Carlos Beltran, no stranger to surgery, actually convinced Jonathon Niese to have a nose job by offering to pay for the procedure before Beltran was traded to San Francisco last season.

Beltran’s proposal was motivated more by looks than by function. The preoperative Niese had a nose befitting a journeyman boxer, and evidently took some ribbing from teammates about it. But when Niese, 25, decided to take Beltran up on the offer, a doctor discovered that the issues were more than skin deep.

“It was all messed up,” said Niese, who arrived Monday at Digital Domain Park. “If you saw the CAT scan, you’d be grossed out.”

– David Lennon, Newsday.

As @SanpeteRTU pointed out on Twitter this morning, very few would have predicted Jon Niese’s nose would be in the best shape of its life come Spring Training. But Lennon’s story adds that the rhinoplasty helped Niese breathe easier, which allowed him to work out harder and drop 10 pounds this offseason. So apparently both Niese and his nose are in great shape.

Hard to say if the nose job will actually make a difference, but I’m hoping Niese finally pitches to his peripherals and everyone credits the new nose. That’d mean Beltran, in absentia, gave the Mets perhaps their best Major League and Minor League pitchers.