One of the more bizarre events of the Winter Meetings flew under the radar yesterday when the Mets diverted headlines with contract offers to Bengie Molina and Jason Bay.

The Rule 5 Draft is often meaningless and I am far from an expert in the subject, but it is a reasonable place to find a low-cost role-player, provided you’re willing to keep him on your 25-man roster. If not, you must send him back to the team from which you’ve taken him. That’s how it works.

Anyway, strange things were afoot yesterday. As I wrote:

The Mets took Carlos Monasterios from the Phillies in the Rule 5 Draft this morning. It’s not a big deal, but the Phillies only had 33 men on their 40-man roster so weren’t even close to protecting Monasterios, plus he didn’t even make the list of 14 guys Jonathan Mayo suggested at MLB.com, plus he only threw seven innings about Single A last season, plus this guy was available. The Mets must really like something about Monasterios, in other words.

Update, 10:02 a.m. And apparently Monasterios has been traded to the Dodgers for cash considerations.

It turned out, according to David Lennon, that scouts loved Monasterios, so there’s that. But enough to make up for the fact that he’d only thrown seven innings above Single A? I guess so. And no one even selected Yohan Pino, a guy who posted over a 4:1 K:BB ratio in over 120 innings across Double-A and Triple-A in 2009.

Shows what I know.

Anyway, the bottom line is the Mets, with 40-man roster spots available, turned the seventh overall pick in the Rule 5 draft — a solid opportunity to find a role player on the cheap — into cash considerations from the Dodgers.

It could be that the deal forebodes some future move with the Dodgers and was some sort of good faith move between the two clubs, as Lennon suggests. I have no idea.

In any case, it doesn’t mean much. But it’s certainly weird.