Sunday, Matt den Dekker broke his wrist. The only piece of good news is that while he will have to wear a cast for a month to six weeks, he will not need surgery.

Still, this is pretty bad news for den Dekker. If he takes his cast off on June 1, he would still be a few weeks from game action. Even then, wrist injuries tend to sap a hitter’s bat control and power: two areas in which the 25-year old den Dekker did not have any room to decline. He was not a realistic candidate to make the Opening Day roster. Again, he hit .220/.256/.373 in 77 games in AAA last year with 90 strikeouts – a a 28% strikeout rate. In 45 PA this spring, he was no better: .205/.222/.364 with one walk and 16 strikeouts – a 36% strikeout rate. I have lowered my offensive expectations for den Dekker from poor in the big leagues, to poor in AAA.

This injury seems particularly damaging for den Dekker. Had he gone to AAA Vegas and hit at all, there might well have been an opening for him in New York by summer. Now, he’ll just be getting his own bearings in Vegas and will no longer be the first option when someone ele gets hurt. Generally, I’m not too worried about minor injuries to prospects in spring training – see Michael Fulmer or Zack Wheeler – for this year’s examples. It’s only when the injuries become chronic as they have for Reese Havens at the extreme or Darrell Ceciliani or Cesar Puello, that it starts to really impact a player’s projection. Nope, for den Dekker the damage is purely in terms of timing and most likely missing a chance at his first big league callup.

So the Mets final outfield spot will come down to Jordany Valdespin and Kirk Nieuwenhuis. That Nieuwenhuis is in this battle at all can be blamed directly on his own injury problems – a knee bruise this spring. And don’t worry, the other one will be up soon – whenever Marlon Byrd gets injured or becomes ineffective or the former causes the latter.

Sorry, been away from a computer most of today (And what’s this, centaurs take PEDS?) but I wanted to add a quick followup to the Michael Bourn yesterday, since it came up in the comments. The whole problem of draft pick compensation and the incredible value on draft picks is a direct result of the last Collective Bargaining Agreement.

As It’s About the Money put it: “they’ve created a league where the 12th pick in the draft is more valuable than one of the game’s better centerfielders, and in which the New York flippin’ Yankees are going to extraordinary lengths to comply with the luxury tax cap.”

In the good old days, teams were allowed to spend their resources however they saw fit. If a team like the Mets decided that Michael Bourn, a legitimate MLB centerfielder would make their roster, which did not currently have any, better they could sign him. Sure, they would sacrifice a draft pick, but they could spend extra on talent in other areas of the draft to try to acquire first round type talents who had slipped. The problem is that the best way to build a winning team is through the draft. First round picks, which used to have value, because hey, you could draft potentially good players, now have extra value because they are a license to spend the most efficient money a baseball team can – on amateur talent.

The answer: less regulation. Blow up the hard draft slots. Keep free agent compensation as is, for all I care. But please, MLB and MLBPA, get rid of the absurd hard slotting for amateur talent. Pay the talented people.

I am opposed to the Mets signing Michael Bourn if it costs them the #11 pick in the 2013 amateur draft. The Mets are still interested in the outfielder, but have not officially asked Major League Baseball to break the rules to allow them to keep their first round pick. Oy. It’s a fun dance two weeks out from spring training.

Why would the Mets have to sacrifice a pick? Well, they had the 10th worst record in 2012 in baseball, but now hold the 11th pick because the Pirates failed to come to terms with Mark Appel of Stanford, and were compensated with the 10th overall pick, pushing the Mets down to #11.

Here’s the actual language of the MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement regarding protected picks:

A Club that signs one Qualified Free Agent who is subject
to compensation shall forfeit its highest available selection in the
next Rule 4 Draft. A Club that signs more than one Qualified Free
Agent subject to compensation shall forfeit its highest remaining
selection in the next Rule 4 Draft for each additional Qualified
Free Agent it signs. Notwithstanding the above, a Club shall not
be required to forfeit a selection in the top ten of the first round
of the Rule 4 Draft, and its highest available selection shall be
deemed its first selection following the tenth selection of the first
round.

Emphasis added. The language of the rule is clear. The top ten picks are protected. The rule does not even hint at the notion that the picks of the teams with the ten worst records are protected.

Yes, it is in the abstract, unfair that the Pirates’ failure to sign their pick pushes the Mets down a slot, and out of the range of protection. However, what incentive does MLB have to change the rules now for the Mets? The League office also has to represent the interests of the 29 other Major League teams who would also be harmed by such a haphazard approach to the language of the rules.

