If Sandy Alderson, the New York Mets’ general manager, has never seen the movie “The Wizard of Oz” or hasn’t seen it in a long time, he should see it and pay particular attention to the moment Dorothy says to her little dog, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

Allow me to paraphrase this for Alderson: “I’m not in Oakland anymore.”

When Alderson was general manager and later president of the Athletics, their fans understood the team didn’t have money to spend lavishly for players. Alderson actually preceded Billy Beane as the architect of a title-winning Oakland team. There just wasn’t anyone around to write a book and make a movie about him.

Now that Alderson is in New York, though, his team’s fans won’t be as patient and understanding as the A’s fans were. Mets’ fans, in particular, are tired of being asked to be patient, and that’s what Alderson is doing by trading R.A. Dickey for prospects.

No, the Mets were not going to win anything next season if Alderson hadn’t traded Dickey; the fans know that. But with Dickey pitching every fifth day, they would at least have had something to root for. It’s not every year that the Mets have a 20-game winner and Cy Young award winner on their mound.

It’s not every year either that the Mets have a batting champion, but they had one in 2011 and they let Jose Reyes leave as a free agent without trying to sign him. No Reyes to root for; now no Dickey to root for. Bob Waterman of Elias Sports Bureau said Wednesday the Mets are the first team in history to lose a batting champion and a Cy Young award winner, in either sequence, in succeeding years.

No matter what Alderson has said, it is lack of money that has dictated the team’s personnel decisions. Alderson was not around Wednesday to discuss the issue. His secretary said he was flying to the West Coast, and he did not return the call later in the day.

But when he spoke to reporters after the Dickey trade earlier in the week, he said, “This means nothing about the Mets’ finances.”

That’s hard to believe. On the contrary, I believe everything the Mets have done and not done A.M. (that would be After Madoff, as in Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi schemer) has been the result of the poor financial condition the owners’ involvement with Madoff left them.

After the Madoff debacle came to light, Fred Wilpon proudly and repeatedly said the Mets were not and would not be affected by the loss of many millions of dollars. Nice try, but developments have demonstrated otherwise.

In 2011 the Mets had a pitcher, Chris Capuano, whose 11 victories in his first full season after elbow surgery were tied for second on the pitching staff, but the Mets let him go to Los Angeles, where he signed a cheap two-year contract for $10 million. Capuano won 12 games for the Dodgers, but the Mets didn’t see the need to pay him to stay.

In his comments following the Dickey deal with Toronto, Alderson tried to make the development as much the pitcher’s doing as it was the Mets’.

“I think we understood, and to some extent he understood,” the executive said, “ that we had to find out what his value might be in the market.”

By value, Alderson meant value in players, not money. Based on the contracts free-agent pitchers were getting, Alderson knew that Dickey was seeking an absurdly meager contract extension from the Mets – two years for $25 million. They offered an insulting $20 million, knowing the 38-year-old pitcher would reject it.

Now that the Mets have traded Dickey and the Blue Jays have given him a two-year extension for the $25 million he sought, the Mets know his value, but it’s too late for them to give it to him, not that they ever intended to.

It was disingenuous for Alderson to say Dickey wanted to learn what his value was. He wasn’t a free agent; he is signed for next season for a paltry $5 million, barely over the major league minimum salary. If the Mets genuinely wanted to find out Dickey’s value and wanted him to find out, too, they could have released him and made him a free agent.

But they wouldn’t have done that because they wanted their package of prospects for him. Those are the players they want their fans to wait for. In two or three or four years, those players supposedly will be the foundation of a pennant contender. Wanna bet?

Prospects are called prospects for a reason; they are prospective major leaguers. But they come with no guarantees. Do the Mets think they have a Mike Trout or a Bryce Harper or a Stephen Strasburg among their prospects? They shouldn’t bet their Madoff money on it.

All they really know is they won’t have to shell out $30 million for Dickey over the next three years. They and Ken Davidoff are happy about that. Ken Davidoff? He writes for the New York Post, and Dickey must have said or done something to him to prompt the self-embarrassing column Davidoff wrote last week.

Davidoff questioned Dickey’s pitching future but worse, his character, maligning a man who is one of the genuinely good guys in the game. The article referred to Dickey’s “unwieldy personality” and said “he can be a handful.” It questioned his ability “to coexist peacefully” in the Mets’ clubhouse.”

“His gift for self-promotion and his love of attention don’t endear himself to most teammates,” Davidoff wrote.” And if he remained with the Mets for 2013, “How many times would Dickey spout off publicly?”

Davidoff was especially bothered by Dickey’s honesty and candor. He criticized Dickey for answering reporters’ questions about his status at the Mets’ annual holiday party for children.

“Not today, not with the kids here,” Davidoff suggested Dickey should have said. However, had he declined to answer questions, Davidoff would very likely have been the first to criticize Dickey.

If he stayed with the Mets, Davidoff wrote, how often would he “work behind the scenes to make the Mets look bad and boost his own brand?”

The article was posted on the Post Web site early last Saturday, before the trade was made, and parts of it showed how in touch with the matter Davidoff was.

Dickey, he wrote, “issued the laughable threat that, if the Mets didn’t extend his contract, he’d bolt the organization after 2013.” The Mets apparently took “the laughable threat” seriously.

However, if the Mets traded Dickey to the Blue Jays, he “is not expected to sign an extension with Toronto.”

So much for Davidoff’s grasp of the situation. His view of Dickey is no more informed.

After the trade, Dickey apologized for the comments he made during the holiday party, but the apology was unnecessary. He did nothing wrong.

If an apology is needed, the Mets owe one to their fans for doing nothing to make the team worth watching next season. No one could blame the fans if they stayed home on the 81 days the Mets are scheduled to play at Citi Field.