These articles, unless making up things and attributing them to Sandy Alderson and the organization, shows a quite different situation than suggested. Also note the different perspectives coming from each author.

http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/mets/amazin_won_knuckle_under_dickey_nZaBsu40qLaw5u4yNh

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/sports/baseball/r-a-dickey-deserved-better-from-mets.html?_r=0

And I think Rob gave a rather good critique on all this in MMO a few months back.

http://metsmerizedonline.com/2012/12/thoughts-on-dickey-and-the-ongoing-mets-incompetence.html

DICKEY CERTAINLY HAD THE SUPERIOR SEASON; HOWEVER, IMO, OF THE 2 ONLY NIESE HAS THE POTENTIAL TO REPLICATE OR SURPASS DICKEY’S 2013 RESULTS IN THE FUTURE!
NIESE WILL TRULY IMPROVE WHILE DICKEY CAN ONLY DETERIORATE
I LOVED RA AS A MET! MUCH MORE THAN SANTANA & NEARLY AS MUCH AS PEDRO, IN ’05.
EVEN I KNOW R.A. REACHED AN UNSURPASSABLE, FOR HIM, PINNACLE OF PERFORMANCE WHILE NIESE, IMO, WILL BE THE PREMERE #3 SP IN THE LEAGUE FOR SOMETINME TO COME!

Doesn’t matter how many teams are involved

So, can we please, stop repeating one thing and blowing it up to something it really wasn’t.

would you do it ?

BINGO

Its a tough call i think niese is gna be awesome. If you look at our high ceiling guys 3 years from now he cld b our number 4 or 5 statter n win btween 15 n 17 games.

You are not in the minority. Many of us feel that Sandy just wanted to dump R.A. Yes, many of us feel less of an emotional impact now than we did when the trade was made and looking at the potential d’Arnaud holds for us, however, now that spring training has started and the WBC is about to begin, the actual sight of R.A. in a Toronto uniform is making many of us once again feel the way we did when he was traded.

R.A. actually has to have a bad year in order to feel less hurt about the trade regardless of how well Travis performs. And even if Travis does develop into a very dependable backstop, we will still never forget the manner in which R.A. was treated for all that he gave back to everone in so many ways that extends way beyond the ball field.

Neise is not speical right now. He may or may not be special in the future.

But if I’m getting the same players by trading Neise instead of Dickey – I got to trade Neise.

And if Tor0nto wants to do a do-over and offer us Dickey straight up for Neise – I’d make that trade.

You are trading potential (and youth) for a the current Cy Young.

Always, Dickey. Though I wish he could have signed my book.

I’m putting sentiment aside on this one and am saying there were right to deal R.A. rather than Jonathon for the package Toronto was offering. Maybe had the Mets been treating R.A. fairly in contract negotiations and indeed were not shopping him around but suddenly got an offer from Toronto and then said to R.A., you know we love you but we got a deal that we just could not pass up the trade would have been less difficult to accept. Though Sandy denied this to be true, he did not hide the fact he would be open to such talks if somebody else made the first move so he was literally inviting people to call him instead (not to mention the leaks on what they wanted known about the contract negotations and then the badmouthing of him at that Christmas party that he found out about at the last minute and changed his schedule to attend to in order to be with the kids)

Just without that top catching prospect looming, but they could have very easily put together a better than 2012 C tandem even without the big deal.