Arn Tellem, the new agent for Hisanori Takahashi, indicated Thursday that the looming deadline the Mets face for completing negotiations with the Japanese left-hander may be extended.

When Takahashi signed in March, the Mets agreed to make him a free agent on Oct. 31 if an extension had not been worked out. However, if Takahashi were to be cut loose on Sunday per that agreement, he could not re-sign and appear in the majors for the Mets until May 15 — essentially meaning he would have to sign elsewhere.

– Adam Rubin, ESPN New York.

Good. Given the Mets’ obvious need for pitching, it’s probably best they bring Takahashi back. Though I’m almost certain that versatility is an overrated quality in pitchers, the reputation for versatility is valuable — if the guy can actually pitch, not Jorge Sosa-style versatility. Takahashi would give the Mets a viable option for the back of the rotation or pretty much any assignment in the bullpen.

Obviously it comes down to the price tag, as always. But there don’t appear to many great free-agent options to eat up innings in 2011.

A few people have asked me my choice for Mets’ manager. I’m tempted to resist picking any candidate, citing again my general lack of relevant information about the various candidates — personalities, philosophies, contract demands, etc.

But that would be a second-straight copout, and I recently went two straight Sandwich of the Weeks without giving definitive ratings and I’m not looking to go down that road again, so here goes:

Tim Bogar.

Seems like a longshot, sure, since I haven’t seen his name come up anywhere but here. But Bogar interviewed for the Blue Jays’ job, so he’s certainly considered a Major League managerial candidate by some.

Plus he has experience working for the Red Sox and Rays, a pair of well-run, top-down organizations of the type I hope the Mets become. Every team Bogar managed in the Minors won and won often, he earned manager-of-the-year honors in multiple leagues, and he was named Baseball America’s top managerial prospect from the Eastern League in 2006.

And he obviously has the Mets ties, which should endear him to ownership, according to the rumors. (Incidentally, Brendon Desrochers points out that Mets ties are available at the MLB.com shop.)

So if for some reason you care who I think should be the Mets’ next manager, there you have it: Tim Bogar. Done.

Could Tim Bogar take over and call for bunts constantly, or destroy every arm in his bullpen, or ceaselessly turn to Guillermo Mota in tight spots? Certainly. Like I said, I really don’t know much about any of these guys besides Bobby Valentine, and he seems destined for Milwaukee. For all I know, Tim Bogar is a hatchet murderer with a personal vendetta against David Wright. Here’s hoping Sandy Alderson does the due diligence to determine whether any potential manager is also a homicidal maniac.

As for managerial lightning rod Wally Backman? Color me ambivalent — which I believe amounts to taking an original position, since everyone on the Internet seems certain he will either lead the Mets to perpetual glory or drag them to sub-Torborgian lows.

My understanding is that Backman loves bunting in many situations, something of a turn-off. But he does have a very strong reputation among his players and ex-players, and he does seem to win most places he goes. He has demons in the closet — a DUI charge and a domestic-dispute arrest — but he has purportedly stayed out of trouble since the latter, in 2001.

I talked to Backman for a while after we filmed a Baseball Show episode with him in Brooklyn, and I came away pretty impressed with his knowledge of the personnel in the Mets’ system — not just the Cyclones. I’m not sure if that means a ton for a Major League manager, but I’d give the guy credit for paying close attention.

So put me down for uncertain in that epic debate.

I think the main thing is, if I’m going to try out having faith in Alderson, I should probably at least trust him to handle his first reasonably big decision in his new job. So though I reserve the right to determine that it was certainly the wrong one come June when new-manager-guy drops Wright to eighth in the lineup or something, I will probably just assume that whatever choice Alderson makes is at least a decent one, knowing all along that the field manager is a position wildly overrated in its importance and that fans of every team in the league are certain their manager sucks.

Unless it’s Bogar. It’d be sweet if it’s Bogar.

Conflicting Tweets last night. Andy Martino:

Daniels request came through back channels, I’m told. They simply wanted to hire Alderson.

And the inimitable Jon Heyman:

daniels never asked the mets to wait, as 1 report claimed. he is in the world series. anyone really think hes calling the mets about a job?

