Though there's been a lot made of Ike Davis' availability on the trade market this offseason, general manager Sandy Alderson tells Anthony DiComo of MLB.com that the Mets are "not that actively engaged in trade discussions involving Ike at this point." Alderson says that he's comfortable heading to camp with both Davis and Lucas Duda in the mix.
Alderson repeated that he has no plans to simply give Davis away: "We're not going to move Ike just to move Ike — or any other player for that matter. This is a trade market, not a yard sale … You can only ask someone to dance so many times before you get the message."
DiComo writes that there is now a probability that Davis and Duda are both still with the Mets when Spring Training opens next month, as Alderson has not been able to land the young, controllable pitcher he's been seeking in exchange for Davis (he's reportedly asked for Tyler Thornburg from the Brewers and Eduardo Rodriguez from the Orioles).
That all has to come as good news to Davis himself, who told Andy Martino of the New York Daily News on Thursday that he wants to stay with the Mets and wants another chance. Davis and Kirk Nieuwenhuis are currently looking for a house to rent near the Mets' Spring Training facility in Port St. Lucie, Fla., adds Martino. Davis told Martino that while he feels that his availability has been discussed too much in the media, he doesn't feel disrepsected by it. He also said that he respects Duda, and the two competing for playing time is nothing new: "Look, we have basically been competing for the same job since Double-A. I think Duda is a great ballplayer. I have a lot of respect for him."
Spoken like a team that tried to trade Ike Davis but nobody was interested.
nobody was Interested in giving up a top prospect that is.
Yeah, this is important. There have been various teams that were very interested (Brewers, Rays, Orioles, Pirates), but the Mets are not going to trade him unless they get something big back, which the others are not willing to give. It’s just different teams valuing a player differently, like usual. Saying nobody’s interested at all is completely wrong.
Yes and No.
In virtually ALL cases, if a player is made available somebody will be interested. We see that every year with waivers. Players are pushed through and almost all get claimed.
So yes, if the Mets want to give away Davis there are teams that would take him off their hands.
But that doesn’t mean that Davis carries any real value outside of NY. The fact that plenty of teams have kicked the tires and there are no bites is telling. Also telling is the general feedback on the names that have been discussed. Outside of Met fans, I don’t see a lot of other people thinking that what is being asked for is remotely reasonable.
I’m still trying to figure out why somebody needs to trade something “big” for Davis. His last 3 seasons COMBINED netted a WAR of 2.3. Steamer and Oliver have an average 2014 estimate of 1.2 WAR in 2014. Injuries, poor performance … they all add up to not much value.
This is an honest critique of Davis and someone of comparable service time.
Mike Carp probably has more trade value right now.
That gives an estimate of why Davis hasn’t been traded. Why would any team give up a *top* prospect for Davis? Is carp worth a top prospect? Of course not.
Exactly what he said. They aren’t willing to give up anything because he doesn’t have any trade value.
Really hope he can somehow turn it around, would really make a difference in the mets chances of contending this year.. but this is the mets so he’ll tank until he’s released then hit .280 with 40 HR’s somewhere else
Like Mike Jacobs he may have one good season with another team and then watch the fast decline come through.
Watch Davis hit 36 homers next season 110 RBI and batts 2.69!!! The Os and Brewers are gonna scratch their heads why in the world they didn’t trade for this guy!
Or watch him repeat 2013 when he posted a 205/326/334 line and guys like Mark Ellis laugh at his offensive ineptitude. The O’s and Brewer’s will breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the offers they sent to NY were still way too much for the player they would have received.
There’s two ways to look at Davis. The first one is to focus on the negative and look at his slash lines from the last two years and say that he’s awful and has ‘offensive ineptitude’.
The other way to look at it is this: Davis has played 442 games, or approximately two and two thirds seasons. In that time, he’s had two bad halves and played well the other 1 2/3 seasons. However, those bad halves were historically bad and hamper his overall numbers. This is cherry picking, but if you remove the first halves of 2012 and 2013, his career slash line (which even without cherry picking is a decent 112 OPS+) is .269/.365/.485, which is definitely nothing to sneeze at.
