Later tonight, the National League Cy Young Award winner will be announced. My own fake awards picks have already been made public, and I am sure everyone was thrilled to read them. The NL Cy Young gave me the most trouble. I ended up voting for the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, but I really wanted to cast my non-ballot for the Mets’ R.A. Dickey.

What’s not to like about R.A. Dickey? He names his bats after fictional swords (only the master smiths of Gondolin could forge a weapon that enables a pitcher to rake to the tune of a career 6 wRC+). He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro during the off-season to raise money to combat human trafficking. He is trying to help others by sharing about being abused as as child. He writes children’s books. He makes an awesome face while pitching. Best of all (strictly from a purely baseball perspective), he is a knuckleballer. Oh, yeah, he also had an awesome season in 2012.

However, when I tried to justify voting for Dickey over Kershaw, I just could not do it. It was not for lack of trying, though.

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R.A. Dickey was just recently announced as a finalist for the 2012 National League Cy Young Award. Depending on who you ask, he might well be the favorite to win. R.A. Dickey was just earlier Thursday reported to be the subject of trade conversations. Joel Sherman talked about it, Ken Rosenthal talked about it, and others have talked about it. Right now team executives are all hanging out in the same place, and the Mets are gauging the trade value of maybe the league’s best starting pitcher. It probably goes without saying that this is an unusual situation.

For those who haven’t been following, what makes this more unusual is that there were just reports that the Mets and Dickey had made progress in contract extension negotiations. Dickey’s locked up for just one more year, and he’s interested in returning, while the Mets are interested in having him return. It’s all just a matter of price, as it pretty much always is. At present, Dickey wants more than the Mets are willing to give, which is obviously why they haven’t reached an agreement.

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For the Mets, three years of Jason Bay was enough. This afternoon, they announced that they have agreed to part ways with Jason Bay, meaning he’s being released from his contract. Joel Sherman has the details.

Bay is getting all $21M he is owed, the $16M salary, the $3M buyout and the $2M left on a signing bonus. Some is being deferred #Mets

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) November 7, 2012

The Mets don’t get any financial relief in terms of actual payouts, but by deferring some portion of the money he was set to be paid in 2013, they can reduce the actual value of those payouts and create a little extra flexibility for this off-season. Because the Player’s Association has fought hard for guaranteed contracts, players are unlikely to accept contract buyouts, but this is probably the best result for both parties.

Now, Bay gets to pick his own landing spot for 2013, and he should pick an AL team that can give him some at-bats at DH in hopes of a rebound season. Bay was terrible last year, but he was an average-ish hitter as recently as 2011, and it wouldn’t take a large bounce back to make him a decent enough platoon DH for a team that already had a part-time left-handed bat in their starting DH spot.

At age 34, it’s also quite possible that Bay is just done, but at least now he gets a chance to save his career and get a fresh start in a new organization. And now Mets fans don’t have to watch him play anymore. Win-win, as they say.

With the final pitch of this past world series in the book, we now have two iconic series-ending takes in recent memory. Miguel Cabrera was frozen by a Sergio Romo fastball when he was perhaps thinking slider, and Carlos Beltran famously flinched at an Adam Wainwright curveball in game seven of the 2006 NLCS.

Of course that’s just two data points, connected only tenuously by situation (last out) and outcome (strike three taken), but it is enough to spawn a digression. Even if it would be kind of crazy to find out that batters swing less often as your average game progresses based on this starting point, crazier things have been born of less consequential moments.

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David Wright experienced a resurgence of sorts in 2012. After four straight outstanding offense seasons, Wright’s offensive production dipped significantly in 2009 — from a 141 wRC+ to 125. In 2011, Wright’s wRC+ declined all the way to 116.

But this year, the old David Wright reappeared and the 29-year-old third basemen posted a 140 wRC+. The Mets, encouraged by Wright’s year at the plate, have not only picked up his 2013 option (which was predictable), but have also continued discussions for a long-term contract extension.

How likely we are to see Wright put up similar numbers in the future is debatable.

Regardless, one thing was clear: Wright was making better decisions at the plate in 2012. And while his plate discipline numbers were positive (e.g. -2.1% O-Swing), the overall change didn’t seem to capture how well Wright’s plate approach improved.

In an effort to tease this out beyond the basic plate discipline metrics, R. J. Anderson used Mike Fast’s “correct” decision-making approach to look at how Wright’s decision-making improved in the past three season. Anderson calculated the percentage of “correct” pitches Wright swung at in 2012, compared to the two previous seasons. He found Wright had improved his decision-making by 7%.

I decided to take an even narrower view than Anderson and focused only on the location of balls Wright swung at that were just off of the plate, or that were off the black.

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Award season is upon us. Perhaps this dates me (or at least my methods) as a blogger, but to me, this is a fun time to bust out a series of awards and rankings based on stats and metrics with varying degrees of usefulness. Today I will begin with the 2012 Joe Carter–Tony Batista Award for the hitter whose 2012 RBI total most exaggerates his actual offensive contribution.

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Yesterday morning, Eddie Yost, also know as “The Walking Man,” passed away at 86. Yost had a long career as a third baseman from 1944 to 1962, mostly with the Washington Senators. He also spent a couple of years playing for the Tigers before being selected in the pre-1961 expansion draft by the Angels and spending his final two seasons there. After he retired as a player, Yost coached in Washington, then with the Mets during the “Miracle Mets” era. His last coaching job was as third base coach for the Red Sox from 1977 to 1984. Of more interest for those reading this blog is how many walks Yost drew despite having little power. Now if we could just solve the mystery of his nickname. Oh wait, I’ve got it:0 the local scribe was a big fan of Giacometti.

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Ever since it opened in 1999, Safeco Field has been a horse, and hitters have been mosquitoes. No matter how much the hitters have tried to inflict damage, Safeco has hardly even noticed. Now, ever since it opened, Petco Park has been a whale to the hitters’ mosquitoes — they haven’t even ever interacted — but just because Safeco wasn’t the most pitcher-friendly ballpark doesn’t mean it hasn’t been an extremely pitcher-friendly ballpark, and now, as announced Tuesday, the dimensions will be changing. The Mariners will bring in the fences in an effort to make the ballpark more neutral.

The planned alterations, of course, have been welcomed by the hitters, and they haven’t been condemned by the pitching staff. Fans, too, are pleased, as baseball fans in the Northwest have grown weary of low-scoring ballgames. People want dingers, basically, and Safeco hasn’t allowed enough dingers. The changes should make for more dingers. Yet just what sort of effect will there be, really? When discussing the changes to Safeco Field, one might keep in mind last offseason’s changes to Citi Field in New York.

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Episode 247
Marc Hulet, author of the site’s organizational top-15 prospect lists and assorted other minor-league coverage, discusses four players — Tony Cingrani (Reds), Corban Joseph (Yankees), Wilmer Flores (Mets), and Daniel Vogelbach (Cubs) — and the larger concerns each raises with regard to prospect analysis generally.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 39 min. play time.)

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In a piece of news that would have seemed impossible at one time, there’s scuttlebutt that New York Mets might be open to trading Ike Davis this offseason. A source told Adam Rubin of ESPNNY that the option of moving Davis in order to both upgrade the team elsewhere and move Lucas Duda to his natural position is on the table. Though much of Queens would be dismayed — “We like Ike” T-shirts abound — it’s definitely possible that this is the right move for the Metropolitans.

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