The Mets’ decision to trade outfielder Marlon Byrd after he was claimed on waivers by the Pirates makes plenty of sense: Byrd was set to depart in free agency after the season, so the club got back a promising infield prospect in return for what amounts to a little more than a month’s worth of Byrd’s services.

It’s just the timing that’s unfortunate. News of Byrd’s departure broke on Tuesday afternoon, mere hours before the Mets were planning to distribute T-shirts celebrating the veteran outfielder.

A photo of the shirt remains on the Mets’ promotional schedule, and it seems likely the team will go ahead and hand them out anyway. After all, it’s not exactly the best time to give out leftover Matt Harvey or David Wright T-shirts, since both those players are currently on the disabled list. Unless they can find someone who can design and print hundreds of Juan Lagares T-shirts in the next couple of hours, fans will probably be getting T-shirts honoring a recently departed player.

So maybe just sell it like that: Hey, remember how good Marlon Byrd was for the Mets this year? Here’s a T-shirt to commemorate that. The wings are symbolic of the way we let him fly away when we saw he had a chance to play in his first career postseason.

In 2012, the Phillies gave out Hunter Pence bobbleheads nearly a month after Pence had been traded to the Giants.