One year ago today, Sandy Alderson made arguably the best decision of his tenure as general manager of the Mets–trading away Ike Davis. This move ended the long internal debate over who would be the first baseman of this team for the foreseeable future, and Sandy and Co. decided to go with Lucas Duda, who was not exactly a fan favorite at the time.
Sandy Alderson has acquired players such as Zack Wheeler, Travis d’Arnaud, Noah Syndergaard, Vic Black and Dilson Herrera, all young pieces who are/are expected to be key pieces to this team’s success, and yet the best move he’s made to date in my mind is sticking with one of his own players in Duda.
The Mets, and quite honestly most of the league, have been starved for power bats over the last few years. While Ike Davis was once a huge prospect in this system and did have a 32 home run season in 2012, he struggled mightily for consistency and to have a batting average that was acceptable at this level.
I was an “Ike guy,” too. At the time, I thought the team may have made the wrong decision, as did many, and boy were we all wrong. After playing just half of April, Duda still managed to have a break-out season, hitting 32 home runs and driving home 92 runs, while Davis became a platoon player in Pittsburgh.
In 141 games (104 starts) with the Pirates and A’s since the trade, Ike Davis has hit .246 with 22 doubles, 11 home runs and 52 RBI, with 62 walks and 80 strikeouts in 436 plate appearances (370 at-bats). In that same time, Duda has played in 150 games (130 starts) with the Mets, hitting .262 with 33 doubles, 28 home runs and 82 RBI with 68 walks and 129 strikeouts.
Since the trade, Davis has struck out 18.3 percent of the time, while Duda has K’d at a bit higher of a rate at 21.6 percent. The key here is that Duda is an every day player, racking up extra-base hits and driving in runs, while Davis has become a bench/platoon player in Oakland, and therefore being far less productive. You’ll take that tradeoff, especially when Duda is beating him in essentially every other statistic since the move.
After tearing it up in 2014, looking good in Spring Training even after missing three weeks due to an oblique injury, and starting off this season scorching hot, Duda is showing me that he is legitimate. In a baseball landscape desperate for power, his value is even higher to this franchise.
With Lucas Duda, the Mets now have a feared presence in their line-up for the first time in years. You can thank Sandy Alderson for that.
Just Mets 