CLOSED FOR BUSINESS—WILL REOPEN APRIL 2012

That is the sign I see posted outside the main entrance to Citi Field, home of the Mets in the borough of Queens in the city of New York. It’s not really there, but in the interest of full disclosure and truth in advertising, it should be.

From everything the Mets have said and not done the past two months, they do not appear to be ready to conduct their baseball business next season. They are selling season tickets, but they probably haven’t notified prospective buyers about caveat emptor. That’s Latin for “we don’t plan to be very good and you buy tickets at your own risk.”

The Mets have been a huge disappointment in recent seasons, ever since they blew a 7-game lead with 17 games to play in 2007. Injuries have decimated them the past two seasons, especially in 2009, and the general manager, Omar Minaya, and the manager, Jerry Manuel, paid the price for the poor seasons.

The Mets have a new general manager, Sandy Alderson, and a new manager, Terry Collins, but the reality is they won’t get headed in the right direction until the owner, Fred Wilpon, fires the owner’s son, the chief operating officer, Jeff Wilpon.

Jeff Wilpon is typical of a wealthy owner’s son, in his position by birthright, not by merit. Unfortunately for the Mets and their fans, Jeff Wilpon is more like Peter Angelos’ sons in Baltimore than like Carl Pohlad’s sons in Minnesota.

The Wilpons say they don’t interfere with the Mets’ baseball operation, but they would be hard-pressed to find anyone in baseball who believes that claim. The man who knows best, Minaya, has repeatedly declined to discuss that aspect of the Mets’ operation. The Mets owe him more than $2 million, and he knows better than to jeopardize his financial future.

Fred Wilpon has often used the phrase “skill set,” which can’t be applied to Jeff and baseball operations. I recall that a year ago I criticized Minaya for not negotiating with free agents on parallel tracks, thereby putting himself in position to sign one free agent if he failed to get the other.

It’s a routine strategy in baseball in the competitive pursuit of free agents, but Minaya stuck to one free agent at a time, very likely losing out on one or two worthy free agents. I suspect it was not Minaya’s idea to work that way but Jeff Wilpon’s. As with other issues, Minaya has refused to address the Mets’ failed strategy.

Alderson, Minaya’s successor, apparently won’t be in position to discuss the team’s off-season strategy because the Mets don’t appear to have one. Don’t ask, don’t tell seems to apply more to the Mets now than it does to the United States military.

The magic phrase around the Mets this winter is “payroll flexibility.” The Mets, they say, don’t have it so they can’t sign any expensive players or even inexpensive players based on the market rate.

Mets’ officials use the phrase so routinely that beat reporters have adopted it and use it to justify why the Mets are making no attempt to improve the team.

“We don’t have a lot of payroll flexibility so we’ve had to be somewhat realistic this off-season,” Alderson said in a telephone interview this week.

That statement doesn’t require a talented translator. Put simply, don’t expect the Mets to spend any money this winter.

In turn, that means don’t expect much improvement from the Mets next season. If there is improvement, it will come from players having better years (Oliver Perez, Luis Castillo) or injured players returning to their previous levels of play when they were healthy (Carlos Beltran, Jason Bay, Francisco Rodriguez, Johan Santana).

The Mets will have no significant additions and will have virtually no chance of overtaking the Phillies or the Braves, their most significant division rivals. The Mets have already passed up the best players who were available as free agents, and Alderson’s comments indicated that he does not expect to sign anyone for a lot of money.

“We need pitching help, bullpen help,” Alderson said. “We have a pretty good everyday lineup, but we need to fill in with extra players, but there’s not a lot of payroll flexibility. We’ve tried to address these in a frugal way.”

The Mets needed a backup catcher and signed Ronny Paulino for $1.35 million. They needed bullpen help and signed D.J. Carrasco to a two-year, $2.4 million contract. They need starting pitching but haven’t signed any starters.

“We are cautiously exploring the market and watching it as it develops,” Alderson said.

The best of the market, though, has already evaporated: Cliff Lee, Zach Greinke, Jon Garland, Vicente Padilla, Jake Westbrook. Carl Pavano remains, but the Mets have shown no interest and wouldn’t pay the going rate anyway.

Asked if he saw any possibilities in the free-agent market, Alderson said, “Yes, there are some pitchers who can help us, some pitchers who can pitch innings looking to bounce back.”

“We’re looking for starting pitching and help in the bullpen,” he added. “Those are things we need to address. But we’re trying to do it carefully. That’s been our approach.”

The approach is not to spend any money. The Mets lost two serviceable relief pitchers, Hisanori Takahashi to the Angels and Pedro Feliciano to the Yankees, because they wouldn’t spend the established market rate. Each pitcher signed for 2 years and $8 million.

“We’d like to have kept Takahashi,” Alderson said. “”He wanted to explore the free-agent market. He got what we anticipated he would get. It was a similar situation with Feliciano. It was more than we wanted to pay.”

When observers talk about the Mets’ lack of payroll flexibility, they point to the team’s “bad contracts,” particularly the one that will pay Perez $12 million and the one that will pay Castillo $6 million next season.

Most competitive teams however, wind up with contracts they wish they hadn’t given players. It’s part of the price of doing business; it’s part of the price of competing. It should not be part of the excuse for not trying to improve the team.

Fred Wilpon has never liked spending the kind of money he has had to spend to compete with the Yankees in New York. When Nelson Doubleday was Wilpon’s partner in the Mets’ ownership, it was Doubleday who wanted to spend money on good players (see Mike Piazza).

Wilpon’s apparent reluctance to spend more money for next season raises a question that has been raised before. Did Wilpon lose so much investment money to his buddy Bernie Madoff in Madoff’s all-time great Ponzi scheme that it has undermined his ability to operate the Mets?

Wilpon has always denied it, and when Alderson was asked the question, he said, “From my standpoint nothing has really changed in my perception of where we are and what we have available payroll-wise from when I started talking to them.”

Alderson said he expected the payroll to be about $140 million, which will be about $7 million above last year’s opening-day payroll.

The Perez and Castillo contracts will be up next season. So will the contracts of Beltran ($18.5 million), Rodriguez ($11.5 million) and Jose Reyes ($11 million), and the Mets’ apologists point to the greater freedom the team will have to sign players to big contracts.

By then, however, another season will have been lost. In addition, the Mets will be asking their fans to pay to watch a team that they themselves don’t think enough of to spend to improve it.

Alderson, however, said, “We expect to be competitive. Our lineup compares with anyone in the division. Whether our pitching does is a question. We think we’re going to be competitive. If we don’t have injuries, if we get Santana back, who knows?”

That’s a good question to ask about the Mets’ winter operation: who knows what they’re doing?