The Mets can’t walk and chew gum at the same time

That’s not just some jerky Braves fan saying that, according to Murray Chass, the people that try to deal with them are saying it:

But more than one agent cited the Mets’ inability to deal with more than one free agent at a time as the primary reason they lost out on free agents. “We’re interested in your guy,” more than one agent recalled the Mets saying, “but we have to deal with this other guy first.”

In one instance, the Mets were a player’s first choice, an agent said, but he was one or two down on the Mets’ pecking order - a phrase used by another agent - and the player and the agent weren’t going to wait for the Mets to deal with them. They went elsewhere. Another agent said that Omar Minaya, the Mets’ general manager, told him at the winter meetings in December that the Mets would address their catching need in January. “How can they wait and be sure what will be there?” the agent asked.

All of this squares with Ken Rosenthal’s report from last week that the team hasn’t approached the offseason with a coherent plan. Indeed, Rosenthal suggested that everything is being micromanaged by Jeff Wilpon and that Omar is being bypassed. Chass notes that none of the agents he spoke to negotiated directly with Wilpon, but even if he’s not handling the actual negotiations doesn’t mean that he’s not running the show. Indeed, the worst micromanagers I’ve ever dealt with came up with the stupid plans themselves but made me carry them out so that they wouldn’t take the heat.

But regardless of who’s calling the shots here, it seems pretty clear that the Mets’ basic approach is totally screwed up. Too linear. It’s like Khan getting pwned by Kirk in the final battle because he thinks of space in two-dimensional terms. And Omar and the Wilpons don’t even have a Genesis Device they can activate to at least make their competitor’s victory a costly one.