Any day on which Mets General Manager Omar Minaya doesn’t give up good major league players and valuable prospects for the privilege of taking on the ludicrous contracts of flawed and declining ballplayers is a good one. Since it seemed all weekend that Minaya was going to make a deal that would have made last year’s disastrous trade-deadline moves look like Ed Hearns for David Cone or Neil Harris for Keith Hernandez by comparison, yesterday was, for Mets fans, a day for champagne and oysters.

No matter what anyone says, there is absolutely no reasonable argument one can make from the Mets perspective in favor of any of the various trades that would have brought Boston’s Manny Ramirez to Shea. The best of these would have required assuming Ramirez’s monstrous contract and surrendering Mike Cameron and either top pitching prospect Yusmeiro Petit or top position prospect Lastings Milledge; the worst would have stripped the Mets of Cameron, both young players, Aaron Heilman, and possibly more to boot, while sticking the team with $64 million in salary obligations over the next three years. (Third-tier reliever Danys Baez and nondescript middle infielder Julio Lugo, who would have been sent to the Mets from Tampa Bay in some permutations of the deal, can be written off as irrelevant. The Mets already have players of this caliber on hand.)

Some will say that doesn’t seem too high a price. Ramirez, after all, is a tremendous hitter, in a group with Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero, and Miguel Tejada as one of the game’s elite. The .370 on-base average and .571 slugging average he’s posting this year would rank among the worst of his career. Some say you have to do whatever it takes to land such a player.

Simply focusing on his staggering offensive numbers ignores something, though. The most staggering number of all is his salary: $19 million a year over the next three years. How much is Ramirez really worth? Consider that Carlos Beltran – who’s six years younger, plays a premium defensive position, was coming off a postseason for the ages, and looked like he had broken out as a hitter at or near Ramirez’s level – was signed for $17 million a year this past winter. It’s hard to believe that had Ramirez been on the open market at the same time, he would have earned a contract much better than Carlos Delgado did – four years, $52 million. The best guess here is that Ramirez’s contract will overpay him by about $20 million through 2008.

With the Red Sox apparently unwilling to pay much (or any) of that salary themselves, Ramirez essentially has negative value, much like Ken Griffey Jr. and Todd Helton. Remember that a year and a half ago, Ramirez was placed on unconditional waivers, which meant any team in baseball could have had him for nothing, and he wasn’t claimed. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for the Mets to take on such a contract. They have the money, after all. But in such circumstances, a player of, say, Kazuhisa Ishii’s caliber would be more than a fair return for Boston.

Past all this is the question of how desirable Ramirez really is. If the Mets could sign him for a Delgado-size contract, would they do so? Perhaps. It’s worth noting, though, that the man is 33 years old, a horrible defender and base runner, having one of the worst seasons of his career (in which, granted, he’s on pace for 44 home runs and 145 RBI), and a legendary flake. Paying him even $13 million a year over three years in which he’d be declining, possibly rapidly, would be a heavily debated and risk-laden move.

In the deals on the table, though, the Mets would not only have been paying him $25 million more than that, they would have been giving up a tremendous amount of talent. Mike Cameron is a fine player in his own right, and only makes a bit over a third what Ramirez does. That has value. Aaron Heilman is eminently tradable, but has a real shot at turning into a Keith Foulke-type reliever or a solid mid-rotation starter. He’s not someone to be just tossed into a deal.

Then we come to the prospects. While I find the idea that Lastings Milledge and Yusmeiro Petit are truly elite prospects to be absurd for any number of reasons, the Mets simply can’t trade away two players with chances of turning into All-Stars for a vastly overpaid veteran. Last year, the Mets traded away not only Scott Kazmir – whose 4.28 ERA with Tampa Bay suggests he’d at worst be the Mets’ fourth starter right now – but Justin Huber, who turned 23 a month ago and was hitting .343 BA/.432 OBA/.570 SLG at Double-A for Kansas City before a promotion to Triple-A this week. Think the Mets could use a first base prospect with those numbers?

The Ramirez-to-Shea rumors are not going to die anytime soon. Yesterday, after all, was only the non-waiver trading deadline. So long as Ramirez passes through waivers with no team other than the Mets claiming him (a good bet, as any team claiming him would risk being stuck with his gigantic contract), the possibility of a deal remains. There is also the off-season. Should the talks be resurrected, I would hope the Mets keep in mind that if the Red Sox won’t assume a great deal of Ramirez’s salary, they have no leverage and the player has negative value. In this case, a fair offer would be Gerald “Ice” Williams (last seen hitting .230 for Norfolk) and a Mr. Met costume in need of laundering. Even if the Sox were to eat enough money to bring Ramirez’s contract into line with market realities, the Mets brain trust should keep in mind that he still isn’t worth multiple top prospects, who might turn into a dependable catcher, second baseman, or top relief ace, all of which are far more pressing needs than the outfield.

Finally, for the Mets fan who despairs at the mind-numbing stupidity of the deals his team is reportedly willing to make, a conspiracy theory: A variety of reports in the Boston press suggested that it was the business side of the Red Sox front office that wanted to move Ramirez; GM Theo Epstein was said to realize that moving him would essentially begin a rebuilding process, and was thus opposed. Meanwhile, the word around the Mets before the Ramirez talk began was that they weren’t looking to make any dramatic moves. Perhaps Epstein, fronting a showy attempt at trading a player he wanted to keep, and Minaya, looking to satisfy the always ravenous New York press and fans, found a mutual use for each other in trade talks they implicitly understood weren’t going to amount to much.

Unlikely? Perhaps, but GMs have been known to employ worse skullduggery in pursuit of less noble ends.