It’s not only that the Mets would be sacrificing a valuable pick in the top half of the draft. They would also be sacrificing the roughly $2.5 million slot allowance that the pick carries. In 2012, the first year under a similar system, the Mets saved a quarter of a million dollars against their pool by signing Gavin Cecchini for $2.3 million instead of the $2.55 slot. They wer able to package that small savings, plus underslot deals with Kevin Plawecki (1S), Matt Reynolds (2nd), Branden Kaupe (4th) Richie Rodriguez (9th) and Paul Sewald (10th) to go overslot and sign hard-throwing high school RHP Corey Oswalt and Chris Flexen and C Tomas Nido.

Finally, I was under the idea that speed players, and yes, Bourn, who derives much of his value offensively and defensively from his legs, age poorly. Eno Sarris tweeted out a few links that argued against this notion one using aging curves of players in skill buckets, which shows that speed guys decline more slowly than their more leaden-footed counterparts. The second piece has a few more issues. Tangotiger at the Book Blog looked at the aging patterns of “great” players. Initially, I recoiled at the notion that Bourn is a “great” player, but his 2012 was great enough > 6 WAR, that he slips into the minimum standards of Tango’s study. Anyway, Tango argued in December 2010 that the Carl Crawford signing was reasonable because speedy, great players aged better. And oh, boy. That’s been a disaster. It surely does not mean the research was wrong, just that there’s one more data point that speedy outfielders are not great long term investments.

Bourn is still a 30-year old coming off a career year. Yes, he would immediately improve the Mets’ centerfield position. But is this a reasonable expense in money and draft pick potential for a team like the Mets who are no better than the third-best team in their division, and might reasonably be projected to be 15-20 games behind the Nationals and Braves at the top?

No. No. And no.

This has been a fun dance, but the lights will come on after one more verse.

If you haven’t heard the Diamondbacks traded Justin Upton to the Atlanta Braves for Martin Prado and a uninspiring collection of younger players. It’s a pretty baffling trade from Arizona’s perspective.

Prado was the better player than Upton in 2012, posting a career-best 5.4 bWAR compared to Upton’s 2.1 bWAR in a year when he was hampered by a messed up thumb. Except of course, teams are not trading baseball cards and last year’s production, but for future production and contracts. Upton, who will turn 26 in August 2013, is under contract for three more years, and certainly could produce like a superstar again, you know, like he did in 2011. Prado, who turned 29 last October, will be eligible for free agency after 2013.

Is Martin Prado enough value for Upton and 3B Chris Johnson? Of course not. How about the rest of the package Atlanta is sending to the desert? We’ll play a little game here and try to find the closest player under Mets’ team control for the package that Atlanta sent to Arizona.

Martin Prado
Closest Met in 2012 value: David Wright (6.7 bWAR).
Career comments: Wright is a year older, and has been better over the course of the two players’ careers. Wright is a .301/.381/.506 hitter, but has slugged .500 or better just once in the last four years after exceeding the mark in each of his first five seasons. Prior to 2012, Wright had failed to reach 3 bWAR in each of his previous three seasons while Prado, since becoming a regular at age 25 in 2009, had put up bWARs of 2.8, 4.9, 1.8 and 2012′s 5.4. There is of course, the wildly disparate contract situation with Wright under contract at $134 million through 2020.

Randall Delgado
Closest Met in 2012 value: Dillon Gee

Gee                     Delgado
R/9              4.60                        4.66
ERA+            94                          92
IP                  109.2                      92.2

Delgado will turn 23 in February, while Gee will be 27 in April. Again, Gee is a solid back-end starter. Delgado is a tick worse, but is younger, and throws a little harder, averaging 92 mph last year to Gee’s 90.2.

Nick Ahmed
Closest Mets farmhand: SS Wilfredo Tovar
Ahmed, who the Braves drafted in the second round in 2011 out of the University of Connecticut, is a gifted defensive shortstop. That earned him the Tovar comparision. Ahmed hit .269/.337/.391 while going 40-for-50 stealing bases in the advanced-A Carolina League in 2012.  Tovar does not run as much (he was 12-for-19 in 65 FSL games) but outhit Ahmed in their time in advanced-A in 2012 putting up a .284/.377/.385 line in St. Lucie while turning 21 in August. Tovar finished the year by hitting .254/.308/.332 in 57 games for AA Binghamton. Ahmed struck out in 18% of his advanced-A at bats in 2012, while Tovar whiffed in 7%, and 8.2% in all of his 2012 plate appearances including AA. Tovar walked in 11% of his advanced-A plate appearances compared to Ahmed’s 9%. Again, advantage Tovar. Given the low-power profile the two guys share, that’s a huge disparity in strikeout rate. Ahmed’s only offensive advantage is speed.

