More than any other figure, Cespedes put the Nationals in their current predicament. His arrival in Queens at the trade deadline last summer completely altered the National League East race. Here, then, in January, he altered it again, taking less money over fewer years to remain with the Mets — securing the reigning National League champions’ position as the divisional favorite again, at the expense of their chief rivals.

Cespedes’s deal to remain in New York: three years and $75 million, according to a person with direct knowledge of the talks. But there are significant addenda, most notably an opt-out clause after 2016. Should Cespedes exercise it, according to the source, he would make $27.5 million — and still have the opportunity to enter free agency next winter, when the group of position players available won’t include players the caliber of Heyward and Upton and Chris Davis, all of whom banked more than $130 million.

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Even if he remains, Cespedes will receive more in average annual value than any free agent position player this year. More than Heyward ($23 million per over eight years), more than Davis ($23 million per over seven), more than Upton ($22.125 million over six years). He gets a no-trade clause. And he gets to go back to the team he transformed and to play in front of the Citi Field crowds he clearly adored. So he turned down what Fox Sports reported was a five-year deal from Washington worth at least $100 million.

What the Mets get: the guy who hit 17 homers in his 57 regular season games with New York the guy with a career on-base plus-slugging percentage of .805. (Nationals who posted an .805 OPS in 2015: Harper, Bryce and … well, no one else.) The day the Mets traded for Cespedes — a day they entered trailing the Nationals by three games in the divisional race — New York stood last in the National League in runs scored. Over the second half of the season, no NL team scored more runs than the Mets.

So this is that rare signing that impacts a race in two ways, strengthening one team and weakening another. How can losing a player the Nationals never had weaken them? Fit it into the context of their entire offseason.

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The Nationals entered the winter pitching the idea that they didn’t have to do much of anything other than reshape their bullpen and figure out second base to contend with the Mets. Though that essentially amounted to saying, “Hey, that team that disappointed you last summer by winning just 83 games and failing to contend down the stretch? We’re bringing back a lesser version of it,” there was some logic to it.

That logic: Put Michael A. Taylor in center, where he already played 96 games last summer spelling Denard Span, and let him run. Move Danny Espinosa to shortstop to replace Ian Desmond and keep the seat warm until prospect Trea Turner is ready. Shift Anthony Rendon back to third base and then find someone to fill in at second — which turned out to be Mets postseason hero Daniel Murphy, signed for three years. Lose Jordan Zimmermann in the rotation, sure, but come back with a group of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, Joe Ross and Tanner Roark — with top prospect Lucas Giolito not far off — and, boom!, there’s your contender.

That logic, though, is for winter caravans and public relations chats. What we know now — after not just the pursuit of Cespedes, but the pursuit of Heyward and Zobrist and Upton — is that General Manager Mike Rizzo wanted to make a splash. Some would argue he needed to make a splash.

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Right now, his splashes are these: signing Murphy, which will add flavor to the already aromatic Mets-Nats rivalry; dealing trade-him-while-he’s-hot infielder Yunel Escobar to the Angels for bullpen help in the form of Trevor Gott; and trading erstwhile closer Drew Storen to Toronto for leadoff man/center fielder Ben Revere. These moves, almost inarguably, make sense, and Rizzo could say after the acquisition of Revere two weeks ago that his winter was done.

But pursuing Cespedes shows that the Nats’ public self-assessment had to be different than their internal self-assessment. When asked about offseason needs, Rizzo uniformly says he will pursue whatever baseball deals make sense. You could argue that going after Upton and, to a lesser extent, Cespedes didn’t make much sense given Washington’s current roster construction.

Upton has never played a game in center field, and Cespedes has played more than three times as many games in left as he has in center. The current Nats have MVP Harper in right and veteran Jayson Werth in left. Even with Werth’s age (37 in May) and injury history (average of 111 games the past four years), Cespedes’s arrival would have meant a crowd.

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So that puts further emphasis on the idea that Washington feels pressure to make a major move. But more than further tweaks to the bullpen or enhancements to the rotation — both of which would be wise — there is an organizational identity at stake here. Internally, the Nationals badly want to be considered among the standards in the game. Externally, that notion is — not a joke, but not close to reality. Dusty Baker may well be the right man to manage the Nats, but the process of his hiring — bungled as it was, with an ownership group more concerned about who leaked what to whom than about who will lead the team — still reflects poorly on the entire organization. Each free agent who spurned the Nats had his own reasons for going elsewhere, sure, but collectively — well, even some internally wonder why no one will take the Lerners’ money.

Regardless of who’s here and who isn’t, it is a team, too, that must beat the Mets. New York, with Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz, has a better rotation than Washington. The fact that Cespedes will bat anywhere from second to fifth for them means their lineup could be as good or better, too.

Cespedes will not bat in those positions for the Nationals, and the Nationals will tell you it doesn’t matter, that they have a team they like and a team that could contend. And that may well be true. But a team that is completely comfortable with its makeup and its reputation does not pursue the majority of the marquee free agents on the market for the fun of it. It does so because it feels it has needs that need tending in order to beat the Mets and win back the division.