For the Mets right now, everything comes down to one simple question: Should they go for the pennant, or not? There are arguments to be made either way. On the one hand, the team is all of two games over .500, behind three other clubs in the National League East and five back in the wild card race, and heavily reliant on some fairly injury prone players like Cliff Floyd.

On the other hand, especially given the surprisingly consistent starting pitching the Mets have gotten lately and the weakness of their upcoming schedule – August will pit the Mets against patsies like San Francisco and Pittsburgh, and only one really good team, the hardly imposing Nationals – there’s a case to be made that the Mets should give themselves a chance to get on a hot streak that would vault them to the top of the standings.

Anyone who thinks the Mets should toss in the towel by making dramatic trades of expensive veterans who don’t figure in the team’s long-term plans is going to be disappointed.

Those Mets it would make most sense to trade either can’t or won’t be moved. Moving Mike Piazza for a prospect would make sense, for instance, but even a team playing for next year needs a catcher.

Moving Tom Glavine would make a great deal of sense for a variety of reasons, especially as the run of effectiveness that started on May 8th (he’s only had one bad start since then) has made him as desirable a commodity as he’s ever going to be. The future Hall of Famer does, however, have a no trade clause, which could make dealing him more bother than it’s worth.

It’s easy to imagine scenarios in which a variety of players are moved, but the Mets are probably not going to gather in a bounty of high-end prospects for anything they could offer other teams.

Equally so, the Mets are almost certainly not going to package up their prospects in an effort to acquire short-term solutions. In a sense, then, going for it would just mean playing the best players now available to the team, with no eye toward next year and beyond. It would probably mean benching Jose Reyes, playing Victor Diaz at first to get his bat in the lineup no matter how unprepared he is to field the position, starting Steve Trachsel over Jae Seo at the first opportunity, and so forth.

There is some possibility that a series of moves along these lines could result in the Mets going on a 20-5 tear over the next few weeks, while there seems to be much less chance that a team featuring Reyes atop the lineup and Doug Mientkiewicz at first might make such a run.

There is, of course, a third way, which would involve balancing the chances of contention this year against the player development that needs to be done for next year. This seems by far the most likely course, but also the most unsatisfying, because it implies an inability – or unwillingness – on the part of Mets management to set a clear goal and work toward it.

Taking everything together, I think the Mets should probably start playing for next year. I say that not because I think they have no chance at winning this year – they do – but because not choosing one way or the other isn’t a good idea, and choosing to make a run for October could very easily damage next year’s chances, possibly severely.

A full-on commitment to overtake the division during the next month, for example, would entail riding Pedro Martinez hard through what is usually a dead-arm period for him. That, in turn, could leave him less effective next summer, when the Mets will be better situated to win the pennant. It would also mean benching Reyes, which seems an awfully silly thing to do at this point given the lengths to which the team has gone to give him the at-bats he needs to develop.

Most of all, though, this team is just too short in a few crucial areas, notably the bullpen and the infield, to win the pennant.

For a team like last year’s Astros – a veteran-heavy squad staring at a bleak future and the end of several of their best players’ careers in Houston – rolling the dice on a 5% chance of winning the wild card made a great deal of sense.

For a team like the Mets, looking to a bright future in which the expiration of several veterans’ tenures at Shea will actually help the team get better, the odds just don’t add up.