KNUCKLE UNDER: Cy Young candidate R.A. Dickey could bring a lot on the open market, which is why it makes sense for the Mets to listen to teams interested in trading for the 38-year-old knuckleballer, writes The Post’s Ken Davidoff (
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INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Sandy Alderson, who turns 65 later this month, is the oldest of Major League Baseball’s 30 general managers.
He doesn’t have the most service time among his peers, because of his pursuit of other baseball vocations from 1998 through 2010, but his resume goes back the farthest, as the A’s made him their general manager in 1983.
With age and experience come a track record and a reputation. So when I chatted with other team’s officials yesterday at the general managers’ meetings about whether the Mets actually would trade the ultra-popular R.A. Dickey, a move counter to their long-time organizational DNA, these folks pointed back to Alderson.
“Didn’t they hire the people they did to make that sort of move?” one of Alderson’s fellow National League general managers asked, on the condition of anonymity.
That’s what we will discover in the next month or so.
Though the Mets insist extending Dickey, who can be a free agent after the 2013 season, is their top choice, any logical mind can understand why trading Dickey now, before he can even take a Citi Field bow for his likely 2012 NL Cy Young Award (we’ll find out Wednesday), should be a realistic, appealing option. Alderson and his front office are all about logic.
The Mets’ brain trust, while continuing to talk dollars with Dickey and his representative Bo McKinnis, are gathering information on a possible trade. They haven’t yet reached out to every potential deal partner in this pitching-hungry market. As The Post’s Joel Sherman reported, the Mets would emphasize getting a young power bat, preferably an outfielder, in return.
You can see it wholly from a baseball standpoint; Dickey is 38, and though knuckleballers age better than anyone — one team executive who worked alongside Tim Wakefield during his Red Sox run proposed four years and $50 million as a reasonable deal for Dickey — he’s susceptible to a physical breakdown. Why not sell high, as Dickey’s $5 million salary for next year looks like a steal?
Nevertheless, this isn’t merely a baseball decision. We’re talking about a team that remains mired in a difficult relationship with its own fan base, because of the four years of losing and payroll-cutting that has transpired. A team that has seen its attendance drop each of the last four seasons.
And we’re talking about a player who is, at worst, the second-most popular on the club. Whose rags-to-riches narrative, freaky pitch and knack for self-promotion have connected spectacularly with the public.
During the 2011 season, the Mets mystified other clubs when they neglected to trade a red-hot Jose Reyes in his walk year; the Rays, rich with prospects and engaged in a tough playoff race, were just one team that called the Mets in hopes of making a deal. Instead, having dealt Carlos Beltran (to the Giants for Zack Wheeler) and Francisco Rodriguez (to the Brewers for … payroll relief, pretty much), the Mets decided to deplete their .500-ish team no more and also hold onto the faint hope they could retain Reyes.
You know how that concluded; we need more time to see if the two 2012 draft picks the Mets received for Reyes’ departure to Miami — catcher Kevin Plawecki and third baseman Matt Reynolds — turn out better than a 2011 trade package. In any case, the Mets didn’t sell high.
Now, maybe an old approach, one tied too much into the instant gratification of fan reaction, will die gracefully. Mets officials insist they have full organizational support in their efforts to explore every option with Dickey — that if they find a trade that makes sense, ownership will authorize it, no matter if it alienates some fans in the short term.
An extension for face of the franchise David Wright, considered far more likely than a Dickey extension, also could help on this front. It would let fans know the team is investing significantly in its future, and that a Dickey trade would be more about capitalizing on a surplus asset than bailing on a long-term commitment.
So we’ll see. Alderson, a godfather of the emotion-free “Moneyball” philosophy, surely wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if he traded Dickey for an attractive package.
It might be a tougher call for his bosses. Yet it very well might be the right call.