Here’s a little comparison between two players. One is Lucas Duda. The other I won’t say yet. Duda had an injury year in 2016 where he only played 47 games and basically sucked. Write it off. So we’ll look at his last 2 ½ years with the Mets (2014,2015 and half of 2017) That’s 363 games. The other guy I picked three seasons that were consistent with his career and gave a SLG similar to Duda. (2012,2013,2016) This may seem odd, but I can defend it as a fair comparison. You’ll have to trust me. I summed everything up and projected to a 150 game season, for perspective. Here they are.

Looking at this you can see that the first guy spent some time coming off the bench, and the second guy was a full time starter. I’ll tell you Duda is the top stat line. Duda also had more HBP so it helped his OBP. So Duda a little better OBP and the other guy a little better AVG. SLG practically the same.

Over those 3 seasons, the only players on the Mets that had higher OPS were Cespedes and Conforto.

Duda was paid $13m for those 3 years. The other guy was paid $25m for those 3 years. Both players signed new contracts this year. Duda signed a 1 yr – $3.5m contract. The other guy signed a 3yr – $39m contract. This shows you the perceived value while their stats are not that different. The other guy? Jay Bruce. Don’t be so hard on Lucas. He was an 800 OPS guy that was cheap. He is an under valued player. (Of course the Mets signed Adrian Gonzalez for $545k. So, yeah.)