Tom Glavine — is he signing, or not signing? Who knows? Wednesday, the Daily News reported that the pitcher was negotiating a two-year, $25 million extension that would, presumably, allow him to retire as a Met. Within hours his agent, Gregg Clifton, unambiguously denied that there had been any negotiations between the two sides. It’s all quite mysterious, especially given Glavine’s unusual contract situation. As part of a contract renegotiation that took place this summer, the pitcher has a $7.5 million player option, and the team has a $14.5 million option. In addition, it is generally assumed that the team will not exercise that option. Why two sides would negotiate options neither would use isn’t entirely clear. Add in that as a players’ union bigwig Glavine is under some obligation to take the highest salary offered, thus helping set the market for other players, and the whole situation becomes murkier.

What’s quite clear is that the Mets need to re-sign Glavine at any nearly reasonable price. He’ll be 41 next year, but it doesn’t much matter. He’s still an elite pitcher, far better than he’s given much credit for.

This season, Glavine pitched 198 innings with a 3.82 ERA, a season indistinguishable from his past two campaigns — in 2004, he pitched 212.1 innings with a 3.60 ERA, and in 2005, 211.1 with a 3.53 ERA. Those are incredibly stable numbers, even more so when you index them to the league average. This year, on a scale where the park-adjusted average ERA (ERA+) is 100, his was a 115; in 2004, it was 118, and in 2005 117.

Twenty-seven pitchers had a better ERA+ this year, and 44 pitched more innings, but only 19 pitchers surpassed both Glavine’s innings total and his ERA+. And if you work backward, that number drops enormously. Only four pitchers in baseball have pitched 198 or more innings with an ERA+ of 115 or better in each of the last three seasons — Johan Santana, Brandon Webb, Roy Oswalt, and Carlos Zambrano.

This doesn’t make Glavine one of the five best pitchers in baseball, but it does show how incredibly rare durable and consistently good pitchers are. There are many pitchers with a better chance at winning the Cy Young next year than Glavine has, but not even 10 who are a better bet to put up a good, solid season as a no. 2 starter. Even his age isn’t much of a factor — older pitchers are actually far less likely than younger ones to be injured or suddenly ineffective, mostly because of a survivor effect. Broadly speaking, those who can’t hold up under a major league workload drop out of rotations in the minors or in their 20s, and those who can’t hold up without the stuff they had when they were younger drop out in their 30s. Those in their 40s are actually better bets than any other pitchers simply to continue doing whatever it is they’ve been doing.

What all this means is that the Mets (and, probably more to the point, their fans) not only shouldn’t flinch at a twoyear deal, but should consider securing such a commitment something of a coup. It’s understandable that between his bland persona, past as a hated Brave, solid but unspectacular numbers, and unimpressive stuff, no one really considers Glavine one of the very best pitchers in the game — but he is. Bringing him back isn’t just about bringing back a solid citizen who will win his 300th game this coming year, it’s about locking down perhaps the most valuable player on the market this winter. For a team as wealthy as the Mets the negotiations should essentially consist of offering numbers until Clifton says yes.

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THE MUCH MALIGNED MR. MOTA The other Mets news of the day was the suspension of reliever Guillermo Mota for 50 games after he tested positive for an undisclosed performance-enhancing substance. A pending free agent who was stunningly effective after coming over from Cleveland in a late-summer deal, Mota posted a 1.00 ERA in 18 games after having posted a 6.21 mark in 34 games with the Indians.

Having Mota unavailable for 50 games at the start of next season might make the Mets slightly less inclined to deal off some of the depth in relief pitching as part of a package for a big bat, but then it might not. At best, Mota was fourth on the depth chart anyway, and if Willie Randolph and Rick Peterson have proved anything, it’s that they can take any random guy with a fastball and milk some quality innings out of him.

Past that, all that has to be said is that anyone who suggests that Mota must have started shooting up steroids upon coming to the Mets, explaining his sudden dominance, has literally no idea what they’re talking about and should not be listened to. Steroids are not to ballplayers as spinach is to Popeye, and if going overnight from a 6.21 to a 1.00 ERA was just a matter of juicing up you’d see a lot fewer players with 6.21 ERAs, because it’s not really all that hard to pass a drug test. Mota was a good, effective reliever for the Dodgers and Marlins in 2003 and 2004,and it’s no surprise that he was able to pitch 18 good games.

Feel free to scoff at him for being a drug user or for being dumb enough to fail what’s essentially an IQ test, but don’t draw a line between whatever it was he was taking and his sudden dominance, which has a lot more to do with his own ability and the ability of any ballplayer to do anything in a short amount of time than it does with supposedly mystical and all-powerful pills and needles. If being good at baseball was as easy at eating or injecting something, more people would be good at it.

tmarchman@nysun.com