As they prepare for their second managerial hire of the offseason, the Mets already lead the industry in one category this winter: liberating themselves from financial commitments.

In jettisoning Carlos Beltran as their manager Thursday, the Mets came to an agreement with the 42-year-old that they wouldn’t pay him the approximately $3 million he was set to earn through 2022. Instead, according to multiple industry sources, the team made a donation of about $200,000 to Beltran’s eponymous Carlos Beltran Foundation, which helps youths in his native Puerto Rico.

The press release issued by the team described this transaction as the two sides deciding to “mutually part ways,” which was accurate in the sense Beltran didn’t fight to keep his contract after the Mets concluded they didn’t want to move forward with him. If he had, the Mets might have invoked Beltran’s lies to The Post’s Joel Sherman about his involvement in the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal to challenge the contract. The discussions never got there, though, as Beltran, who earned more than $220 million as a player, clearly realized how badly he had erred and backed away from the table.

The Mets already had scored one of the biggest clawback victories in professional sports history when they renegotiated Yoenis Cespedes’ contract in the wake of his May 2019 interaction with a wild boar that resulted in him fracturing his right ankle. Cespedes, whom the Mets rewarded with a four-year, $110 million contract in November 2016, lost a guaranteed $15.7 million and, if he can’t stay healthy in 2020, could wind up losing nearly $30 million