But therein lies Davis’s problem: he’s wildly inconsistent. For a contending team to trade for him, it’s a huge gamble. For a middling or bad team, he’s got some value, as the team could potentially absorb it if he plays badly again. That’s why Sandy Alderson is asking for so much in return. Maybe he gets lucky, and some team rolls the dice on Davis and gives Sandy what he wants. If not? Well, the Mets are a middling team. If he plays terrible, they can move on. If he’s great, then maybe he’s their first baseman or they could trade him. But to say that he’s terrible or has no value (or, otoh, to focus solely on the 32 HR) is an oversimplification, imo.
That makes him Adam Laroche and as a Pirate fan, I don’t want that at any cost.
Davis’ current problem is in his head. He’s not as inclined to adapt and adjust as he should be. That’s why his 2013 numbers are where they were and why unless he is actually interested in adjusting/correcting, they will not get better. He’s a selfish, arrogant pr!ck if he doesn’t make the corrections that apparently everyone who could spell the word “baseball” was pointing out last year.
Most guys look good if you cross out all the parts of their careers where they weren’t good.
Yes, but with most guys, you’d have to cross out a week here or there or a few games, i.e. small spurts. The point I’m making is that Ike’s good or (very) bad spurts are prolonged and sustained. He rarely plays at his career averages; he’s either well above them or well below them, and for sustained periods. That’s what gives him some value, but it’s also what makes him such a gamble.
The issue asking for Thornburg for Davis is team/cost control. No matter what happens Thornburg will be on the team through control this season and next and likely a 3rd.
Davis in his 1st year arb can go the Mark Reynolds route. Have his 1WAR season as projected at 3.5mil this year and go to Arb next season and the Brewers look at the tab being 5-6mil. and saying for 1WAR? Not worth it and non-tender Davis making him a Free Agent. It’s a losing situation for any team trading for Davis because he will be expensive regardless his performance.
You can’t give up your team’s top prospect for that. Not without something else in return as a backup okay we still have so and so to at least make the trade somewhat breakeven.
And in your dream season, that would be amazing only now you own Davis and his price is 7-8mil the following year. And 10-11 the year after with just a career avg numbers after that 2014 dream year.
Or, you give up your top prospect he bats .200/.300/.325 for you with a -2WAR and release him before the year is over….That’s the kind of move that gets a GM fired.
Good, keep Ike! The only player that I would trade for those lousy pitchers is JR Smith.
A lot of pressure will be off Ike with the offensive additions. I think he’ll turn it around and continue to do what he did when he got called back up. The homeruns will eventually come back around.
I agree there. I’ve been saying for the last 2 seasons that Ike will do alot better when he’s not looked at as “the big RBI bat” on the team. 90% of his problem is he’s putting too much pressure on himself. You can see it in every at-bat.
Did he have a lot of pressure last year? I mean we were out of the race in mid May.
Doesn’t matter if they were in contention or not. He still had pressure on him to 1) repeat the 32 HRs he put up the previous year and 2) make sure that if they were to walk Wright or if Wright gets on or whatever the situation may be, that he gets the job done. It puts a lot of pressure on a guy. However, being a professional player, he has to know how to deal with it and not let it get to him. I think it could be part of maturing and he will improve this year like we’ve seen when he was called back up.
Couldn’t you make the same argument for Duda? His numbers were 10 x better than Ike’s last year.
Breaking news: a yard sale is a trade market. If you ask a really high price for something in any market, there’s a good chance it doesn’t sell. I’m sure he could get a decent prospect in trade, but he wants to fleece someone.
Based on what?
Really haven’t been following Sandy’s trade record at the helm of the Mets, have you?
I guess we’ll see if he can fleece someone for Davis.
Zach Wheeler for Beltran, Travis D;Arnaud/Noah Syndergaard for Dickey. Got Eric Young Jr for Collin McHugh and got a promising Dilson Herrera for Bryd.
That’s doing really good imo. Traded Dickey at the best time.
Well, that answers that No Ike David for the O’s or the Brew Crew.
Now, if my Orioles would get a bit more aggressive and go and sign Jimenez and then Morales, we would be in good shape.
Haha@Morales. It’s a coin-toss on which will actually have a better year next year between him and Davis.
Mets “Not That Actively Engaged” In Davis Trade Talks
Roughly translated: “Rats. Nobody would overpay for him.”
