I’m really not trying to be snarky about this, but I can’t help myself. If the Mets should target a single free agent this offseason, it should be this one:

Thinking, “we should pursue Randy Wolf now that his value is high because we missed out on him when his value is low,” is akin to saying, “well, I really missed the boat on buying Microsoft stock when I thought about it in 1986, so I better recoup that by purchasing a lot of it now.”

It’s not that difficult a concept to grasp, and I’m certain it’s covered in Mankiw’s introduction to microeconomic principles.

Also included, I’m sure, is an explanation of sunk-cost economics, which would help them understand why they might move on from Omar Minaya instead of keeping him around because they owe him $3.5 million dollars.

But hey, if the Mets’ front office is too busy to do that much reading this offseason, I understand. In that case, they can simply hire my old roommate and namesake, Ted Burke.

Ted works down in Virginia now and hosts a Colorado Rockies podcast, but I’m certain he’d be happy to relocate for a job in a Major League front office.

I know he’s qualified because he was a total stud economics student in college. I know that because every time I introduced myself to some other econ student, they would curse me out for always ruining the curve, and I would have to explain that they meant to curse out my similarly named roommate, who probably wasn’t showing up for too many classes but managed to get the highest score on most of the econ tests.

Basically, they could just sit him at a desk somewhere, and whenever they were thinking about making a move, they could explain their reasoning and say, “Hey, Ted, does that makes sense?” and he could tell them if it did or didn’t.

Also, he’s doing some groundbreaking work in the field of facial hair.

If you’re familiar with my work at SNY.tv, you know that I don’t believe anything I read in the offseason with regards to player movement.

But I do like weighing in on potential moves, which launched the Wireless Calling series last offseason. So this is that, I suppose, updated for the blog format.

Wireless Calling: Randy Wolf

Tim Dierkes at MLBTradeRumors.com sees the Mets signing Wolf to a three-year deal in excess of $30 million dollars. Tim admits he’s guessing, of course, but there have been reports linking the Mets to Wolf.

Most of those reports focus on the fact that the Mets feel they “missed out” on Wolf last offseason.

That, my friends, is a terrible reason to sign Randy Wolf.

Wolf had a great year for the Dodgers. He threw over 200 innings for the first time since 2003 and posted a career-best 129 ERA+ and 1.101 WHIP.

He turned out to a terrific signing for Los Angeles, who took advantage of the market and inked him to a one-year, incentive-laden deal that ended up costing them around $8 million.

That’s not the situation now. Now, Randy Wolf is as valuable a commodity as he has been in a long, long time, and Dierkes is right to expect him to land a deal similar to the one Oliver Perez got last year.

But before 2008, Wolf hadn’t stayed healthy for a full season since 2003 and before 2009, he hadn’t been appreciably better than average since 2002.

So to sign him, at age 33, to a three-year deal befitting the second-best free agent pitcher would be foolishness of the highest order.

The chances of Wolf repeating his 2009 success are slim. This season, he yielded a .254 BABIP (batting average on balls in play), well below his career .294 mark. That means he probably got a bit lucky and benefited from good defense behind him, neither of which is likely to repeat itself with the Mets in 2010.

If Wolf’s stock drops and it appears likely he’ll sign for far less than the deal Tim suggested, then sure, the Mets should be a player. He’s not a bad pitcher, and he’s coming off two straight healthy years.

But signing him to a longterm deal coming off a career year could be an epic buy-high mistake. And if the Mets did that just because they felt they missed out on him last year, it’s an inexcusable example of operating in hindsight rather than foresight.

This year is not last year. Randy Wolf is no longer a good bargain-bin pickup. Signing Wolf to a three-year deal because he’s coming off a couple of good seasons would not undo their mistake. More likely, they’d be signing him instead of someone better and less expensive, and so they’d just be making the same mistake again.

Baseball’s offseason is upon us, and with it various outlines for how the Mets should revamp their roster.

This is an annual tradition, of course, and a fun way to kill time between the end of one season and the start of another. Sam Page turned in a particularly good plan for Amazin’ Avenue last week, but as Matt Cerrone points out — and Sam admits in the post itself — it’s entirely unlikely to happen.

But that’s not really my issue.

