Who says the Mets aren’t active at the winter meetings? They just acquired another replacement for Jerry Manuel.

According to Joel Sherman and confirmed by David Lennon, the Mets have signed 2007 NL Manager of the Year Bob Melvin to be a Major League scout.

Interesting that both Melvin and Wally Backman are now employed by the same organization. Further interesting that Jerry Manuel has so many managerial candidates around him.

Is J.P. Ricciardi also on the Mets’ wish list, to help Wayne Krivsky keep Omar Minaya on his toes?

As expected, the Mets have brought in “motivation” for Omar Minaya — former Reds GM Wayne Krivsky.

Krivsky was hired by the Mets last June as a scout, but after the season he moved on to the Orioles as GM Andy MacPhail’s special assistant — a role he likely would have filled for the Mets had Tony Bernazard not been in the way.

In any case, Krivsky returns to Flushing, bringing with him real-world MLB front office experience and success (with the Twins) — a strange combination for a Mets hire, no? Unlike his predecessor, Krivsky comes to the Mets with experience negotiating player contracts from the TEAM’s perspective (Bernazard spent his post-playing career as an MLBPA assistant / consultant to players prior to joining the Mets). That said, perhaps the Mets will finally start signing players to logical contracts — rather than grossly overpaying with dollars, terms, years, and other conditions (I’m going to hope / assume that Krivsky didn’t start working for the Mets until AFTER Alex Cora was signed).

When it’s all said and done, this could turn out to be the Mets’ top free-agent acquisition of the winter.