Pace Law School in White Plains won the sixth annual Tulane National Baseball Arbitration Competition in New Orleans in 2013. This week, coach Dan Masi’s team of James Di Maggio, Scott Koren, Earl J. Menard III, Bryan Kelly and Joseph Moravec offers salary projections for the New York Mets’ arbitration-eligible players. Now up: Lucas Duda.

Duda has been with the Mets for seven seasons. Throughout that tenure, he has provided offensive power to an up-and-coming team. This past year, however, Duda was sidelined by a stress fracture in his lower back that limited him to 47 games. Because of the injury-shortened season, his statistics were limited and he saw his numbers drop compared to his typical year. Still, Duda possesses strong career statistics, specifically in home runs and RBIs. Those power statistics are indicative of the type of player he has been throughout his career, and may help his cause in determining the salary he should receive for 2017.

Given his limited action this past season, the three players comparable to Duda for his upcoming arbitration are Cliff Pennington, Jacoby Ellsbury and Brandon Moss.

While both Pennington ($525,000 salary raise) and Ellsbury ($950,000 salary raise) are players at different positions than those typically compared to a first baseman, they nonetheless are two players who missed time during their platform seasons. Therefore, they are ideal candidates to show how the arbitration process values players who have missed significant time.

Pennington appeared in 68 games during his platform season (2014), whereas Ellsbury played in 74 in his comparable season (2012). Both of those totals were greater than Duda’s 47 games played in 2016. Although both players had lower home run totals than Duda’s, Pennington and Ellsbury both had a stronger batting averages and OBPs when compared with Duda’s 2016 season. Comparing their careers, Pennington and Duda played nearly exactly the same amount of games -- with Duda having stronger power numbers, while Pennington had the higher batting average. Although Ellsbury played in fewer games than both players, his batting average and OBP were higher than Duda’s and their slugging percentages were comparable.

The one player most similar to Duda is Moss, who received a $1.75 million salary raise after his 2015 season. Both Duda and Moss were first basemen at that point in their careers. During their respective platform seasons, Moss played in significantly more games (145) than Duda (47). This alters Moss’ numbers in comparison to Duda's in their platform seasons, although it is notable that Duda had a slightly higher batting average (.229 vs. .226) in his limited action. The true comparison comes through their career performances. Overall, Moss played significantly more games (770) than Duda (685). Other key statistics, however, such as home runs, RBIs, and slugging percentage are separated by a smaller amount, though still in Moss’ favor. Duda’s career batting average and OBP, on the other hand, are higher than Moss'.

Taking into consideration the drastic differences in their platform seasons, in addition to their career statistics, it is reasonable to believe that Duda should receive a significantly lower raise than Moss, given his limited playing time this past year.

For the following reasons listed above, Duda becomes a very difficult player to predict and we wouldn’t be surprised if this case goes all the way to an arbitration hearing.

Projection: Duda's 2017 salary will be $7.315 million, which is a raise of $585,000.