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.