I like Ike and I’m rooting for him this spring to turn it around.
This just in: Police uncover underground warehouse where Ike has teamed with the Joker in leaking brainwashing gas throughout the city.
I simply do not understand the emotional attachment that people have with Ike Davis. You would think this guy was good at some point.
Totally agree, it’s amazing the serious case of amnesia all the fans who bashed him nearly every game the last two seasons now have.
I rather see if Ike still has it then trout out Kendry Morales who isn’t honestly much better at this point…
What are you talking about? His rookie season was very good, and then his 2011 season started off even better until he sprained his ankle the end of May…..
His rookie season he was league average for a 1B. It was good for a ROOKIE 1B, but average overall. .264 19 HRs .791 OPS 523 ABs
That’s very similar to what Duda put up last year 15 HRs .765 OPS 300ABs in half a season.
The guy WAS good at some point. Many points, in fact: his rookie season, the following season (before the season-ending injury), the second half of 2012, the second half of 2013. It’s just that he’s also had two atrocious halves in 2012 and 2013. There’s a lot of potential there because he hasn’t been consistent. He’s either been very good or terrible.
I’m not sure you can count 2011 since he only played 36 of 162 games.
His rookie year was about league average for a 1B.
2012 1.1 fWAR
2013 -0.2 fWAR
Thank you though. This is exactly what I’m referring to.
At some point we all got potential to be good confused with good.
You’re missing the point. You can cite his full season stats all you want (and why wouldn’t you count 2011? And also, no, his rookie season was not league average for a 1B; he had a 3.3 rWAR and 3.1fWAR in 147 games–as a rookie), but Davis is simply not what his full season stats indicate.
I’ll repeat: he’s either been very good, posting 142 and 170 OPS+ the last two second halves, or he’s been atrocious, posting 67 and 43 OPS+ in those first halves. He hasn’t just had potential to be good, he HAS been good. Look deeper into the stats and you’ll see it.
You can’t just look at his hot streaks and reference him as that player. The simple fact is that his good 2nd halves came with horrid 1st halves. You can’t dismiss that, and he has done it in back to back seasons, so yes, that is who he is. He has put together ONE above average season, but he doesn’t play the same defense that he did his rookie year.
Where am I dismissing his bad halves? Please actually read what I wrote. To repeat, again, Davis is not what his overall stats indicate. He’s either very good or atrocious; he’s rarely (if ever) in the middle. Jeez. Third time I’ve had to iterate this.
But the bad half + the “good” half is what you get for the entire season. You don’t just get the good half. So, we should expect him to hit .205 10 HRs. That would be a slight improvement from last year.
Duda is the dude!
I don’t know why everyone is mocking the situation, as a Mets fan, I don’t see it being a big deal
I’m happy Sandy is being smart about the situation. As people stated earlier, Ike is extremely inconsistent, but has a very high upside. Why waste someone with a high upside on a meh prospect?
The Mets have nothing to lose, our expectations are very low, so we can afford to roll the dice and throw him out there again. But if another team sees the potential and wants to roll the dice themselves, the Mets would get a top prospect which is awesome.
IMO…the situation was always that the Mets should either keep Ike or sell high. Trading him for a mid level prospect doesn’t help the Mets at all
Hey man. How would you like it if your boss brought in someone tomorrow to work beside you everyday that may or may not be your replacement? How would you like it if that guy was the guy that did it before you did, and wasn’t very good at it?
Thing that stuck out the most about this post: that Kirk actually DOES still exist
Gotta say I was all for trading away Ike if it got a decent return, but I’m not all that mad to have him still on the team… With all that said if a team offers a decent reliever, I’d be all for trading Ike and starting Duda
I understand where Alderson is coming from, but he’s got to be a bit more realistic than he sounds in his quotes. No team in the Majors is going to give up a pitcher who projects to the middle of the rotation for a Dave Kingman clone. Ike Davis is a nice little player, but which part of his stats is he more likely to duplicate in the near future — the 30 HRs or the .220-something batting average?
Only 14 players hit 30+ HRs last season down from 27 the year before. So teams are desperate for power.
10 of those 14 players hit 30+ the season before.