There is no such category listed in the authoritative Elias Book of Baseball Records, though I haven’t received the 2012 edition. But I doubt that it has been added: largest single-season payroll reduction.

Yet in writing about the New York Mets’ poor financial condition, reporters have pronounced the team’s payroll reduction, which they have estimated at about $50 million, to be the biggest in baseball history.

There are several problems with that claim:

• The Mets’ season-opening roster hasn’t been set and it’s not certain which 25 players will be on it and if any players will be on the disabled list and therefore count for payroll purposes.
• Reporters calculating the payroll plunge are basing it on the payroll at the end of last season, which is like comparing the proverbial apples and oranges. To compare payrolls properly, it is necessary to use the same time of year, either season-opening or season-ending figures.
• No matter what figures are used for the Mets, before their season-opening roster is set, their payroll decline is not the steepest in history. Their payroll may not drop as much as the Texas Rangers’ payroll declined from the start of the 2003 season to the start of 2004.

The comparison with the Rangers the Mets hope for is reaching the World Series as quickly as the Rangers did after they slashed their payroll. The Rangers played in the World Series six years after they demolished their payroll and then again the following season.

What are the Mets’ chances of matching that feat? Probably not great.

But John Hart, who was the general manager who made so much of the Rangers’ payroll disappear in 2004, said Friday, “The Mets could expedite our situation by two or three years. Ultimately they would get good when they have a core of young players and maybe they can supplement quicker through the free-agent market.”

At the moment the Mets and the free-agent market don’t fit in the same sentence. That’s why they have slashed their payroll from $139.8 million at the start of last season to close to $90 million for this year’s opener. For the size of their reduction to eclipse the Rangers’ 2004 reduction, they would have to open at no more than $91 million.

In 2004 the Rangers plummeted from $103.5 million to $54.8 million, a difference of $48.7 million. That is the standard the Mets will be shooting for as they select the 25 players to be on their opening-day roster.

Not that the Mets will compile their roster based on the players’ salaries. Johan Santana, Jason Bay and David Wright, whose salaries total $57 million, more than those of the other 22 players combined, will be on the roster regardless of their pay. After all, the Mets need someone to lure fans to Citi Field to watch them play.

A significant segment of the Mets’ 2011 payroll was consumed by players who didn’t play for them. Oliver Perez received $12 million for the final year of his guaranteed contract after the Mets released him, Luis Castillo got $6 million and Gary Matthews $1 million (with the Angels paying him $11 million).

Even though the Mets traded Carlos Beltran to the Giants July 28, they paid the $6.77 million that remained on his contract, and they included $5 million in the trade that sent Francisco Rodriguez to Milwaukee July 12. In addition, they didn’t re-sign Jose Reyes, who earned $11 million last year.

Add up those figures, and you have nearly $42 million in savings for this year.

How did the Rangers shed $48.7 million from their payroll for the 2004 season? They got rid of the most sizable chunk, $22 million, by trading Alex Rodriguez to the Yankees. Another $22 million disappeared with the expiration of the contracts of Juan Gonzalez and Rafael Palmeiro.

Those developments marked the end of the wild-spending era of owner Tom Hicks.

“In the reduction in payroll at that point there was a financial motivation for it,” said Jon Daniels, the Rangers’ current general manager, who was the assistant general manager under Hart then. “It was about the financial health of the company. It was similar to the Mets.

“It was clear it wasn’t working. Ownership wanted to take a far different course. A lot of it was financially motivated, but it gave us an opportunity to get younger players.”

The signing of Rodriguez before the 2001 season epitomized the out-of-control mindset of Hicks, who eventually succumbed to his financial irresponsibility and was forced to sell the team.

Once he met Rodriguez and had dinner with him, Hicks had to have the talented shortstop and personable young man.

How much, he asked agent Scott Boras, who told him, and Hicks said where do I sign? It was an historic 10-year deal for $252 million, and it turned out to be $100 million more than the next highest offer Rodriguez received.

A year later the Rangers signed pitcher Chan Ho Park for 5 years and $65 million. In that same free agent-signing season, the Rangers wanted to bolster their bullpen so they signed a trio of relievers, each for three years, to what were then considerable contracts for their jobs: Jeff Zimmerman $10 million, Jay Powell $9 million, Todd Van Poppel $7.5 million.