Zeke Spruill
Closest Met Farmhand: Cory Mazzoni
The Braves drafted Spruill in the second round out of Marietta, GA in 2008, while the Mets plucked Mazzoni in the second round in 2011 out of North Carolina State. Both turned 23 last fall, and ended their 2012 seasons in AA. Spruill was repeating the level, after splitting 2011 between advanced-A and double-A, which was Mazzoni’s path in 2012.

Mazzoni           Spruill
AA ERA                3.72                   3.57
AA K/9                 6.2                      5.3

Keith Law sees three average pitches in the lanky Spruill (6’5″, 190lbs) but not the stamina or bat-missing ability to start. I have the same concerns, durability and too few strikeouts about Mazzoni, who stands 6’1″ 190.

Chris Drury
Closest Met: ???
Drury hit .229/.270/.333 as a 19-year old 1B/3B in the South Atlantic League in 2012.

Pick your favorite non-prospect outside of the Mets top-50 to match here.

Conclusion

I love this deal for Atlanta. They will miss Prado, but Upton could be a top-five player in the league – just as he looked like he was becoming two years ago.

As far as the Mets and Diamondbacks, finding a match, well, that’s a different problem. The Diamondbacks got a useful piece in Prado, who would have been the Mets’ best position player in the last few years not named David Wright. Obviously, the Mets weren’t going to move Wright for Upton (although if that was an option, yes, they should have considered it).

That left the Diamondbacks looking for value off the Mets big league roster. Once they asked for Zack Wheeler, the Mets walked away, per Jon Heyman. Creating a package around Wheeler for Upton would have been an entirely reasonable move for the Mets. It would have made the team more expensive, and pushed the team closer to contention in 2013-2015. However, the front office chose to save their prospect value – a different if also reasonable move.

I’ll write a longer piece once everyone knows the identity of the “non-elite” prospects, and the amount of money in the Mets-Jays Dickey-d’Arnaud/Syndergaard deal. However, I will say this right now: if a team is going to trade a reigning Cy Young award winner, this is how it’s done. Pull the other team’s best two prospects. In d’Arnaud, the Mets acquired a player who is ready now and a top 10 prospect in baseball. Syndergaard becomes the Mets’ second-best pitching prospect.

Has R.A. Dickey been excellent over the last three years? Yes. Is he a wonderful story? Yes. Have knuckleballers aged well? Yes. Were the Mets a likely playoff team in 2013? No. Are they better off in 2014 and beyond for having done this deal? That’s the idea.

There is no guarantee that d’Arnaud’s minor league success will translate into his becoming a big league all-star. There’s no guarantee that Syndergaard’s promise will make him a rotation regular in 2015. Similarly, Dickey might never have a year, or a half-season as good as his 2012.

This is a risk worth taking for a team that has missed the playoffs for each of the last six seasons.

As I write this late Saturday afternoon (5 pm), the likeliest permutation of an RA Dickey to Toronto trade, has the Mets receiving C Travis d’Arnaud, and either RHP Noah Syndergaard OR RHP Aaron Sanchez. The Mets will likely send more players to Toronto, and get another piece or two back, but these are the big names.

Both Baseball Prospectus and John Sickels had the three players listed 1, 2 and 3 in that order in their most recent evaluations of the Blue Jays’ system.

D’Arnaud joins Wheeler as the top prospect in the system. I’d pick d’Arnaud, who is widely regarded as not just the top catching prospect in baseball, but one of the best position player prospects anywhere, over Wheeler. Reasonable people with a pitching fetish could choose Wheeler.

Either Syndergaard or Sanchez, who both pitched in the Midwest League for Lansing, the same level as Savannah, would slot in behind Wheeler as the Mets’ second best pitching prospect. Yes, that’s ahead of Michael Fulmer, Rafael Montero and everyone else.

D’Arnaud hit .333/.380/.595 in 67 games last year for AAA Las Vegas with 21 doubles and 16 homers as a 23 year-old before his season ended with a torn posterior cruciate ligament (PCL). He’s no Vegas mirage: he hit .343/.381/.577 with seven blasts on the road. He’s no PCL mirage either; he hit .311/.371/.542 as a 22-year old in AA New Hampshire in 2011.

The full numbers for d’Arnaud:

Basic

Advanced

The one concern numbericaly for d’Arnaud is that he walks at a rate below the Major League average of 8.5%. The Mets, who under Dave Hudgens, have done a strong job teaching plate discipline, should be able to address this with d’Arnaud.

Syndergaard
Syndergaard, a first round pick (38th overall) in the 2010 draft, is listed at 6’5″.

