Maybe, just maybe, we can look at this as a sign that the Mets aren’t as constrained as the media says they are and they have plenty to spend as they have been saying all along.

You convinced me to jump on the anti-Cora bandwagon. If the Mets are going to continue to penny pinch and limit their offseason budgets, then there is absolutely no excuse to pay Cora anything more than the league minimum. And if he said, “I want 2 million or I’m out of here”, I would have been fine with the “Shake a tree and six utility infields will fall out” theory.

And I assume you’re talking about SNY.tv’s Tom Boorstein when you mention your former co-worker who wasn’t very kid at his job. I kid of course…we all know Tom is not a really awesome guy.

One definite point of contention would be on Valdez: It’s not hard to argue, when looking only at the stats, that Valdez would indeed be a better backup middle infielder than Cora. Unlike Cora (and Anderson Hernandez, for that matter), Valdez appeared to be an excellent defensive shortstop last season, something very valuable to a team with a strong groundball pitcher in Pelfrey that could add at least one more in the form of Marquis, Pineiro or Garland.

I agree that there’s some value to having a good clubhouse guy, as you suggest. But there are also good clubhouse guys that are above replacement level at their position, guys who might actually be worth the $2 million on the field who can bring leadership in the clubhouse for no extra fee.

I do think, though, that good clubhouse guys can develop organically, and that on well-constructed teams, they do. It’s a credit to Cora that he managed to maintain a great attitude on a terrible team last season, but it didn’t appear to do that much to help the Mets in the standings.

That’s unfair, of course, because it’s also not Cora’s fault that everyone around him got hurt. So there’s that.

As for the contracts adding up, I suppose we’ll see. It’s always tough to say in a vacuum or to isolate a single acquisition not made, but Minaya makes a ton of these deals — Tim Redding, Cory Sullivan, Marlon Anderson, Julio Franco — and the Mets do operate within a finite budget.

First, we’re not comparing Alex Cora and his $2 million to zero. The major-league minimum for 2009 is $400,000. A $400,000 player to fill Cora’s role would be someone like Wilson Valdez. I’m assuming everyone agrees that we’d rather have Alex Cora than Wilson Valdez. I am quite dubious that anyone we would be happy with who would fill that role will cost us any less than $800,000, if not more. The expense of signing Cora is being exaggerated.

Second, the concept that a player’s value may not be wholly captured by VORP or the stat du jour is not fanciful. If Cora can impart some useful knowledge or instruction to Angel Pagan that Wilson Valdez would not, that is value. If Jerry Manuel can count on a veteran like Cora to be his own manager, rather than having to waste time and energy he would spending a younger or more clueless player how to do some basic things, that is value. If Cora can inspire at least some of his teammates to play harder by playing through a painful injury, as he did last season, that can be of some value.

The question is *how much* value there is in stuff like that. No one knows how to measure it. Chances are it’s not worth $1.2 million per year. But I don’t think that managers and executives are morons for thinking that it’s worth *something.”

When someone can cite with some precision a situation in which the Mets have been prevented from making an important signing or acquisition because of the Cora deal or a series of deals like it, I’ll be more persuaded that it’s a bad move. In the absence of that, I think it’s been over-analyzed.