So it’s no secret that the Mets will be looking for an upgrade in left field this offseason, and luckily for them, both good player Jason Bay and very good player Matt Holliday will be available on the free-agent market.

Unfortunately for the Mets, both the Red Sox and Yankees will be looking for left fielders, as well. I have no idea what specifically those clubs will look for, but Sox GM Theo Epstein has been adamant that he will try to re-sign Bay.

There’s no guarantee that will happen — it’s likely Epstein is openly praising Bay only because Bay is part of the Red Sox. But should it happen, and should the Yanks offer Holliday a blank check — also not a sure thing because of the way they spent money last offseason — it’s easy to imagine the Mets settling for current Yanks left fielder and free agent-to-be Johnny Damon.

Here’s why:

1) Durability: If you’ve followed the Mets under Omar Minaya, you recognize that their offseason tendency is always to fix the principal concern from the previous season. In 2009, that was the team’s inability to stay healthy. In 2009, Damon played in more than 140 games for the 14th consecutive season.

2) Marketability: It will be tough for the Mets to sell tickets and ads in February, but Damon would help the cause. Maybe not as much as Holliday, for sure, but Damon is a familiar face in New York with a reputation as a clubhouse leader and a hustler. The Mets could try to sell fans on his intangibles while propping him up as a “proven winner” after his contributions to the 2004 Red Sox and, should they succeed, the 2009 Yankees.

3) Illusions of power and defense: The Mets are looking to add a power bat to the lineup and upgrade their defense. Damon doesn’t really do either of those things, but he is coming off a 24-homer season and probably maintains some of his rep as a rangy defender even though he’s outgrown it. If the Mets wanted to get really creative, they could argue that Damon’s tendency to pull his homers could help him take advantage of Citi’s right-field corner.

In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’m not on board with this idea I created myself. Here’s why they shouldn’t:

1) He’s 35: There’s a reason very few players have played 14 straight seasons with 140 games or more. Old players get hurt more often. Signing Damon — who has managed to stay on the field despite numerous minor injuries — to a multi-year deal because of his ability to stay healthy would likely prove ironic.

2) He’s not good at defense: Damon could still boast above-average range, according to UZR, as of 2008. But in 2009, it appears the nagging injuries and Matsui-forced inability to take days off as a DH caught up with him. Also, if you’ve seen him throw, you know about his “arm.”

3) He’s the biggest sellout of all time: This is a subjective thing and I really don’t begrudge baseball players for taking the largest contracts offered to them, but leaving the Red Sox for the Yankees while shaving his caveman beard and cutting his hair was just too much. C’mon, guy. At least get yourself a beard clause in the contract. He makes Mark McGrath look like Ian MacKaye.

Marty Noble has a new Mets.com mailbag out today, and in it, he discusses Angel Pagan:

He was a productive offensive player last season. But his errors — of omission, commission and in thinking — were so many, assessing his skills can’t be done so readily.

I don’t know. Maybe that’s true. Pagan did make a few really terrible mental mistakes in 2009. But were they really so bad as to take away from the value he added to the team?

Not nearly. Bill James Online, which relies on video scouts from Baseball Info Solutions to judge how many plays a defender makes above or below the average player at his position, had Pagan as a +12 left fielder, a +7 center fielder and a +1 right fielder. Presumably, that includes the penalties levied against Pagan for his blunders.

And on the basepaths? The same site has him as a +12 baserunner, meaning he gained 12 more bases with his feet than the average player would in similar situations. (Note: I initially botched — by a lot — my reading of his stats page. I wrote that he was +35, which is his career total.)

He was thrown out on the bases four times, which isn’t great. But I’d guess that a player so aggressive on the basepaths will always be more prone to the occasional gaffe. So while everyone was so busy chastising Pagan for the times he cost the Mets runs with his baserunning, they forgot to celebrate all the runs he actually earned the team with his legs.

So essentially, there are ways to assess readily assess his skills despite his lapses in concentration. I’m not saying we should take the Bill James Online stats as gospel, but since they do weigh both his positive and negative contributions, they provide a lot of assistance in figuring out how to value his tendency for the baserunning or defensive yip.

And the verdict shows that Pagan, when you combine his plus defense and plus baserunning with his .837 OPS, was pretty damn good in 2009.

Should the Mets count on it going forward? Maybe not. But they certainly shouldn’t hold against Pagan all the nonsensical sanctimony about him playing the game the wrong way.

Incidentally, the first question in Noble’s mailbag regards Carl Crawford’s “personality and leadership” and is posed by a Queens resident named “James K.” Could this be James Kannengieser, Amazin’ Avenue writer, occasional TedQuarters commenter and sabermetric knight-errant of the Mets’ blogosphere? James, are you baiting Marty Noble?