Zimmerman injured his arm and didn’t pitch after he signed that contract, Van Poppel lasted with Texas less than a season and a half, emerging with a 5.91 earned run average, and Powell compiled a 5.37 in his three years.

“When Tom hired me,” Hart said, “he wanted to make a push with that group, in a sense justify the Alex contract.”

The Rangers, however, did not achieve the owner’s goal. They finished in last place in the American League West for four successive seasons, including all three years Rodriguez played for them.

The winter between the ’03 and ’04 seasons was the time the Rangers’ baseball hierarchy decided a change was necessary if they hoped to become a playoff contender.

“A big part of it was not so much Tom Hicks’ financial condition,” Hart said, “but we convinced him we weren’t going to win the way we were. We felt we had to shed some veteran players and commit more to young players and international players.

“We did shed the payroll with the idea of getting younger. We didn’t feel it would necessarily affect us. It didn’t. We were right in it at the end.”

Benefiting from the practice of addition by subtraction, the Rangers raised their record from 71-91 to 89-73 in 2004, finishing only three games from first after losing three games of a four-game series with the first-place Angels in the last week of the season.

“We probably overachieved that year,” Daniels said. “But we had a younger, more athletic team. We basically kept our payrolls relatively the same for five, six, seven years. We were in the $55 million to $70 million range for an extended period of time. We made a commitment to build with scouting and development. We started coming together in ’08 and ’09. The following year we put it together and made the playoffs.”

In those years leading to repeat World Series appearances, the Rangers added position players named Kinsler, Cruz, Hamilton, Andrus and Moreland and pitchers named Wilson, Lewis, Feldman, Hunter, Harrison, Holland, Feliz and Ogando.

Not all of those players have been home grown. Daniels made one of the best trades in recent years, sending Mark Teixeira to Atlanta at the trading deadline in 2007 in a seven-player swap in which the Rangers received Elvis Andrus, who is their shortstop, and two pitchers, who are in their starting rotation, Matt Harrison and Neftali Feliz, who was their closer last season.

Daniels also acquired catcher Mike Napoli in a 2011 trade with Toronto three weeks after signing third baseman Adrian Beltre as a free agent.

The payroll has understandably risen again, reaching $104 million at the end of last season. However, it ranked only 13^th in the majors. In 2010, the team that played in the Rangers’ first World Series had a $75 million payroll, 22^nd in the majors and $2 million less than the pay list of the low-revenue Tampa Bay Rays.

In contrast, in the seven seasons before the great payroll reduction, the Rangers placed in the top 9 each year. They won two division titles in that stretch but finished last four times.

OUT-OF-COURT, OUT-OF-MONEY SETTLEMENT?

The sighs of relief from Fred Wilpon, Saul Katz and all of the other members of the Mets affected by the lawsuit filed against them by the trustee for Bernie Madoff’s victims were audible. Instead of standing trial in Federal court in Manhattan, the Mets’ owners escaped with their financial lives. Or did they?

The party line, as uttered by Wilpon, principal owner of the Mets, always is he and they are unaffected. By what? By anything and everything.

That’s why they reportedly are hundreds of millions in debt. That’s why they are spending no money for players. That’s why they are headed for last place in their division, seen as finishing behind even the Washington Nationals.

New York teams are important to their leagues in every sport. The bedraggled Mets are not doing their part.

Observers wonder how Commissioner Bud Selig can allow Wilpon to continue operating the Mets. It’s a fair question. So is the one that asks why Selig allows Wilpon to continue running the Mets as if nothing is wrong while he is forcing Frank McCourt to sell the Dodgers.

Selig bristles when that question is raised, saying vehemently the cases are entirely different, and if you don’t know that, you don’t know anything. And anyway, Wilpon settled with the Madoff trustee and very likely will owe him nothing, not bad for a case that started out at $1 billion and still had $386 million on the table when it was settled.

When the case was settled last week, it was believed that the trustee, Irving Picard, decided to settle because his case against Wilpon et al wasn’t as strong as he initially believed. The Federal judge in the case, Jed Rakoff, told him that in open court, and perhaps Picard had to be concerned that even if the jury found in his favor, the judge could overrule the jury and throw out the verdict.

