I’m going to put aside Dan Haren for the purpose of this post. I figure he will — and should — cost a ton in prospects if the D-backs decide to deal him, and his contract is reasonable enough that teams with more premium prospects than the Mets can make a pitch for him if he becomes available. Plus I’m not certain why the D-backs would be eager to trade a great pitcher signed to a reasonable contract through 2012 with an option for 2013. Rebuilding processes don’t take that long; Haren should be part of Arizona’s long-term plans, not part of a firesale.

Instead I’d like to look at Cliff Lee and Roy Oswalt, the two top-flight pitchers most frequently rumored to be available this season. Initially, I figured there was no way the Mississippi-born Oswalt would waive his no-trade clause to join the Mets, but he has since suggested he would. So dehumanizing this as much as possible, I want to compare Lee and Oswalt as commodities.

Lee is a better pitcher than Oswalt. By WAR, he has been worth 1.5 wins more than Oswalt in 2010. And Oswalt is enjoying his best season in three, so he’s more likely to regress in the second half of the season (though it’s hard to imagine Lee maintaining his historically good peripherals).

Frankly, I have no idea what either will cost. The Mariners traded three prospects for Lee in the offseason, only one of whom cracked Baseball America‘s Top 100 prospects list — Phillippe Aumont, who was No. 93.

But then teams don’t necessarily measure prospects the same way Baseball America does, plus that deal now looks like a complete fleecing. The Mariners were paying for a full year of Lee (plus the draft picks he’ll bring when he flees for free agency) and a team acquiring him now would be trading for a half season (plus the picks). But again, players seem to be worth more at the trade deadline than in the offseason, and it appears unlikely the Mariners will receive less value in young players than what they traded for Lee.

So in short, no clue. If I had to guess, I’d say it takes at least one high-end young player or prospect and 1-2 promising midrange guys for Lee, but that’s pure speculation.

But because Lee is signed to a reasonable deal that ends after this season and Oswalt is signed to an expensive deal that runs through 2011, there may be a disproportionate difference in their costs. Every competitive team could reasonably make a play for Lee, since none will be hamstrung by his contract. Only the teams that can afford to take on the $18 million guaranteed to Oswalt after 2010 can bid for his services.

That means there should be significantly more teams in the mix for Lee than for Oswalt. More competition means the Mariners can ask for more in return, driving Lee’s price higher.

So though Lee is inarguably better and would do more to help the Mets contend in 2010, it strikes me that the Mets might actually be better-served pursuing Oswalt. Granted, that assumes the Mets have — and will continue to have — some payroll flexibility, and I don’t know anything about their budget. But theoretically, the high salary should mean less to the Mets than most MLB clubs and the prospects — since they don’t have a whole lot of them — should mean more.

Of course, there’s that whole human element to consider. Oswalt has been the Astros’ ace for a long time now and certainly means a lot to that franchise. They may not be motivated to deal him — even with his big contract — without receiving top-flight talent in return. So again, who the hell knows? Consider this post useless.

OK, here starts the first of a two-part regarding the incessant talk-radio, message-board and comments-section trade chatter.

So many things are overlooked when speculating on potential trades, but none more so than the economic factors involved. I’ll get deeper into that in the following post (about the supposedly available pitchers), but this one’s about Angel Pagan, a name frequently bandied about as trade bait for an ace pitcher.

There are plenty of obvious reasons the Mets shouldn’t trade Angel Pagan. He’s really good, for one, and a big part of the reason they’re even in contention this late in the season. And dealing Pagan because you’re relying on Carlos Beltran’s return to full health is just, well, you know. C’mon.

Inextricably linked to Pagan’s production, but perhaps less obvious, is his value to the team moving forward. Pagan will be paid $1.45 million this year, according to Cots. Per Fangraphs, he has already been worth about $9.9 million. And Pagan is under Mets control for the next two seasons. He’ll likely get a big raise in arbitration, but the total probably won’t come close to what he would cost to replace on the open market.

That means, if he stays healthy — no sure thing, of course — Pagan will provide the Mets with premium production at a bargain rate through 2012. He is precisely the type of player the Mets need more of: A low-cost contributor that allows them the payroll flexibility to pursue big-name free agents.

Obviously every angle in all trades should be explored, and if the D-backs come and ask the Mets for Pagan in a straight-up swap for Dan Haren, then, well, peace. But Pagan is worth more than a rental.

Using WAR as a quick-and-dirty reference point to evaluate players, Cliff Lee has been worth about 1.2 wins over Pagan this season. If they were to deal Pagan for Lee at midseason and both Lee and Pagan continue their torrid paces, the Mets will gain about 1.2 wins for the remainder of 2010, and that’s worth something. But the Mariners will receive Pagan’s cost-controlled production through 2012, which is worth a hell of a lot more.

Reader “dave crockett” brought up an interesting point in response to my post about the way Jerry Manuel and Dan Warthen handled John Maine’s recent injury. He wrote:

I’m no Jerry apologist, but he’s become a caricature on the interwebs. No hyperbole is completely out of hand. No need for context when it comes to Jerry’s monkeyshines. When he subscribes to the same worn out, cliched, debunked “book” that supposedly good managers also still use it’s evidence of “Jerryball”.

This to me is a prime example…

Jerry and Dan *clearly* could have and should have been the bigger men in this situation — no question. But Ted, you don’t think this incident has anything to do with Maine blasting Jerry in the press on multiple days after being removed from his last start? Maine didn’t burn *any* bridges with the act he put on, even after it was clear he was hurt?

