I’m kind of surprised by the results of the earlier poll. As of right now, 61% of you would not trade Jon Niese for Gio Gonzalez. I voted “yes,” and I figured most of you would — in fact I thought it seemed like such a no-brainer I questioned whether I should even bother posting the poll. I hope the post itself didn’t sway any votes. If I were Sandy Alderson and that deal was on the table, I would trade Niese for Gonzalez before Billy Beane even had a chance to hang up and consult with Jonah Hill.

And yeah, though Niese’s xFIP and FIP might show signs that he could be better than Gonzalez, he just hasn’t been better than Gonzalez — or really anything close. He has been kind of bad and Gonzalez has been kind of awesome. I know there’s a lot to suggest they’ll both come back toward the middle, but I find it hard to believe they’ll cross. If that’s an indication that I lack faith in xFIP, then… well, actually yes: That’s an indication that I lack faith in xFIP.

And beyond that, what puts Gonzalez over the top is that he’s thrown 200 innings in each of the last two seasons. Niese’s injuries have been reasonably minor and trying to figure out which healthy pitcher is more likely to get hurt is silly, but I’ll take the guy who has started off his career showing the durability that Gonzalez has.

Mike Salfino looks at some comps for our new hero after his first part-season of regular big-league work and likes the return. I’ll throw in that a quick survey of the guys listed shows that few of them flashed the type of power that Duda did in the high Minors. Ryan Howard’s numbers, somewhat predictably, demolish everyone else’s. But if you’ll recall, Howard spent a couple of seasons stuck behind Ol’ Jim Jam in the Phillies’ system.

No one has ever accused TedQuarters of ignoring roster minutiae. The Mets signed left-handed pitcher Chuck James to a Minor League deal today and invited him to Major League Spring Training.

You may remember James from his time as a wholly unmemorable Braves starter in 2006 and 2007, before he tore his labrum and rotator cuff in 2008, missed the entire 2009 season recovering from surgery and wound up in the Nationals’ system in 2010.

James pitched out of the bullpen for the Twins’ Triple-A club in Rochester in 2011 and did a fine a job of it, posting a 2.30 ERA and striking out more than a batter per inning. He struggled in his 10 1/3-inning stint with the big-league Twins, but James pitched effectively against both lefty and righty hitters in the Minors, like an elusive “crossover” guy. And he pitched 62 2/3 innings in only 38 appearances, meaning — based on division alone — he’s apt to throw more than one inning at a time.

I’d say it’s better than even money James winds up in the Mets’ Major League bullpen next year, if not to start the season then at some point not long thereafter.

But wait, there’s more! If the Mets need to save money as badly as we all think they need to save money, they can call on James for double-duty. As recently as January, 2007 — after his successful first big-league season in 2006 — James worked as a glass installer for his local Lowe’s. Maybe that’ll prove useful, what with the Citi Field wall reconstruction and all.

Also, James was once bitten by a poisonous copperhead but elected not to seek treatment. “I decided I wasn’t going to die, so I didn’t do anything,” he said, apparently not realizing at the time he was lobbing a wide-open alley-oop pass for jokes about the Mets’ medical staff years later.

Don’t ask me why I started going through the league splits year-by-year on baseball-reference.com to see which innings produce the highest offensive totals. Truth be told I can’t even remember. But it turns out the innings in which hitters generally produce the best OPSes are the first, fourth, and sixth.

The order changes every year, but those are almost always the top three, which makes a lot of sense: A team’s best hitters usually hit in the first inning. They’ll often come up again (with a better sense of what the pitcher is throwing) in the fourth, and the sixth must be the perfect window in which the best hitters most frequently face tiring starting pitchers.

Every year, hitters in the ninth inning produce the lowest OPS. Often it’s about 30 points lower than the next lowest inning. Presumably this is because Proven Closers come in and Shorten The Game. In 2011, Major Leaguers in total posted a .728 OPS, but only a .665 mark in the ninth inning.

Anyway, that’s all trivia. I bring it up because of this, which is also trivia: Carlos Beltran — he of the .857 career OPS — has a .941 career OPS in the ninth inning.

I don’t really know what that means and I suspect it means very little beyond what we already know about Carlos Beltran being awesome. But neither Derek Jeter nor David Ortiz nor Macier Izturis nor Albert Pujols nor Dustin Pedroia nor Chipper Jones nor Reggie Jackson nor Edgar Renteria nor most other reputedly clutch guys Twitter and I could come up have ninth-inning OPSes that match their career lines. Most don’t even come close.

Obviously there are a bunch of others out there, and obviously there’s a whole long conversation about clutchness that I’m not eager to revisit here — again, this is all trivia — but the only two other guys I found with ninth-inning OPSes better than their career marks are Evan Longoria and Tony Gwynn. And neither’s ninth-inning uptick is as severe as Beltran’s.

Supposedly the Rockies are making a move for our man. That’d be fine by me. I’m still sort of maintaining the vague hope that Sandy Alderson can pull off a Christmas miracle and Vernon-Wells Jason Bay on someone then sign Beltran with the freed up cash, but I probably need to confront the very real possibility that it’s not happening.