Editor's note: Yahoo! Sports will examine the offseason of every MLB team before spring training begins in mid-February. Our series continues with the New York Mets.

2012 record: 74-88

Finish: Fourth place, NL East

2012 final payroll: $103.7 million

Estimated 2013 opening day payroll: $90 million

Yahoo! Sports offseason rank: 28th

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OFFSEASON ACTION

The masterwork that was Sandy Alderson's handling of the R.A. Dickey trade this offseason should be studied, dissected and, whenever possible, emulated. He turned a 38-year-old pitcher on a one-year contract into six years of the game's best catching prospect, six years of a frontline pitching prospect, a high-ceiling 18-year-old and a stopgap catcher. And when your owner needs a tourniquet to stop hemorrhaging money, this is the sort of deal a general manager must concoct to keep hope afloat and progress alive.

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That the Mets – the New York Mets – are even in this position where they must play the game like a small-market patsy is simultaneously hilarious and embarrassing, an indictment and guilty verdict on the ownership of Fred Wilpon, who long ago should've been sentenced to exile. Somebody who needs to refinance $450 million worth of debt simply to cover day-to-day operations, as the New York Post reported the Mets just did, belongs nowhere near a team that should operate as a monster, not a mouse.

Instead, the onus is on Alderson to do what he did with Dickey, which is parlay the pieces New York does have into blockbuster returns. Whether the Mets' contract negotiations with Dickey ever were earnest – and either the Wilpons are poorer than anybody can imagine or the lowball offers were there to create the illusion of a potential extension – doesn't matter. Dickey liked New York and gave the Mets a number to hit, so there always was a threat of him re-signing, which gave Alderson proper leverage in his trade negotiations.

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How he balanced the juggling of the Dickey talks and the eight-year, $138 million contract extension with David Wright, a move that bought some of the goodwill necessary to deal the reigning Cy Young winner, was worthy of a spot with the Flying Wallendas. Alderson waited and waited and waited, letting the free-agent pitching market blow up financially, and he waited some more, until the James Shields-Wil Myers deal reset the trade market, too.

And then Alderson struck, landing catcher Travis d'Arnaud, pitcher Noah Syndergaard and plaudits from around the industry for his industriousness. When the rest of your offseason consists of eating more than $20 million of a bad contract from your predecessor, trading for a fringe outfielder to fight for a spot among a cavalcade of others and re-signing a LOOGY coming off shoulder surgery, well, you'd better make that deal count.

Because these days, with the Mets operating like they play in Tampa Bay or Kansas City or Milwaukee, that's the best anyone can wish for.

REALITY CHECK

Since the last quarter-century has been rather unkind to Mets fans, perhaps a carrot of optimism is worth dangling before the gore: The starting rotation, with Johan Santana, Matt Harvey, Jonathon Niese, Dillon Gee and eventually Zack Wheeler, could be pretty good. Especially since Santana is in the final season of his six-year, $137.5 million contract.

Story continues