With David Wright's Deal Done, Mets Now Need a Team NASHVILLE - Maybe the Mets will finish their contract negotiations with R. A. Dickey before they depart baseball's winter meetings this week. Maybe they will leave with a new catcher, or a capable outfielder or two. Or maybe none of those things will happen. For a short while Wednesday morning, these things seemed not to matter. Almost a full week after the news first emerged that the Mets had signed David Wright to an eight-year, $138 million contract, the team made things official, reintroducing their longtime third baseman - the player considered the face of the franchise - with a lengthy, feel-good news conference. "I'm humbled, privileged, emotional," said Wright, who was drafted by the Mets as a teenager. It was very important for me from Day 1 that I finish what I started. Things haven't gone the way we would have liked the last couple of years, but that's going to change. Wright, who turns 30 this month, donned a crisp Mets jersey and tugged on a new cap as his parents, girlfriend, agents and several Mets officials watched from the front row. Smiles abounded. The overarching theme of the day, the subtext of this entire scene, was that the Mets were turning their floundering enterprise in the right direction. But over the past two months, Wright needed to be assured of the specifics of the continuing Mets project before resuming his role as the team's centerpiece. The negotiations began when Jeff Wilpon, the team's chief operating officer, took Wright out for a burger during a late-season trip to Miami. The discussion that night was about the big picture. "He wanted to make sure I was going to be around and nothing he was reading from all of you, that we were selling the team or going anywhere, was the truth," Wilpon said to a group of reporters. As we've said from the beginning, we're not going anywhere. After the season, General Manager Sandy Alderson visited Wright at home in Norfolk, Va., where they played golf and shared a midafternoon meal. Wright asked Alderson that day about the team's minor league system, trade possibilities and potential free-agent signings. There are 100 different factors that went into this decision, but before any of them could even be taken into consideration, No. 1 had to be that commitment to winning," Wright said. I got the answer I wanted to hear. Just after midnight on Friday, Wright and the Mets agreed to the deal, which is structured to give the team slightly more financial flexibility next season than it would have had on his previous contract. The deal also includes a full no-trade clause. Wright said he never envisioned an alternative. "I can honestly say, I've never pictured myself in a different uniform, and it wouldn't be as meaningful if I were to win somewhere else," he said. Whether the Mets, fourth-place finishers for four straight seasons, can make the playoffs anytime soon will remain to be seen. Whatever the case, Wright, Wilpon and Alderson spoke about accumulating victories with some urgency. Wilpon said he thought the team could compete for a playoff spot during the 2013 season. "There's a lot of ways to get to the postseason now, with the extra playoffs and everything," he said. I think we would be competitive this year. Asked when the team would return to the playoffs, Wright said, "We aren't that far off." Alderson, who has been able to keep a detached view of the team, emphasized the need for victories in the near term. "People will subscribe to the process, and they'll get what you're trying to do," Alderson said. But at some point in time - and not that far out, in terms of horizon - you've got to actually win. The Mets" chances for success will be easier to gauge once Dickey's situation has been resolved. As of Wednesday, the two sides could not agree on dollar amounts for an extension, and the Mets did not seem to move closer to engineering a trade. Wilpon, as he did last month, suggested that he did not have a problem letting Dickey pitch for the Mets next season without a new deal, calling his $5 million option-year salary a bargain. But that particular outcome, Dickey said Tuesday, would create a "bad dynamic" for him, and Alderson said Wednesday it was "not preferable, from our standpoint." With things appearing rather static, someone asked Alderson whether he expected the Mets to leave Nashville with any players. "We're going to leave here with David Wright," Alderson said. And for a little while, that seemed enough.