Baseball Prospectus:

Strengths: Monster size; high-end arm strength; fastball is thrown on steep plane; already works near plus-plus velocity range and can touch elite; shows heavy sink and occasional boring action; one source called his fastball “bottom-heavy and difficult to lift”; curveball flashes plus, with hard vertical action; changeup took steps forward in 2012, flashing plus with sinker movement and good arm speed; shows strike-throwing ability and feel for working low in the zone.

Weaknesses: Delivery has some effort; good arm speed, but can show some drag; can lose legs in the delivery and become too arm-heavy; curveball isn’t consistent and will lose depth; changeup can get too firm; tendency to push the pitch.

John Sickels:

Strong sinking fastball, good changeup, breaking stuff coming around, solid command, good body, good makeup, strong sabermetric profile. Just needs to stay healthy.

The Numbers

Those are some pretty sexy a-ball numbers for a guy who turned 20 years old in August 2012.

Sanchez
The 6’4″ Sanchez is a little behind Syndergaard, both as a prospect, and in height, but not by much. The Jays drafted him with the 34th pick in 2010 out of high school in California.

Baseball Prospectus:

Strengths: Prototypical size; improving strength; easy delivery; 7 fastball; works in easy plus range and touches higher; excellent extension and lighting fast arm; plus life; projects as cash money pitch; curveball shows 6+ promise; big hook with tight rotation and vertical bite; changeup flashes above-average potential, with some fade to the arm-side and a fastball disguise.

Weaknesses: Command is below-average; delivery can get funky; doesn’t finish and elevates to the arm side; timing and balance can get thrown off; late pickup will force arm to compensate and play catch-up; secondary offerings are inconsistent; at times, doesn’t show enough pitchability.

John Sickels:

Stuff is even better than Syndergaard’s, three plus pitches, but needs to sharpen his control. Noah has a better balance of stuff and command than Aaron at this point, but they are very close.

The Numbers

Obviously, he has a control problem. He also misses bats and gives up few hits.

This is essentially a series of things I think in the wake of the Royals-Rays Wil Myers + for James Shields/Wade Davis and the Mets’ on-going negotiations with R.A. Dickey.

- The amount the Royals paid in prospects for James Shields and Wade Davis increased R.A. Dickey’s value on the trade market.

- In fact, they increased it so much that it has almost become hard to make a deal. R.A. Dickey has been Shields’ equal or better in the last two or three years. With the inclusion of Myers, the Mets would only be happy with a return that included a truly elite prospect who projects as a impact player – a potential all-star – who contributes value on both sides of the ball, in the big leagues. There just are not that many of those guys in the high minors. Leaving out NL East teams for a moment, the list includes guys like Travis D’Arnaud (TOR), Jurickson Profar (TEX) and Oscar Taveras (STL). I’m open to suggestions for others to include.

- The Texas Rangers’ Mike Olt is not enough to be the centerpiece of a return deal for R.A. Dickey. Grant Bisbee did a very nice, thorough explanation of many of the important ideas behind that here. The Mets think so too. Texas has, thus far, balked at including either Profar or Elvis Andrus.

- The gap between R.A. Dickey and the next best pitcher on the free agent market, Anibal Sanchez, is significant. In his last three seasons, Anibal Sanchez has been worth 6.1 bWAR. R.A. Dickey was worth 5.6 bWAR in 2012 alone and 12.1 in the last three. Or is it? If Fangraphs WAR is your style, Sanchez has been worth 12 fWAR in the last three and R.A. Dickey 9.9. Moving back to more basic stats, in the last three years, Dickey has allowed 3.28 runs/9 innings pitched over 616.2 innings. Sanchez: 4.12 r/9 over 587 IP. Nah, there’s a gap: Dickey’s been better on a per-inning basis and pitched more innings. He’s also 10 years older.

- The gap between what the Mets are offering Dickey - $20 million on top of 2013′s $5 million, for a total of $25 million, and his request of $26-28 million for 2014-2015 for a combined value of $31-33 million, is in baseball terms, not big. It can be easily bridged, if the Mets wanted to.

- I don’t think the right answer for the Mets is definitively “TRADE” (or if you prefer “TRAID”) or “SIGN.” I would lean toward trade, and I think the deliberate pace of the negotiations suggests that the Mets are too. However, the real issue is whether the Mets can hook up with a team, and it’s maybe 5 or six in baseball, with a high-enough ceiling offensive prospect to make trading Dickey an appropriate value play. That is not an easy task. Were Dickey to come back on a three-year deal that average between $8.3 and $11 million annually, at anything close to his 2010-2012 level, he would continue to be an incredibly valuable asset. It’s obviously a shorter term asset than say, 6 full years of a prospect, but those extra years of control have to be balanced against the odds that the players acquired for Dickey do not achieve his level of success. In the same vein, the odds have to be against 38-year old of Dickey 2013-2015 equalling Dickey 2010-2012, right?