Michael Baron over at Metsblog had a good take on why the Mets would want to trade Jon Niese. While Michael makes some great points, to me, the fact that they're looking to trade him right now is actually a testament to how valuable he actually is. For the same reason the Oakland A's are shopping Gio Gonzalez, Sandy Alderson thought it was a good opportunity to listen to offers for Niese. This action is completely dictated by the current state of the market for starting pitching. There is a ton of demand (as there always will be), but there's little supply. A young, cost-controlled, improving, left-handed starting pitcher holds heightened value right now because there aren't many available, quality starting pitchers in trade or free agency. 

One thing that should always be kept in mind is the fact that the current team of executives running the Mets baseball operations is very savy, and they would never make a trade they didn't whole-heartedly believe was in the best interest of the franchise long term. With that in mind, I can say with certainty that Niese will not be dealt unless it's for a package of assets that makes the team better off long term. The Mets obviously feel that they could get incredible value for Niese if they deal him now. And I'd have no problem with trading Niese in a deal like that.

For the last 6 months, we've watched a mediocre Mets team have their ups and downs throughout the course of the 2011 major league baseball season. They're better off due to this past year's events than they were before in my opinion, but that's really a topic for another day. Now by comparison, the Phillies really just had their ups and more ups throughout the course of the season. They won their 5th consecutive NL East division title with a 102-60 record, best in the majors. They had the most dominant starting pitching in the game by a large margin. It's hard to go on long losing streaks when you can throw Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels out there on consecutive days. This was painful for Mets fans to watch no doubt.

Last night, on the other hand, was pure jubilation. We saw two extremely competitive games, in decisive Game 5's no less. The Brewers and Diamondbacks game was exciting (though completely secondary in the grand scheme of things last night from my perspective), and then there were the Cardinals and Phillies. The Cardinals got off to an early lead, scoring a run on a Skip Schumaker double in the first inning off of Roy Halladay. Normally, the Phillies would find a way to strike back. But they never did. That run was the only one scored in the game. Halladay followed that first inning up with 7 scoreless, striking out 7 while walking just 1 over the course of his outing. On the other side, Carpenter was flawless, and I loved every minute of it. Well, maybe not Ryan Howard potentially tearing his Achilles. I may hate the guy as a player, but I don't want to see anyone hurt like that.

Sports is really the one place in life where I feel comfortable reveling in the misfortune of others (barring injury). And I tend to take advantage. The Patriots being beat by the Giants in the Super Bowl, pushing their season record to 18-1? Awesome. The Celtics losing a tough Game 7 against the Lakers in which Kobe played like crap and their best player was Ron Artest, who went on to thank, among others though in my opinion most prominently, his psychiatrist in his post game interview? Fantastic. Even to a lesser extent the Yankees losing Game 5 to an inferior Detroit Tigers squad capped off by an inevitable Alex Rodriguez strikeout? Stellar. Despite the fact that my favorite teams suffered through mediocre, awful, and borderline historically awful seasons during these events, I didn't enjoy them any less. While having my favorite team cause these enormous failures for said hated franchises is 10 times better, I still love watching them lose to other franchises. I've seen the Jets knock the Patriots out of the playoffs. I've seen the Nets knock the Celtics and Knicks out of the playoffs, but I'll take these moments any way I can get them. So naturally when the Phillies fail to meet even the most reasonable of expectations, I'm over the moon with joy. Phillies fans can say whatever they want to me about how the Mets are no where near as good as their team, and they would of course be right. It doesn't mean I can't thoroughly enjoy their loss. 

All I've heard about from the talking heads of New York since the Mets have fought they're back to the .500 mark and beyond is how hard this is going to make it for the Mets to trade the guys they need to trade, whether it be Reyes, Beltran, K-Rod, whoever. I've actually heard people talking about how the Mets strong play over the past month or two is negative for the franchise because they won't unload they're players like they should be doing because they obviously have no shot to compete for a championship. And therefore, it's smartest to destroy the roster. I have a few points to make about this whole situation:

• The Mets are winning baseball games, which is good: The ultimate goal of any major league franchise is to win a championship. To do that, you need to win games. That's exactly what the Mets are doing. Trading Jose Reyes doesn't advance that goal in the slightest.
• Even if you feel the Mets need to deal all of their pieces; this is still a good thing: Why wouldn't you want all of your players that you intend on trading playing as well as they can? At the start of the season, Reyes returns one nice prospect and maybe another mid-level guy or two. Right now, the Mets have every right to demand the moon in return with the way Reyes is playing. Unless they get bowled over with an offer, they can't trade him because they'll be losing value. If you subscribe to theory that Beltran has to be traded (which I don't), then let him hit the cover off the ball so a team desperate for an outfielder with pop will overpay for him.
• The team is fun to watch: I don't honestly care about what the Mets will be like 3 years from now when you get right down to it. I want them to be good right now, fun to watch right now. And they are. The Mets have prospects in the minors who will make tomorrow exciting. We don't need to give up hands down the most exciting player in baseball today to maybe win tomorrow when the Mets are winning games right now. 

