Schoenfield: Why the Mets should trade R.A. Dickey

Over at FanGraphs, Dave Cameron writes that the Mets aren’t that far away:

  So, I say good for the Mets on not giving up on their short-term future. They just aren’t anywhere close to being bad enough to justify punting the next few years while they wait for the farm system to develop new stars to build around. They already have stars to build around. They can win with the ones they have now.

I agree with Dave’s premise that teams shouldn’t always be so willing to punt on a season. But I think the Mets are just in the wrong division; and if they can’t sign Dickey now, there’s no guarantee they sign him next offseason. Their best move would be to shop him around and acquire a young hitter to add alongside their old third baseman. You can still build a rotation around Harvey, Wheeler and Niese, but you need to build up the offense around Wright. If they can sign Dickey to a long-term deal, I’m in favor of that—knuckleballers are good risks even in their early 40s—but I don’t believe this ownership is going to give out two megacontracts in one winter.

As bad as the public relations hit would be in trading away the reigning Cy Young winner, maybe Mets fans—at least the older ones—can remember back in 1989, when the Mets acquired the reigning AL Cy Young winner, Frank Viola. While he had some nice years with the Mets, the Twins did acquire Kevin Tapani and Rick Aguilera in the deal. Two years later, the Twins were World Series champs.

Thanks to JB.