The Mets’ veteran stars are going to be as useful to the team for the rest of this season as Tom Seaver would be if he climbed down from the broadcast booth and took the mound.

They’re won’t be any more useful next season. The organization has tried for two years now to contend with a team built around Al Leiter, Tom Glavine, Mike Piazza, and Cliff Floyd. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work next season when they’re all a year older, and it isn’t going to work the season after that. It’s time for the Mets to cash in their chips for whatever they can get.

Two weeks ago, the team’s deadline trades looked ridiculous.To move their best pitching and positional prospects, several lesser minor leaguers, and Ty Wigginton for mediocre pitchers Victor Zambrano and Kris Benson – the latter of whom can become a free agent in two months – seemed the height of folly.

Various justifications were offered for the deal, but they simply would not have been made unless there was at least some belief in the front office that the Mets were still in contention. That the club was five games under .500 at the time the deals were made seemed not to dissuade key decisionmakers.

Two weeks later,the Mets have managed to make up all of one game in the loss column, and that’s after four games against the pitiful Diamondbacks. Core players Jose Reyes, Mike Piazza, Kaz Matsui, and Tom Glavine are all on the disabled list,the first two entirely predictably.So everyone – which hopefully includes the Mets front office – is now disabused of any notion that the team is in contention. Skeptics should check yesterday’s lineup card, which featured Gerald “Ice” Williams, Joe McEwing, and Todd Zeile in the first three slots.

Trading for Zambrano and Benson now seems an even worse idea than it did at the time. They haven’t helped the team in the standings,and Benson has looked downright terrible in his three starts. The move set back the future of the club for no benefit in the short term, and dubious benefit in the medium term.

This doesn’t mean it’s too late for the front office to redeem itself. July 31 is not the trading deadline – it is the non-waiver trading deadline. So long as a player passes un claimed through waivers, he can be dealt. If he is claimed, his team can withdraw him from waivers, and either trade him or simply give him to the claiming team.

As a procedural matter, teams put nearly all their players through waivers, and then draw them back off if they are claimed. It is difficult to know with certainty which players have passed through unclaimed, as team officials are subject to fines if they release that information. So the various reports that the Mets have not had a player claimed should be taken with a grain of salt. But if those reports are accurate, the Mets have a real opportunity to set themselves up for next year and the seasons beyond.

There are tight races in four divisions; three teams are within five games of a wild card spot.An ace like Leiter could be the difference between a pennant and a World Series flag for the Cardinals and Dodgers; a solid starter like Steve Trachsel could be the difference between playing and sitting home in October for Minnesota or Cleveland. Piazza and Floyd would be of immense value to several contenders.The Mets should trade all of them for whatever young players they can get, and they should pay however much of their stars’ salaries is needed to get the deals done.

But there’s no chance of this happening, if only for the very reason that the club traded Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano in the first place: The Mets refuse to face reality.

Zambrano and Benson are parts; they aren’t players you build around, they’re players whose contributions complement those of a core of championship players.They were brought in because the Mets believe, against all evidence, that they have such a core – that next year Tom Glavine and Mike Piazza will lead them to October.

It just isn’t true anymore, and every day the Mets delay getting rid of them is a day closer to the time when they won’t be able to get anything at all.