The Mets open a 3-game series tonight against the Yankees. Unlike some Mets fans I've heard from, I want them to annihilate the Yankees.

As reported by Adam Rubin of ESPN New York, Matt Harvey and Matt den Dekker have been promoted from A-St. Lucie to AA-Binghamton. Clearly both players have proven they are ready to be promoted to the next level in the minor leagues, and I think that's really the key piece to take away from this bit of news. 

Over the past few years, a mishandling of prospects by the Mets front office has lead to some unfortunate results. Jenrry Mejia is the lead example of this. Before last season, after only making a few appearances in AA at the end of 2009, Mejia was wrongly promoted to the major league roster to pitch in the bullpen. Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but I think it's safe to say that most fans and members of the media thought this was a terrible idea. It turns out to essentially have stunted Mejia's growth by 2 years including the Tommy John surgery he underwent a few months ago. The switching between being a starter and a reliever is thought to be the main culprit of his injury problems. The Mets should've left him alone in AA last season to be groomed as a starter. Even when Mejia comes back at age 22 sometime next season, he'll still have a long way to go if the Mets plan to use him as a starting pitcher in the majors. 94.2 innings is the maximum amount he's thrown in a season. He'd have to almost double that to go a full season in the majors.

This is why I'm so glad the Mets have changed the way they handle prospects, even though Harvey is a much more polished pitcher coming into the season. There's nothing wrong with letting pitching prospects hone their skills and gain experience as well as confidence in the minor leagues. St. Lucie proved to be a good test for Harvey. Now that he has shown through a full half of a season that he is capable of dominating the competition at that level on a consistent basis, he's ready to be challenged again at the next level in Binghamton. He's not being rushed like past Mets pitching prospects. 

What makes the Mets treatment of Mejia even less palatable is the state of the major league team at the time in which he was brought to the majors. The Mets were never expected to compete for a World Series last year. If they were, then bringing up a guy like Mejia to give the team that final piece that they needed would've made sense. Since that wasn't the case it of course made things worse. And since the Mets aren't really expected to do much more damage this year than they did last year, it makes even more sense to let Matt Harvey take his time and develop into a frontline starting pitcher who can provide the maximum amount of value over the course of his tenure with the Mets.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Harvey does in AA the rest of this year (and hope to make it up to school in time to see him pitch before Binghamton's season comes to an end.) The Mets are in no rush to get him to the majors, as they shouldn't be. Let the cookies bake in the oven so to speak. It might be hard to wait, but they'll be that much better once they're ready.

*In our second installment of the Future Impact series: How does Jason Bay factor into the Mets future?*

(To read the first installment: "Future Impact: Robert Alan Dickey", click here)

• Born (Age): September 20, 1978 (32) (Wiki)
• Current Contract: 4 years, $66M (2010-2013), $17M club option (2014) ($3M buyout) (Cot's Baseball Contracts)
• Season Statistics: 176 PA, .303 OBP, .576 OPS, 41 TB, 44/20 K/BB (Baseball-Reference)

Jason Bay is not a young player. He's 32 years old. He'll be 33 before the season is over. However, he is going to be a part of the Mets future for at least the next 2 seasons, over which they owe him more than $36M. Normally, if a team is paying a player $36M over a 2 year span, that player is going to be one of your biggest contributors. As any Mets fan would tell you, he has been anything but that. In his two years with the Mets he's hit just 8 home runs with a .697 OPS. That's not going to cut it if he hopes to even approach earning his salary. Let's see what he's going to mean to the Mets going forward.

When Omar Minaya decided to give Jason Bay the contract he's under now, Bay was coming off one of the best seasons of his career with the Red Sox. In fact, he was one of the best hitters in baseball that season. He hit 36 home runs while posting a .921 OPS. To put that in perspective, if that was his current OPS he'd be ranked 7th in the category in the NL. That's the type of production the Mets expected when they signed Bay. That is not who Bay has been for the Mets. He really hasn't been much better than the random players they would throw out in left field before they signed him. 

So what are the chances that Bay can be productive for the Mets over the next 2+ seasons he has left on his current contract? It's incredibly hard to tell. It's not often that major league sluggers fall off a cliff quite like Bay has done. Whether it has something to do with Citi field's dimensions, or the incredible amount of money he makes now making him a bit less aggressive as far as keeping his production, I'm not sure. There are plenty of holes in any of the arguments being thrown around. Whatever it is, I don't really know what to think about Bay going forward. But I do know this. Don't expect the Mets to be able to trade him. With all of the money he's making no team is going to take him off their hands without a large portion of his contract being paid for. I don't see the Mets doing that with their current financial situation. So know this. We're stuck with him, for better or worse.