Via John Harper in the New York Daily News:

The slights keep coming for the Mets. It was one thing for Jimmy Rollins to declare his Phillies, those perennial underachievers, as the team to beat in the National League East this season. Now Steve Phillips, the former Mets GM, is all over ESPN in his gig as baseball analyst picking the Mets to finish third in their division.

Has a team that won 97 games and ran away with the division title ever been shown less respect?

Over at SNY.tv, Marc Raimondi wonders aloud whether Phillips comments aren’t just sour grapes over being fired by the organization in 2003, and whether Phillips should even be permitted to analyze his former team given his bias.

Meanwhile, Harper goes on in his column to discuss Mets COO Jeff Wilpon’s response to Phillips’ salvo, and sheds some light on the Amazin’s offseason plans that went awry:

Wilpon admitted the Mets’ winter plan, formulated by GM Omar Minaya, was built around trying to acquire Daisuke Matsuzaka. Wilpon was stunned when the Mets’ $39 million posting bid for the Japanese pitcher was topped by Boston’s bid of $51 million.

“I thought we bid $10million over the market,” he said. “I was crying and moaning that we were bidding too high. There was no way of knowing what other teams were doing, and when we bid (nearly) $40 million, it took a little bit of a gulp to do it.

“And the thing I was scared of was not getting beat by $10 million or $12 million. I was more scared we were going to beat everybody else by $10 million (and thus overpay). Believe me, we had a whole package, we had a plan. The Red Sox got themselves a hell of a pitcher.”

Harper concludes that the Mets know that the race for the NL East is a marathon, not a sprint, and are confident in their ability to repeat as division champs.