NEW YORK — With the clock tick-tick-ticking away toward the Dec. 1 owners lockout and the collective bargaining showdown over a proposed salary cap, the player agents, particularly Scott Boras, are getting very anxious over the lack of action on the free agent front.

There is good reason for this. As one owner told me last week: “How can you be making big money offers to players, free agents or even your own, when you don’t know what the parameters are? The whole purpose of the cap is to provide cost certainty and right now we don’t have that.”

And yet, according to Boras, and his media surrogates, there are multiple teams readying to make offers for his prime client, Tarik Skubal; offers that, according to him, will have to exceed $325 million.

Cap or no cap, there are only a precious few teams able and willing to compete in that financial stratosphere — 7-8 years at $46-plus million per for a 30-year-old pitcher who was hurt much of last year and has already had three arm/shoulder surgeries in his career. If you’re counting the usual suspects, the Dodgers, forget it. They and their embattled CEO Mark Walter are operating with a huge target on their backs amid allegations they’ve been cheating through illegal loans from their insurance companies to finance all these contracts that have lifted their projected payroll to a major league high $371 million. They are what this push by the owners for a cap is all about.

The Blue Jays? Not after finishing last in the AL East with team record $314.7 million payroll that will cost them some $40 million in additional luxury tax. Add in the $500 million they invested in Vlad Guerrero Jr. to have the worst season of his career (9 HR, 57 RBI) and you can understand why they would have no interest in adding another massive contract to the payroll.

Which brings us to Steve Cohen and the Mets — Boras’ new favorite “One Dumb Owner.” Boras has his media disciples working overtime to convince Uncle Stevie he absolutely has to sign Skubal to make the Mets instant World Series contenders — just as he did two years ago by signing Boras’ other client, Juan Soto, to a record 15-year, $765 million contract, and how has that worked out so far?

If Cohen really is in on Skubal, it would mean he is totally oblivious to the pending salary cap and the ramifications it will have on the Mets, not to mention the financial disaster that his 2026 season already was — a luxury tax payroll of over $360 million, plus a $120 million tax hit for a last place team that was 74-88. Assuming the owners are able to implement a cap — and they appear to be more unified than ever before on this and prepared to go the distance on it even if it costs a healthy chunk if not all of the 2027 season — Cohen right now would be in a position of having to shed over $100 million in payroll, given the initial $258 million “cap” and $180 million “floor” parameters the owners have proposed.

Presently the Mets have a combined total of $74.5 million a year committed to just Soto and Francisco Lindor through 2031, leaving them $183.5 million for the rest of the team to stay under the cap. Add another $46 million for Skubal and it’s $137.5 million for the entire rest of the team. And with a hard cap, the penalties for exceeding it will be more than just a whole lot more money for Cohen but also lost draft picks and revenue from the Central Fund. In other words, the Mets, as is, stand to get crushed by a salary cap and if Cohen allows himself to be bamboozled by Boras into adding another $46-47 million player in Skubal, it will have crippling financial consequences on the team for years to come.

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