But a lawyer I know who is well versed in baseball, financial matters and the law has a different theory as to why Picard settled.

“Wilpon has no money from which Picard could have collected,” he said. “It’s hard to make a deal with someone who doesn’t have money. There’s no sense litigating with someone who is broke.”

Wilpon, my friend noted, has retained bankruptcy lawyers and is trying desperately to avoid bankruptcy “but I don’t know if he can.”

Bankruptcy would certainly lead to Wilpon’s baseball demise, just as it did for McCourt in Los Angeles, Tom Hicks in Texas and Eli Jacobs in Baltimore.

IT DIDN’T TAKE VALENTINE LONG

When the Boston Red Sox foolishly hired Bobby Valentine as their new manager, people asked, “Can he change?” Even before managing a game that counts in the standings, Valentine apparently has answered the question: NO.

I have no first-hand knowledge of this circumstance, but the Boston Globe reported the other day that Valentine was already engaged in a power struggle with the general manager. So what else is new?

Valentine and general manager Ben Cherington, the Globe reported, disagree about who the starting shortstop should be, Mike Aviles or Jose Iglesias, and whether Daniel Bard should start or relieve.

What I liked most about the Globe piece by Christopher Gasper was this part:

“Word of the differing views about Bard and Iglesias going public is Bobby looking out for Bobby.

“If he doesn’t get his way, and Bard struggles in the rotation or the bullpen is so bad it needs to be fumigated, or Aviles starts channeling Edgar Renteria, he has it on record that these failings aren’t his fault.”

That is pure Valentine. Leak something to a favored writer so it’s out in front of fans who now will know where to place blame if there is reason to place blame.

Cherington, a rookie general manager, is overmatched against Valentine and his devious schemes. Cherington, who replaced Theo Epstein, didn’t select Valentine to replace Terry Francona. Larry Lucchino, the chief executive officer, did despite knowing the potential pitfalls posed by Valentine.

If there is to be a loser in this power struggle, it will be Cherington. It would be most unlikely and uncharacteristic of Lucchino to act against Valentine and, in effect, admit he made a mistake. Lucchino doesn’t make mistakes.

Managers and general managers often disagree, but in most instances they keep their differences private and thrash them out privately. One of them doesn’t usually leak their differences to a friendly reporter. But that’s Valentine’s modus operandi.

Valentine, according to reporters who have covered him and the teams he has managed, also divides reporters into two opposing factions, one he favors with leaks for doing his bidding, and those who won’t and don’t.

Gasper, the author of the Globe piece exposing Valentine’s inaugural effort in his Red Sox role, should not count on being the recipient of Valentine leaks. But I would guess he won’t be looking for any. Based on his recent piece, he doesn’t strike me as someone who would stoop that low.

STAN AND MAGIC IN THE LEAD

When recent reports said the number of candidates for the purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers had been reduced, I was pleased.

I don’t root for prospective owners any more than I root for teams or players, but one of the three finalists was reported to be the group that includes Stan Kasten and Magic Johnson. While others list Johnson first, I give Kasten that spot because he is the most important member of that group.

As soon as I became aware last December of Kasten’s interest, I pronounced his group the leading contender. Now that I see who the other two finalists are, I have to say that as long as the bids are at least close to being equal I would be shocked if Kasten and Johnson were not the winning bidders.

Even though the Dodgers are in bankruptcy and a bankruptcy judge is involved, Commissioner Bud Selig can influence the outcome, and he would clearly prefer Kasten, a long-time friend and ally, and Johnson, a prominent African-American and Los Angeles hero, who from a public point of view, would fix everything that Frank McCourt has done to turn off Dodgers fans.

The other two finalists are Stan Kroenke, owner of the N.F.L.’s St. Louis Rams, and a group headed by hedge-fund billionaire Steven Cohen and Los Angeles billionaire and philanthropist Patrick Soon-Shiong. Cohen recently agreed to buy a $20 million share in the Mets.

The winning bidder, who is expected to pay at least $1.5 billion, is supposed to be selected by April 1 so that a deal can be closed by the end of the month, when McCourt is legally bound to pay his ex-wife Jamie $131 million as a divorce settlement.