According to Jon Heyman on Twitter, the Blue Jays are asking for huge prospects in return for lefty setup man Scott Downs. Like blue-chip prospects.

It sounds a bit ridiculous, and since no deal has yet been made it’s reasonable to expect the Blue Jays won’t get anyone near the caliber of Casey Kelly, Jose Iglesias or Jesus Montero for Downs.

But if the market rate for lefty relievers is even a good but not great prospect, a tier down from that trio, the Mets should probably dangle Pedro Feliciano out there and see what teams will offer up.

Downs and Feliciano are not perfect comps, though they will both be free agents after the season. Downs is a little better than Perpetual Pedro against righties and tends to throw longer outings less frequently. He’s closer to Jerry Manuel’s elusive “crossover guy” and less of a straight lefty specialist like Feliciano.

Feliciano’s career stats are more impressive, but only because Downs started his career as a mostly crappy starter. Downs is a better reliever than Feliciano and no doubt a more valuable commodity.

But with the way he flummoxes lefties, Feliciano offers value to a contending team. And if, for whatever reason, setup men are going at premium rates this July, then the Mets should consider spinning Feliciano into something that can help their future.

Now I know what you’re thinking: You’re saying the Mets should be “buyers,” not “sellers,” at the deadline, since they’re still on the fringes of contention.

Nonsense. Those are labels. That’s silly. Teams should read the market and take advantage of inefficiencies when they present themselves. Determining before the trade deadline if you’re a “buyer” or “seller” is a bad way to approach it. You’re a general manager. Improve your team.

It will make for a slightly tougher haul, but if the Mets can contend with Feliciano in 2010 — no sure thing — they can contend without him. Ollie Perez should not be on the team, but if they’re going to insist on keeping him around, he might actually prove a decent lefty specialist — righties have done the bulk of the damage against him this season and last. Mike O’Connor, down in Triple-A, could likely handle the role too. Not as well as Feliciano, certainly, but a close enough approximation to make it worth the Mets’ while if they could get something of real value for the familiar lefty.

Granted, this is all probably immaterial because I will be shocked if a team gives up a top 100 prospect for Downs. I’m skeptical of all trade rumors, and Heyman’s Tweets imply that the Blue Jays are purposefully asking for too much because they don’t want to trade Downs within the division.

I’m just thinking out loud.

Well that was a fun one, huh? Amazing how one solid win will change the tone in the media and blogosphere, too. Everyone who said the season was over two days ago is now fixing for a big deadline acquisition. How it goes, I guess.

I never doubted that the Mets’ lineup would eventually hit — and I’m not willing to take one game as evidence that they continue doing so — so I’m more interested in Jon Niese’s performance last night.

Niese didn’t have his best stuff, pretty clearly. He only struck out one batter, allowed seven hits over six innings, and pitched in traffic for much of his outing. But he induced a lot of weak contact, got groundouts when he needed them and worked past some shoddy defense behind him. I haven’t consulted pitchFX to back this up, but it seems like he has thrown his big, slow curveball more often and more consistently in his last few starts than he had been earlier in the season, (when he almost entirely abandoned it).

It’s good. Fans talk constantly about the Mets’ need for a “true No. 2,” whatever that means, and here’s Niese, at 23, pitching like at least that. Using ERA+ for a quick and dirty study, Niese has been the 22nd best pitcher in the National League in 2010, and only four teams have two pitchers who have been better than Niese.

That’s meaningless, of course. The goal is to have as many good starters as possible and not to label them one thing or another, plus ERA+ is not necessarily a good indicator of how a pitcher will perform moving forward. I’m just saying if you think the Mets don’t currently have a “true No. 2” guy, you’re wrong. Plus, with the emergence of R.A. Dickey, Niese has arguably been only the Mets’ third-best starter.

I keep getting bogged down in things that don’t matter. What does matter is that Niese is 23, under team control for the foreseeable future, and appears to be pretty damn good. Granted, 107 2/3 — or 147 1/3, if you count the last two seasons — Major League innings are not an indicator of much. Plenty of pitchers have started better and fallen apart. But Niese’s Major League numbers in his first full season are in keeping with his Minor League history, so there’s reason to believe he’s actually this good.

And that’s exciting. I’ve been waiting so eagerly for so long for the Mets to have a solid crop of young, cost-controlled players to help them create a sustainable winner, and it appears they finally might. The jury is still out on all of them — Niese and Ike Davis included, and certainly less-proven guys like Josh Thole and Ruben Tejada and all them still in Double- and Triple-A. Some will fail and disappoint us. One or two might be better than we hoped.

I generally try not to link back to things I’ve written in the past because I’ve been wrong about too much, but here’s what I wrote in September:

Eventually, trading away too many Minor Leaguers leaves a team short on Major Leaguers. Not Major League stars, just Major League guys. So the Mets overspend on free agents or trade more young players simply to fill their big-league needs. That not only costs them money they could be spending on the more deserving free agents, it costs them depth.

So every offseason, the Mets construct an elegant sand castle, only to have it destroyed by the first wave of trouble, whether it comes in the form of prolonged slumps or bad bullpens or injuries. In 2009, they were hit with a tidal wave, one no team could weather. But let’s not forget that the Mets weren’t exactly dominating before the injuries to Beltran, Wright and Santana.

Allowing young players to develop — even the ones who might not appear to be anything special — can provide sustainability. The Mets have a series of intriguing prospects of various repute, including recent callup Josh Thole as well as Fernando Martinez, Ike Davis, Ruben Tejada, Reese Havens, Jonathon Niese, Brad Holt and Jenrry Mejia.

None of these players, with the possible exception of the injured Niese, appears ready to help the Mets by Opening Day 2010. But all of them could potentially help by 2011. With a year of development time, the Mets would have a better sense of what to expect from their prospects and a sharper idea of which of their numerous holes need to be filled by players from outside the organization.

Whether design or by accident, the Mets followed that plan. They kept the farm system intact in the offseason. And now, I think and I hope, we’re beginning to see the next winning Mets team take shape. I just hope they don’t screw it up.

By now you’ve probably heard that the Mets put Rod Barajas on the disabled list yesterday and called up legendary Minor League masher Mike Hessman.

Cool.

I wrote yesterday that the team could not afford to carry a roster handicapped by yet another player nursing a day-to-day oblique injury, and Barajas’ absence will give Josh Thole a chance to show he belongs in a regular role at the big-league level. The couple of weeks won’t be an adequate sample to judge Thole either way, but hopefully he gets hot and locks down the job, because the Mets need offense and everyone loves a productive young homegrown player.

Hessman gives the Mets a little defensive flexibility — he is experienced at both infield corners and has actually played every position on the field in his lengthy Minor League career.

But more than that, Hessman provides right-handed pop off the bench. The active Minor League home-run leader, Hessman boasts a .571 slugging percentage in Triple-A in 2010.

Hessman won’t get a ton of hits that aren’t home runs; he’s a three-true-outcomes guy all the way. But given Fernando Tatis’ struggles (in a small sample) as the Mets’ in-house righty bench bat with defensive flexibility, Hessman likely represents an upgrade to the Mets’ reserve corps.

Plus, y’all know I love a Quad-A masher and root like hell for them to get a big-league shot. Hessman has had a few — he has played in 77 games over parts of four seasons with the Braves and Tigers — but here’s hoping he hits well enough to stick this time. Good luck, sir.