Ordinarily, the news that a club had held some minor internal discussions about signing Barry Bonds, such as those Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon acknowledged to the Associated Press yesterday, wouldn’t be very interesting. What don’t clubs discuss internally? The Tampa brass, looking at their shabby bullpen, has probably held internal discussions about cloning Joba Chamberlain. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, either.

However serious the Rays are about Bonds, though, they aren’t serious enough; after all, they haven’t signed him yet. The Rays, former home of such freak show attractions as high school chemistry teacher Jim Morris and an aged Jose Canseco, really have no excuse for not bringing on the best hitter in baseball history for one last stand. If they have any sense, they’ll cut a deal today.

This has very little to do with Bonds and the much-rehearsed arguments for and against him. Bonds is 43, under federal indictment, a living symbol of corruption, and about as good at baseball as Manny Ramirez or Vladimir Guerrero. You can draw whatever conclusions you’d like from those facts, but the last should be the one that really counts to the Rays. They are, after all, fringe contenders.

In any reckoning of a potential relationship between Bonds and the Rays, the fact that the team is actually pretty good is certain to go lightly noted. This is understandable — the franchise is a laughingstock, and if they manage not to lose 90 this year, it will be the first time they’ll have avoided doing so. Even so, while signing Bonds would be generally taken as desperate flailing on the part of a sad-sack franchise, it would in truth be more like a shrewd bet on the part of a team that’s much closer to a playoff spot than most realize.

Baseball is all about talent, and the Rays, even after trading off bad citizens Delmon Young and Elijah Dukes this winter, have gobs. First baseman Carlos Pena, 29, ranked second in the league in home runs, third in walks, and third in OPS last year, more than fulfilling his long-lost early promise. B.J. Upton, 23, hit .300 BA/.386 OBA/.508 SLG, and finally settled on center field as a position after years of fruitless attempts to master the infield. Left fielder Carl Crawford, 26, is as good a hitter as Johnny Damon was in his prime. And third baseman Evan Longoria, 22, is by acclamation the best position prospect in the league, ready to make as strong an impact as David Wright did on his debut. Even their lesser players are solid. Shortstop Jason Bartlett, 28, is a terrific fielder and passable hitter who never got a fair shot in Minnesota, and right fielder Rocco Baldelli, 26, is, while injury-prone, otherwise just as good as Crawford.

On the pitching side of the ledger, the Rays are nearly as strong. Scott Kazmir, 24, and James Shields, 26, struck out 423 in 421.2 innings last year. No. 3 starter Matt Garza, 24, put up a 3.69 ERA in half a season’s worth of starts for the Twins last year, and has long been considered one of the safest bets among all pitching prospects to have a solid career. The team’s bullpen is a travesty, and the back of the rotation is nothing much, but on the other hand the team has a horde of potential top line starters, such as David Price and Wade Davis, in the minor league system.

All of this is a credit to the Rays’ front office, which is one of the more interesting around these days. Baseball America has rated their farm system the best in the sport two years running, and the organization’s brain trust takes in everyone from octogenarian former Yankees bench coach, Don Zimmer, to Chaim Bloom and James Click, former Baseball Prospectus writers. It’s a healthy mix, and it’s put the Rays in a strong position.

Early statistical projections tip the Rays as about a .500 team — and that comes playing in the stronger league, with the Yankees and Red Sox taking up about a quarter of their schedule. The only clearly superior National League teams are the Mets and the Cubs. The Rays might be widely regarded as a joke, but that probably has more to do with the unfortunate color of their uniforms and the beasts atop their division than anything they’re likely to do this year. I think they’d give the Mets a tougher race than Philadelphia will. (Phillies fans are more than welcome to remind me of this claim in September.)

Whether anyone likes it or not, if they sign Bonds, the Rays will be, on paper, something like an 85-win team. It’s a simple matter of Bonds, who is still a truly great hitter, replacing at-bats that would otherwise be taken by Cliff Floyd and unremarkable designated hitter Jonny Gomes. I would bet the under on those 85 wins; the Rays have gaping holes on their pitching staff, and AL competition is brutal.

Still, it’s not at all hard to imagine a scenario where the Yankees’ young pitchers struggle, the Rays’ young pitchers blossom, Bonds rakes, and the wild card spot comes down to the last week of the season. That, not IRS probes and tales of dirty needles, is what baseball is all about. Leave the steroid angle aside, and all the speculation is about an old gunslinger’s last go-round with a team of green, talented kids. It’s the stuff of a far better movie than the one Disney made about that chemistry teacher.

tmarchman@nysun.com