clip to make them worthwhile, so, you know gravy.

Many will — and have — argued that Reyes’ value is in his legs and so signing him to a multi-year extension could be foolish, as he will inevitably slow down over time. I think that undercuts the man a bit. There’s plenty of value in his bat and his glove too. Both of those, of course, require his legs (his slugging percentage is at least partly inflated by his ability to take extra bases) but certainly not the way stolen bases do.

It has long been supposed that Reyes, who is deceptively broad-shouldered, will develop more power in time. Only he’s 27 now, and it hasn’t happened yet. It’s worth noting, too, a tidbit Rob Neyer passed along today: While players hit their offensive peaks in their late 20s, they hit their defensive peaks from 22-25. Reyes may never again be the elite defensive player he was when he came up.

So what to do? We — I — like Reyes; he is a homegrown and enormously talented young player. If he succeeds in 2011 and the Mets re-sign him, the deal may be so expensive as to prove costly down the road. But if they determine he is not worth the massive salary he is likely to command (the Yankees, recall, may be looking for a shortstop soon enough), they will be accused of penny-pinching and small-market Sandying and everything else.

There’s no obvious answer, but to me the best solution seems like exactly the opposite of what Heyman says the Mets are doing. If the team determines early in the season that Reyes is again capable of getting on base at a 35-percent clip, it can work to lock him up long enough before he hits the open market to maintain some part of the discount afforded by his last two underwhelming seasons. There’s more risk that way, of course (he could get injured or revert to being a leadoff hitter with a .321 OBP).

But then that supposes that Alderson and Reyes’ agents are willing to negotiate in the season. So really I’ve got nothing. No easy answer. My bad.

Indulge me for a moment while I sort something out:

This site has never strived for objectivity. I don’t believe any such thing exists, for one, plus this is inherently an opinion-based blog, not a news outlet. My primary goal is clarity, both in my thought and in my writing (I often fail to achieve both, but that’s besides the point).

So I am trying to elucidate why, when I read this story in the Times this morning, my initial, visceral response was a pang of concern.

I have mixed feelings, as I suppose many Mets fans do, about the team’s ownership situation. Obviously I would prefer my favorite team not be riddled with debt, and I realize that there are prospective buyers out there whose involvement, both as part- or full-owners, will benefit the team in the long term (and some who could hurt it, too).

But I know I would prefer that this network not change hands. (And I should note that I have never met Fred or Jeff Wilpon outside of public forums. I don’t know what or how much involvement they have with people up the chain from me at SNY, as I am not privy to those details.)

I like my job. It puts a roof over my head and bacon on my table, for one, and it provides health insurance that I need very desperately. It affords me the opportunity to do all sorts of awesome things, many of them involving my favorite sport and my favorite team. No outlet before this one gave me the chance to write or opine in any quasi-professional setting.

And perhaps most importantly, no one has ever told me what to write about or what not to write about. No one tells me not to rip the Mets or their management, and no one tells me not to review sandwiches.

That’s something I value very much, and I fear that if this network changed hands, I could lose that freedom. And I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I did. So it is probably impossible for me to weigh in on the inclusion of SNY in any sale of the Mets without letting my massive — and, as far as I’m concerned, wholly justifiable — biases get in the way.

I will continue linking relevant news items and adding my two cents where appropriate.

Look: Johan Santana is an awesome pitcher. I love watching Johan Santana pitch. I have thoroughly enjoyed all 600 innings — even the bad ones — he has thrown in a Mets uniform.

But every time someone pens a lamentation for the Omar Minaya Era, it is qualified with an aside about Minaya’s obtaining Santana for “pennies on the dollar,” or something to that effect. (Jonah Keri’s otherwise strong writeup of the Mets’ ownership situation at Fangraphs is only the most recent example.) And I can’t see how that’s really the case.

The four young players the Mets traded for Johan Santana have not amounted to much, and may never.

But the Mets didn’t exactly trade four young players for Santana; the Mets traded four young players for the exclusive right to sign Santana to a market-rate contract. Santana was the best pitcher in the game when he was acquired, so that contract cost the Mets a lot of money.

To date, they’ve paid him $60 million. Fangraphs estimates he has been worth a little over $47 million in that time, but whatever. You pay a premium for top talent. Let’s say he has been worth it for these first three years.

On Opening Day of 2011, Santana will be 32 years old and on the disabled list recovering from shoulder surgery. And the Mets will owe him $77.5 million over the next three seasons. $77.5 million, with no guarantee he’ll ever be anything like the pitcher that dominated the National League in 2008. Will the exclusive right to give him that contract back in 2008 still seem so valuable by 2012? 2013?

And you can say: Oh but how could anyone have predicted an arm injury? Pretty easily, actually: He’s a pitcher. Pitchers get hurt, like, constantly. That’s why massive deals for free-agent pitchers tend to be bad ideas.

So while Santana has given the Mets more than the combined value of the four players they traded to the Twins, he is at this point unlikely to provide them anything like a full return on the resources they’ve invested in him. The deal seemed necessary at the time, with the Mets desperate for starting pitching and coming off the 2007 collapse, so this is not to say Minaya shouldn’t have executed it in the first place. But it’s probably time to stop talking about it like it was a total steal, since Santana’s contract seems likely to prove an albatross moving forward.