My concern about “plans” is that they might be a drop too similar to what Omar Minaya himself scripts out at the beginning of each offseason, and it’s a habit that often gets him into a lot of trouble.

Take last offseason, for example. On Jan. 13, Minaya said: “Right now, we’re not in the position player market. We’re in the pitcher market.”

I responded with this article, one of my all-time favorites, and one that got me thoroughly trashed around the Internet. Minaya’s metaphor, I maintained — and still do — was a faulty one. The position-player market and pitcher market are the same market.

The market is all available baseball players. The general manager enters the market with a certain amount of resources — in money and players — and must work to get the most value he can in return for what he spends. Obviously a team’s needs are an important factor in determining that value; a good third baseman is worthless to a team that already has a great one.

Last year, when the Mets had a decided need in the starting rotation but also some big-time question marks in the lineup, Minaya determined that he wanted a starting pitcher and went out and spent big on the “best” one available — a certain Oliver Perez.

So to extend this metaphor, think about it this way: I’m really in the mood for steak. When I get to the store, though, I find that there has been a run on steak, and the last remaining piece of steak has been marked up, plus isn’t all that appealing anyway. Meanwhile, perhaps because everyone suddenly wants steak, chicken is on sale. I could buy the chicken and a bunch of delicious seasonings and side dishes to make that chicken taste better, or I could buy the steak.

I would buy the chicken. Minaya, last year at least, bought the steak. That’s the problem with adhering to the grocery list.

The general manager’s job is to put together the best possible baseball team. It doesn’t matter really matter what kind of players he needs to get there — whether his team is power-laden or pitching-heavy or defensively apt — so long as they can win ballgames.

So when he approaches the offseason, his job should be to read the market and use the resources at his disposal to put together the best team. That’s all. Setting a plan at the offseason’s outset would be to imply that there’s no need to adapt to the whims of the market. It’s writing a grocery list and stubbornly sticking to it, ignoring what’s in stock and what’s on sale.

Matt Cerrone cites the Bill James Handbook to point out that it was 10 percent easier for right-hand hitters to hit home runs at Citi Field than in other National League parks.

Cool. And Cerrone is right that the Mets should stress this type of information when pursuing free agents. I’ve covered this before; there’s just not much evidence to suggest Citi Field diminishes offense nearly as much as it is purported to.

Still — and this is why I need to get that book — I’d love to see if there’s a way to figure out the tendencies of specific hitters who performed better at Citi Field. I know the handbook assesses hitter tendencies, and I wonder if the right-handed hitters that fared better at Citi were mostly right-handed pull hitters.

In the comments section from my post on Citi Field a few weeks ago, Sam Page from Amazin’ Avenue pointed out that David Wright hit about 10 balls in Citi that would have been homers at Shea, according to HitTracker Online.

I love HitTracker, but I’m still not willing to go all in on its ability to judge park effects, especially since Wright struggled to hit home runs on the road as well.

But it does look to the eye as though guys who traditionally spray the ball around, like Wright, might be hurt (in their home-run totals, at least) by Citi’s cavernous right-center field gap while a pull-hitting righty bat might be able to take advantage of the relatively short fences in left and left-center.

And HitTracker paints an interesting picture in regards to the two big free-agent left fielders this offseason. Here’s Matt Holliday’s home-run chart from 2009:

And here’s Jason Bay’s:

I’m not certain what this means, if anything. Holliday’s homers travel further than Bay’s on average, but he spreads them around a lot more. Bay is far more pull-heavy.

Of course, Bay played half his games in Boston with the Green Monster making a tempting target in left field, and at least a few of those wouldn’t have gone out of Citi Field, or Busch Stadium and Oakland Coliseum, where Holliday played.

Home runs aside, Holliday is younger than Bay and a far superior all-around player, and so in a vacuum, the Mets would be much better served to sign Holliday.

But the offseason market is a fluid thing, and if there appears to be a lot more competition for Scott Boras-client Holliday and Bay’s stock drops, the Mets might want to at least consider how Bay’s pull power would play at their home park.

He’s not worth nearly, nearly as much as Holliday is in dollars or years, but he’s still a very good power hitter, and I would guess he’s the type that would succeed at Citi Field.