http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/p ... ckey-trade• Toronto approached Mets at the GM meetings in early November about Dickey, but there was no substantive trade discussion until a week before the winter meetings. At the winter meetings, Anthopoulos thought the deal was dead. The teams ultimately signed an agreement on the players involved Thursday afternoon. Anthopoulos and Jays manager Jay Gibbons met with Dickey in Nashville on Saturday afternoon, after MLB granted a negotiating window. Anthopoulos and agent Bo McKinnis agreed to the extension deal at 6 p.m. Sunday.
• Anthopoulos would not have agreed to the trade without an extension with Dickey, but he asked Alderson about Dickey's contract demands early enough in the process and was satisfied the parameters were workable. "We definitely needed to have a window to extend him," Anthopoulos said.
• Travis d'Arnaud had been part of trade proposal for 10 days. Alderson did not accept until Noah Syndergaard was included. Anthopoulos said he understood, because when he was shopping Roy Halladay years ago, he wanted multiple blue-chip prospects back, not solely relying on one primary prospect.
"I think it comes down to how you evaluate R.A., and that's going to define the result of this trade for us -- how he performs," Anthopoulos said. "We evaluate him as a front-of-the-rotation starter. Clearly, he won the Cy Young. He's pitched like one the last three years. I think he doesn't get the credit and the respect he deserves because of his age and because of what he does throw. And I understand it's so rare. But there's so much overwhelming data and evidence to point to him continuing this success. He's gotten better every single year."
Anthopoulos added on the Mets' leverage in talks: "Sandy clearly had the option to sign the player back. Everyone knew that. That was made aware. And the player wanted to stay. I think Sandy, when d'Arnaud was on the table, he was probably on the table for 10 days. And it really didn't move anywhere. There was no traction. There was no dialogue. It just was not enough from his standpoint, as much as we valued Travis. ...
"Obviously Sandy had the player. He had the price. We had the ability to say no. But from our standpoint we looked at there's very few opportunities to get players like this that tie in so well with our club, that fit so well with our payroll. It's very, very rare. When you look at the frontline starters that have been moved in the last year 10 years -- Halladay, Sabathia, Santana, Greinke, Cliff Lee -- all of them either were rentals, hit free agency and signed monster contracts with full no-trades or, in the case or Santana and Halladay, had full no-trade clauses and dictated where they went and ultimately signed very large contracts."
• John Buck, owed $6 million, was included in the deal to balance out money. The Jays could not increase payroll. Josh Thole and Mike Nickeas were attractive parts regardless because they have experience catching Dickey. Anthopoulos watched the "Knuckleball!" documentary and heard Thole speak about the difficulty catching the pitch and did not want to be auditioning catchers for Dickey's batterymate.
