This past week at Citi Field, R.A. Dickey broke character — as one of Santa’s elves, at a Mets holiday party centered around young victims of Hurricane Sandy — to show his true character. All about himself once again, Dickey issued the laughable threat that, if the Mets didn’t extend his contract, he’d bolt the organization after 2013.
The Mets are prepared to call the knuckleballer’s bluff with flair. As of last night, the club was engaged in serious trade discussions that would send the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner to Toronto for stud catching prospect Travis d’Arnaud and perhaps other, lesser players.
Forget about Dickey, who is not expected to sign an extension with Toronto, bolting Flushing for the 2014 campaign. Now he’ll be gone a year earlier than he predicted, for the top prospect in Toronto’s rich farm system, a guy the Mets can control through 2018.
The Mets are poised to pull this off even though Dickey’s unwieldy personality, the same personality that fueled his remarkable climb to greatness, mitigated the Mets’ options. Dickey’s remarks Tuesday underlined how risky it would be to employ Dickey as a one-year, $5-million, extension-less player in 2013.
This transaction marks a brave new path for the Mets, one in which sound baseball operations trumps sentiment. This in the same week when the Yankees are giving 39-year-old Ichiro Suzuki, who clocked 10 mediocre weeks and two phenomenal ones in The Bronx, a two-year extension seemingly because fans adored his inability to hit home runs.
Dickey’s request for two years and $26 million, beyond the $5 million due to him next season, was eminently reasonable. Yet that doesn’t mean that the Mets needed to concede. He is 38, and while the data on knuckleballers’ aging bodes well for the right-hander, it’s not a huge sample by which to go. There’s reasonable doubt that Dickey can replicate his outstanding 2012 campaign.
And, in an underappreciated part of this saga that soared into visibility this week, Dickey can be a handful. He clearly has enjoyed his rise from the ashes into a Flushing folk hero, and while he deserves praise and riches, there’s also the matter of him having to coexist peacefully in a workplace. His gift for self-promotion and his love of attention don’t endear himself to most teammates. Instead, his durability and outstanding results led him to be appreciated but far from beloved.
If Dickey can’t control his verbiage at a holiday party — “Folks, not today, not with the kids here” was all he had to say to reporters — then how would a full season of uncertainty feel? How many times would Dickey spout off publicly? Or work behind the scenes to make the Mets look bad and boost his own brand?
That’s why Mets general manager Sandy Alderson has been saying all along that he wasn’t enthralled by the notion of keeping Dickey for the one year. And it’s why there’s something to be said for selling high on Dickey. If he puts up another Cy Young campaign for Toronto in 2013 and d’Arnaud flops for the Mets, then we’ll rightly rip the Mets. But this is a sound process, and d’Arnaud, a potential All-Star at a position in which the supply has never appeared weaker, is the sort of high-impact player Alderson said he would need to get to let go of the ultra-popular Dickey.
Dickey’s love of his narrative, the embracing of his professional challenge, helped him defy the odds. Now it’s time for the Mets to let the Blue Jays, armed for a 2013 pennant run, roll the dice on him and build a Dickey-free future in Flushing.