I replied:

I’d probably just let it go if it didn’t reflect a pattern. Remember that Warthen suggested the Mets’ catchers were responsible for the team-wide inability to throw strikes last season, and Manuel had his whole thing with Ryan Church.I don’t know the nature of Manuel’s relationship with any of his players, and the players do seem to enjoy playing for him. But talk to just about any player or ex-player about what makes for a good manager, and he’ll stress the importance of the manager having his back publicly. Bobby Valentine got a lot of heat for having a big ego — rightfully so, maybe — but he generally did a great job of putting players’ mistakes on his own shoulders.

Manuel has a way of subtly divorcing himself from many of the things that go wrong in a game — instead of “we were sending him,” it was, “he has a green light,” etc. He’s very likely being honest, but he rarely seems to step out of his way to take heat for a player’s error.

dave crockett responded:

My larger point is that I think we — I’m lumping myself in this category — have a classic perceptual bias. We’ve become so hypersensitive to JerOmar’s (many legitimate) faults we can’t acknowledge positive steps. The Maine situation was handled about as differently from Church or even Beltran as possible, but rhetorically people are connecting those three instances rather than separating them.

For the record, I wish we had a better manager. It’s just that manager is really hard to significantly upgrade. The woods are full of guys like Jerry. They may not come with a bunting fetish, but it’ll be something else. Almost the most you can expect is for them to be thoughtful about and responsive to their mistakes. Slowly and uncertainly maybe that’s beginning to happen.

I’m not ready to excuse Manuel or Warthen for the things they said about Maine’s injury after the fact. But I do think dave crockett makes a good point: It does seem like Manuel and Minaya are frequently crucified on the Internet for typical behavior of men in their positions.

And it seems like, in certain situations, Manuel would be torched no matter what he did. I was surprised he brought Jon Niese back out on Wednesday night after the rain delay and lengthy inning, but also surprised by the amount of negative reaction it prompted.

Disagreeing with managerial decisions is a big part of being a baseball fan, and I’m certain that fans of every Major League team quibble with the choices their manager makes. But are we too hard on Jerry Manuel for what we perceive to be mistakes? Do we ignore the correct decisions he makes? Should we point instead to this season’s positive results?

I don’t know. I’ll still contend that he bunts too often and overworks his relievers, no matter what anyone tells me. But at the same time, I think dave crockett is right that I’d be saying something similar about any manager leading the Mets.

Before last night’s game, R.A. Dickey was on a clubhouse computer looking up statistics about the Tigers. After the number he did on Detroit last night, people may be looking up his stats today.

– Roger Rubin, N.Y. Daily News.

I don’t have a link to Rubin’s recap as it has since been replaced by a later version. I transcribed it from the print edition.

So R.A. Dickey looks up stats on a computer before Mets games. Cool. Me too.

I imagine that’s not terribly unusual for a Major League pitcher preparing to face a team he’s never seen before, but then R.A. Dickey has demonstrated a capacity to surprise Mets fans again and again. Maybe he was looking up his own impressive WAR total. Maybe R.A. Dickey is a nerd like the rest of us.

Basically everything we know about R.A. Dickey is awesome. To boot:

He reads: Kevin Burkhardt told Mets fans of Dickey’s pre-game ritual of laying around and reading, and Dickey later told Marty Noble that he stresses the power of the written word with his children and urges them to think critically about literature. Check it out:

“There’s no testing, but I do want to know about their comprehension and what they retain … want them to see beneath the surface, to understand the human condition.”

R.A. Dickey wants his children to understand the human condition. The man sets lofty goals.

He goes by “R.A.”: Not because he’s preventing underage Ruben Tejada from bringing beer back to his dorm room, but because his name is “Robert Alan.” But this is no Bob or Robby Dickey. He’s the R.A., a name that conjures a form of mild authority. Also, it is a rare type that can pull off going by his initials when the initials do not include the letter J. Think about it: You know some J.J.s and T.J.s and J.P.s and maybe a P.J. or two. But R.A.? Unique.

He has a sweet beard: He does.

He looks a tiny bit like Will Ferrell: Also awesome.

He has no ulnar collateral ligament: And yet he can still throw a fastball in the mid-80s and a knuckleball that touches 80. R.A. Dickey is an actual freak of nature. Plus, you can’t tear something that doesn’t exist.

He dominates: In his first seven starts with the Mets, Dickey is 6-0 with a 2.33 ERA. His 2.50 K:BB ratio is impressive for a knuckleballer, and he has induced a 53.2% groundball rate. Smart money says Dickey probably won’t always be this good, but it’s difficult to guess just where his true talent level lies. Dickey has demonstrated reasonably steady improvement since taking up the knuckleball full time a half-decade ago, so there’s reason to expect he’ll continue to outpitch his historical norms.

He makes a hilarious face when he pitches: In conversation, a few of my friends have mentioned “that picture everyone keeps using of R.A. Dickey.” You know the one I’m talking about, right? Where’s he’s got his arm extended and his mouth wide open so it looks like he’s roaring like a lion?

Yeah, that’s not any one particular picture of R.A. Dickey. Look closer at “that picture” the next couple of times you see it. Notice that his uniform keeps changing, even though the rest of him keeps staying the same? The A.P. photo wire has like 30 pictures of R.A. Dickey making that face for at least three different teams. He’s yelling “R.A.” phonetically, like “RAAHHHH!”

Also, R.A. Dickey’s initials spell “Rad.”

So in conclusion, knuckleballers are awesome, and R.A. Dickey is a particularly awesome knuckleballer. Please direct all questions to your resident advisor.