Mets Losing Battle Vs. R.A. Dickey, Themselves

Oct. 2, 2012; Miami, FL, USA; New York Mets starting pitcher R.A. Dickey (43) swings at a pitch during a game against the Miami Marlins at Marlins Park. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

I suppose by now we all just accept as fact that the New York Mets are a punchline. This is a reality. Sometimes it can be amusing, but mostly it’s just the context in which we live—the Mets doing stupid stuff is like air, you just live in it, breathe it in, you don’t think about it or else you’d lie awake at night hyperventilating. We don’t have the time, or strong enough muscles in our fingers, to rehash the woeful chronicle of the Met’s incompetence. There were drugs and Ponzi scheme’s and losing of baseball games and all sorts of other unmentionables. There was a lot of it, whatever it was. And now we are here, in the present, in the middle of the most current example of Metropolitan maelstrom, their contract negotiations with the knuckleballing and reigning Cy Young Award winner R.A. Dickey.

Last season, R.A. Dickey was all awesome and one of the best pitchers in the game and now he’d like to negotiate a contract extension with the Mets. Seems reasonable. Owned only $5 million next season, it’s being reported that Dickey would like something in the neighborhood of an additional $26 million and two years. Seems extremely reasonable. By most accounts, the Mets have been open to this sort of idea, but instead of quickly and seamlessly locking in their best pitcher, a fan favorite who pens epic memoirs and climbs mountains for charity, the Mets instead have decided to low-ball Dickey (Editors Note: lol) at every step of the process. It’s been some time, but it seems the two sides are now only about $5 million apart when it comes to terms. The problem is that the Mets prolonged and continued unreasonableness has now soured the master of the pitch face, and it is growing evermore likely that Dickey will pitch out his final season with the Mets and then flee to the calmer waters of free agency, eventually landing ashore in the arms of a less dysfunctional and more appreciative baseball team. A trade remains a possibility, because who wouldn’t want a Cy Young caliber pitcher making only $5 million next season, willing to sign a below market extension? A team would have to be straight up insane to not recognize that kind of value!

And who could blame the man, were he to leave the Mets? I’d have already stormed the team’s head offices, brandishing one of my famously named sword/bats, leaving devastation in my wake. By every and all accounts, Dickey is being more than accommodating here, it’s the the team to which he’s committed that’s decided it’s more important to pinch every last penny, and take swipes in the media, and act altogether petulant and shortsighted. After the much publicized David Wright extension, the Mets seemed to be boldly proclaiming an earnest commitment to winning baseball games and fielding a competitive team. Instead, this unsavory battle with R.A. Dickey is proving to produce more of the laughable same.

Kyle writes baseball nonsense at The Trance of Waiting. You can follow him on Twitter @AgainstKyle.