In an article that came out early this morning in the NY Post, Joel Sherman, weighs in on David Wright’s contract negotiations. He claims that talks are ongoing (contrary to yesterday’s report) and that the organization is doing a fine job by not allowing information to leak and having the contract negotiated through the media. The ten officials he spoke to outside the organization believe that Wright will become a Met for life this off-season and that it will happen “sooner rather than later.”

Much like @MetsPolice has been clamoring about for much of the second half of the season, Wright is more than a third baseman to this organization. He is their ambassador to the sponsors, community, season-ticket holders, and bigwigs that come to Citi Field. Those same ten executives agree and say that the Wilpons see extending Wright as much of a PR decision as a baseball one. Sherman quoted an NL executive as saying, “If they can’t sign their best player after letting Jose Reyes go, what are they telling their fans? They might be damning themselves to bad crowds and press for quite a while.”

Sherman then proceeded to talk dollars and years (something the Mets and Wright have reportedly not) and the resounding figure was seven years for $127 million. That seems like a good middle-ground based on the Mets willingness to begin negotiations at $100 million. Most see the most comparable contract to Wright as fellow Virginian and friend, Ryan Zimmerman, who received a six-year, $100 million extension last off-season making the full length of his deal (when combined with the remaining years on his existing contract) eight-years, $126 million. The aforementioned years and dollars for Wright would surpass that on every level and make him the second highest paid third basemen in baseball behind Alex Rodriguez’s ridiculous burden on the Yankees.

Sandy Alderson has already said that any extension reached with Wright would begin in 2014, so his $16 million option for this season is already guaranteed. That means that combining that option with the other executives’ consensus number of seven years, $127 million would result in a total contract length for Wright of eight-years, $143 million.

Some may think that would be too much to pay for a third basemen coming off his best season out of the last four and who will be 30 years old on Opening Day next year, but when you look closer at what that number means it may be the perfect price. A $143 million combined contract for Wright would surpass Johan Santana’s $137.5 million and make him the highest paid Met ever.