Congratulations to Carlos Beltran who in a move I can barely get my head around is returning to the Mets, as their manager, apparently with Terry Collins as his bench-coaching sidekick.

The move is so unusual on so many levels, and I’m so suspicious of the Mets’ motives generally, that I’m having a hard time getting past downside scenarios and telling myself this was another one of those gigantic Wilponian compromises that reveals the club’s elemental obsession to be praised and its terrifyingly paranoid internal workings.

It’s a move with something for everyone: Fans get a figure they loved; players get a guy who engenders reverential respect; Brodie gets a back-page win and enhances his brand of bold unpredictability; Fred gets a white-haired old baseball man; Jeff gets ticket sales and presumably, cover for budget consciousness; and the press gets lots to write about and a return of not one but two good quotes.

But I still found myself though with lost of worries off the bat. If things go wrong, and they will at times, how will the rookie skipper manage? And if gets really bad, and it might, will the club ever have the juice to fire a guy certain to be elected to the Hall of Fame during his tenure as manager?  Is Terry here as a kind of shadow Xs and Os man and Beltran merely a front–and what happens if they don’t get along? What will the players make of the re-installation of a guy they were told wasn’t good enough to manage them only a few seasons before? And would you trade the new manger for 7 more years of Zack Wheeler?

I realize a lot of these worries have upside too and as expressed below I might personally have been inclined to try a guy with less built-in like Tim Bogar but I’m willing to give it a shot. That, as they say, is why they play the games.

As to the unis, 15 is available for Beltran and 10 most recently belonged to first-base coach Gary Disarcina who may or may be not be back.

And speaking of those who won’t be back and for that matter of center fielders from Puerto Rico, the Mets have made it official they were parting ways with Juan Lagares, who started off better than anyone expected but who also would progress less than might have been hoped. Juan played more games wearing No. 12 than all but John Stearns and Ken Boswell and departs as the uniform’s greatest triple-hitter of all time. Joe Panik (2) and Donnie Hart (68) also became free agents after refusing minor-league assignments.

Other Met free agents are Luis Avilan (43), Brad Brach (29), Rajai Davis (18), Todd Frazier (21), Rene Rivera (44) and Wheeler (45).

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