Alderson needs to jettison Bruce and just be done with it

ATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Sometimes at work, you want to juggle and pivot and create all sorts of appealing options for yourself.

Other times, you just need to trade Jay Bruce.

This isn’t brain surgery, right? I highly suspect the Mets know this, too. One opposing general manager offered his informed take, on the condition of anonymity, that the Mets simply want to jettison Bruce and, thereby, keep Curtis Granderson.

The Mets acquired Bruce in the first place because of their willingness to act like a big-market team, as they took on his $4 million-ish salary and exercised his $13 million 2017 team option despite his being an imperfect N fit. Bruce became officially superfluous when the Mets functioned like a big-market team, retaining Yoenis Cespedes for four years and $110 million.

So how do they successfully unload Bruce? Sing it with me: by continuing to operate like a bigmarket team.

That means, if they can’t get the return they want on Bruce, that they must either give him up for an underwhelming package and appreciate the payroll relief or pay down the commitment and get something good back.

“I think it’s still early,” Sandy Alderson said Monday at the winter meetings. “Right now, it’s just hard to tell where and to what extent the interest lies in any of those outfielders.”

Fair enough. The soft deadline to get a deal done would be the start of spring training. It would not behoove the Mets to bring their entire current outfield — and the question of how the gridlock would be cleared — into camp. So they have time to shoot for the stars and settle for something much lower.

Well, except that one can conjoin the Mets’ surplus of outfielders with their shortage of relievers. Combine that alignment with their aspirations to win it all, and they can’t afford to get too cute on this.

Trading Bruce to a club for a good reliever is the most desirable option — and perhaps the least likely. You find a bevy of available corner outfielders when you scan both the freeagent market (Jose Bautista, Ian Desmond, Colby Rasmus and Mark Trumbo, for starters) and the trade market (Ryan Braun, J.D. Martinez and Yasiel Puig, for starters). Bruce, while a fine major league player, doesn’t stand out as particularly alluring.

He becomes more alluring — a de facto free agent — if the Mets let it be known they are just look-

ing for the payroll flexibility to go out and sign a free-agent reliever. Surely, a club, be it the Blue Jays, Orioles, Angels or someone else, would give up a lower-level, questionable prospect or two to get Bruce on his walk year with the knowledge he might even prove worthy of a qualifying offer on the other side.

Or, make Bruce plain free. Pay down his whole salary or a nice chunk of it. All of a sudden, the Mets will find themselves with some appealing returns.

Asked Monday whether including money on an outfielder trade stood on his spectrum of possibilities, Alderson said: “Not at this point.”

Getting Bruce on Aug. 1 and including second-base prospect Dilson Herrera ranked as a major risk for Alderson, and it didn’t pay off at all, really, with Bruce slashing a lousy .219/.294/ .391 in 50 games, totaling 187 plate appearances.

Nevertheless, it reflected the Mets’ new and improved world order, one in which urgency rules the day as they try to capitalize fully on their window of contention.

That urgency looms larger than ever, with Cespedes back and their young starting pitchers rehabilitating their way back into the mix. Granderson, thanks to his ability to play at least some center field and his New York-friendly personality, can’t leave now. It’s got to be Bruce, for whatever he’ll bring back, and then move onward.

They say that a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. Trading Bruce is a good plan today, and it will help the Mets achieve their goal in the tomorrows of 2017.