In the early years of free agency teams played games with their fans. Wanting to show their fans that they were aggressively pursuing free agents, teams let it be known that they were talking to this attractive free agent or that one. There was, of course, no chance that the team would sign the player, but in November and December it sounded good and whetted the fans appetite for baseball, perhaps even inducing a few of them to buy tickets for the coming season.

The practice died out as fans became more sophisticated in their understanding of free agency, but fans and other observers couldn’t be faulted for wondering if the miserable Mets of New York have resurrected the practice.

This observer is among those wonderers. Three recent headlines in the space of two weeks caught my attention and started me wondering:

• Mets meet with agents for free agent Cano
• Mets interested in Arroyo; meeting uncertain
• Granderson, Mets have get-to-know-you meeting

The first headline alone would make one’s head spin. Everyone knows the Mets would not sign Cano, whose agents, one of whom is the rapper Jay Z, reportedly asked the New York Yankees for more than $300 million while the Yankees countered at $170 million.

So why would general manager Sandy Alderson meet with Jay Z and the boys? Alderson, who has put in three fruitless years with the Mets, did not return multiple telephone calls seeking answers to that question and others.

Should I speculate that Alderson saw the meeting as a way of learning about the rap music industry in case he tires of baseball – or it of him – and wants to consider alternatives?

Or take as truth what Alderson told Mets’ reporters last month, that the meeting was the idea of the Jay Z side and he saw it as an opportunity to meet and get to know baseball’s newest agent.

“They requested a meeting,” Alderson said. “We had a nice dinner. They made a presentation. We talked generally. And that was it. As I said, we were approached.”

“It was a well-prepared presentation designed to sell us and presumably other teams on Cano’s value,” Alderson added. “We certainly have a high regard for Robinson Cano as a player. So in that sense, the presentation was a little bit overdone. But, again, it was a very preliminary meeting. They’re having, or hope to have, preliminary meetings with a number of different teams.”

Alderson, though, has had enough experience to know that Cano’s people would use a Mets’ meeting to enhance their position in their negotiations with the Yankees so why let himself be used in that manner if he didn’t see some immediate value in it for the Mets?

In the same manner Alderson very likely saw positive public relations possibilities by meeting with Granderson, whose cost wouldn’t be anywhere near Cano’s but nevertheless would most likely be too much in the Met’s current spending policy.

The outfielder, who will turn 33 in March, had a $15 million salary this past season with the Yankees, for whom he hit a combined 84 home runs in 2011-12 but had injuries wreck his 2013 season.

As for Arroyo, no sooner had a report surfaced that Alderson planned to meet with the pitcher than another report said he was low on the Mets’ list of interest.

Nevertheless, there has been more talk than activity this off-season, in which the Mets’ lone free-agent signing has been journeyman outfielder Chris Young for a modest $7.25 million.

Until the Mets encountered money problems in 2008 because of their owners’ involvement with Bernie Madoff, he of the infamous Ponzi scheme, they were one of the best paying teams in the majors.

In a 7-year span, 2003-09, the Mets’ opening-day payroll was second or third highest in six seasons. They reached a franchise-high $138 million in 2008. In Alderson’s three years as general manager, the payroll has been $120 million, $93 million and $73 million. When the 2014 season starts, the payroll is supposed to be between $85 million and $90 million.

However, even if owner Fred Wilpon were to authorize greater expenditures than the past couple of years, Alderson wouldn’t be expected to rush out and toss thousand dollar bills at players.

He was the general manager of the Oakland Athletics from 1983 through 1997, building a team that won three consecutive American League pennants in 1988-90 and the World Series in ’89. In that position, he tutored Billy Beane, who succeeded him and gained fame as the star of the book “Moneyball.”

Beane has eclipsed his tutor, being named major league executive of the year twice each by Baseball America (2002 and ’13) and The Sporting News (1999-2012).

He has been especially adept at building winning teams with low payrolls. The Athletics have won the American League West title the past two seasons with payrolls among the majors’ four lowest. When Alderson’s A’s won three straight pennants, their payrolls ranked No. 25 each season.

Alderson, however, has been unable to duplicate in New York what he did in Oakland, but his protégé has duplicated in Oakland.

If Alderson is to succeed in New York, he will need to make his actions speak louder than his words. If part of his strategy is to try to fool fans by floating news about meetings with free agents or staging meetings with players he has no possibility or intention of signing, he will be regressing, not progressing.