Which Tweeter told the truth? Who knows? Who cares?

Here’s the thing: Jon Daniels’ Rangers are in the World Series for the first time in franchise history. The Rangers have new owners that took over in August, and part-owner and CEO Chuck Greenberg has said publicly that Daniels is going nowhere.

The sale of the team means Daniels gets an out clause in his contract, but it’s hard to imagine a situation wherein a brand-new ownership group is eager to let a GM walk away after building the franchise’s first AL champion.

Presumably Daniels is a smart dude — he got a GM job at 28, after all — and recognizes that Greenberg’s statement gives him a leg up in any negotiations for a contract extension. And if the big-market Mets of Daniels’ hometown still had a front-office opening when Daniels and Greenberg sat down, it would give Daniels a hell of a lot of leverage to demand big money.

So, though I have no source or inside information or anything, I’m guessing if Daniels really did reach out to the Mets through mysterious “back channels,” it was just that — a leverage play. And if it did happen, presumably the Mets either called his bluff or decided Alderson was the better candidate anyway — a reasonable enough decision — and perhaps recognized that waiting on Daniels only to ultimately hire someone else would undermine the new GM before he even started.

I’m a pretty big fan of Daniels’ work and if the Rangers had been eliminated sooner I would have loved to see him in the mix in Flushing. But I can take no issue with how this played out, regardless of if he actually somehow contacted the Mets.

Sandy Alderson it is, then.

Cool.

I resisted endorsing any of the GM candidates here, but that resistance grew difficult as I read more and more about Alderson. Here’s what I wrote on Oct. 11:

While I think the bluster about the particulars of the New York market is normally little more than the New York media overemphasizing the impact of the New York media, in this one instance I think it’s important the Mets hire someone they feel can withstand the pressure to compete immediately, shoulder the comparisons to the winning team across town, and exercise the requisite patience to turn the Mets into a successful, sustainable franchise.

And man, it sure sounds like Alderson is that dude. Read this. I’m nearly speechless. Giddy? Maybe.

A little bit skeptical? Always. But that ESPN interview, and all the stuff from DuckSnorts and everywhere else, really present Alderson as a confident leader well-versed in modern analytics. That’s, well, it’s nothing short of awesome.

As Mets fans, we’re innately cynical. We associate hope mostly with impending doom. We assume every decision the team makes is the wrong one, even when it appears to be the correct one on paper. Late at night, when we allow our rational minds to wander into less reasonable territories, we consider the possibility that our team is somehow cursed, that 1969 and 1986 were weird, miraculous digressions from an ignominious tradition of losing baseball.

And by “we” I mean “me.” I am an innately cynical Mets fan. I think those things sometimes.

Maybe Alderson changes that. Maybe, under Alderson, the Mets will remind us that objective analysis and sharp management trump fatalist mumbo-jumbo almost every time, in the same the way some lucky Red Sox fans realized the Curse of the Bambino was, in truth, little more than the Curse of a Decades-Long Saga of Mismanagement, Bad Luck and Bad Baseball, in the same way Rex Ryan took over the Jets and waved his middle finger in the face of perpetual mediocrity.

I don’t really know yet. But I know there’s now hope, a sneaking suspicion that someone in charge of the Mets might actually know what he’s doing, a feeling I haven’t had since… well, never. Not since I started understanding and paying attention to this stuff in the mid-90s.

Now all we need is patience. Well, pitching and middle-infield help and a manager, too, but mostly patience. It takes time to reshape a franchise from top-to-bottom, and since that appears to be Alderson’s M.O., it’s hard to expect he’ll have the team operating and developing players and playing baseball like he presumably wants it to by the time the Mets take the field in April.

But for once, we can imagine it eventually happening and know that it might not be a ridiculous pipedream. That might not be enough to put asses in seats in April or guarantee meaningful games in September, but it sure goes a hell of a long way to assuage the frustrations of fans fed up with false hustle, two closers and Prevention and Recovery.

Maybe it’s a new day, is what I’m saying. Looks like things are looking up.