Hack Bay

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Seriously, let's just cut this piece of shit right now, or trick him into retiring or something.

[metirish]

He looks like Cedano up there swinging , terrible player.

[Fman99]

I've tried to be patient. Forgiving, even. But fuck, Jason Bay is a 6' hunk of shit in a Mets jersey. He's Burnitz-bad.

[batmagadanleadoff]

"For an encore after I finished designing my stadium with the cavernous dimensions, I thought I'd follow up by spending $66M on a home run hitter".





"Next year, I'm gonna install cup holders and tobacco spitoons with built-in lighting for night games at every base".










"I'm smart. I got lots of ideas."

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

He's worse than Burnitz. Burnitz followed up his shitty season with a better one. Bay sucked last year and is sucking even worse this year.

[batmagadanleadoff]

"Dad, we can fix Jason Bay by moving the fences farther away from home plate. That'll make him try even harder to hit HR's. Whaddya think? Can I have some more money?"

[Guest Edgy DC]

It's really a different issue.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I'm laughing anyway.

The issue is, Bay sucks.

The dimensions are maybe another issue, and maybe they suck too.

[batmagadanleadoff]

"What if we put the outfield fence on a track like those retractable stadium roofs and move the fences in whenever the visiting team bats? This way, our outfielders won't have to cover so much ground on fly balls. That's another idea."

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Maybe we just need to hit him in the head with a fence again.

/Everything I know about performance psychology, I learned from sitcom depictions of amnesia

[Guest The Second Spitter]

Fences, schmeneces. If they sprung the extra $$$ for Holliday, nobody would talking about fences.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Second Spitter wrote: Fences, schmeneces. If they sprung the extra $$$ for Holliday, nobody would [be] talking about fences.

Of course not. It's never the fences. After Holliday the Met ended his 2010 season with 12 HR's, the critics simply said that Holliday sucked. Hardly anyone blames the fences for anything. Analyzing Ike Davis' last HR --a Citi Field bomb that traveled about 450 ft.-- Bobby Ojeda reasoned that CF isn't taking HR's away from anybody. As if every fly ball that Ike Davis ever hit that was far enough to clear the Shea fences would've also cleared the CF fences. As if every fly ball Ike Davis hits travels 450 feet, minimum. As if the dimensions at CF are the same as Shea's. And if there are any differences, they don't matter at all.

Matt Holliday hit 23 road HR's combined for 2006-07, while totalling 70 HR's playing half his games in Denver over that span (23 road, 47 home). Who the eff is Matt Holliday? He wasn't a better HR hitter than Bay through 2009.

[Centerfield]

My wife has the same last name as Jason Bay (albeit a different spelling). Her boss has told her he would rather see her in the lineup than Jason Bay. He says he can't imagine she could be as unproductive as him.

I tend to agree.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I don't hate Jason Bay (he seems like a decent guy) but I hate that the Mets are stuck with him.

In the past, the Mets have shown that they're willing to eat a bad contract, but they always wait until the final season of that contract. (Oliver Perez, Luis Castillo, Kaz Matsui, and George Foster are the ones that come immediately to mind.) If that pattern, such as it is, holds, the Mets will continue to carry Bay for another year and a half.

I understand that they want to give him a chance to play his way out of this "slump" (although I'd say it's much more than that) and while I suppose there's hope that he will, it's looking more and more unlikely.

What to do? Nobody is going to trade for him. Would he do a Steve Trachsel and spend three or four weeks in Buffalo? Would that even do any good? (For Bay, that is. It would be good in that it would give Fernando Martinez a chance to show his stuff in the big leagues.) Or do the Mets keep him around as an expensive, and non-threatening, right-handed pinch hitter? He can probably do everything that Scott Hairston can do.

[ashie62]

Jason Bay runs well, plays better defense than I expected, BUT..the bat speed is gone...

There are 66 Million reasons why Bay will trot out to LF almost everyday for a long time.

[G-Fafif]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I don't hate Jason Bay (he seems like a decent guy) but I hate that the Mets are stuck with him.

Spoke to him for five minutes once (with four other bloggers) and he was a swell fellow. I'd be happy to watch a game with him. I just hate to watch games with him in them.

Right now, he's a defensive replacement.

[smg58]

Which is ironic, given that defense was supposed to be the hole in his game.

I'm tired of blaming Citifield. Ask Tulowitzki or Mike Stanton if it's hard to hit homers here.

The truth is, I can't come up with a reason to think I'd rather have Bay out there than Martinez.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I'm tired of blaming Citifield. Ask Tulowitzki or Mike Stanton if it's hard to hit homers here.

In all seriousness, I'm not necessarily blaming Citi Field for Bay's struggles. But I'm not ruling out the stadium either. Who knows? Maybe the stadium dimensions have Bay psyched out. Maybe it's the lingering effects of last season's concussion. Or maybe the Mets had the misfortune of acquiring Bay at the precise point in time when Bay's skills began to noticeably diminish from age, wear and tear. Maybe it's a little of all of the above.

I'm not denying that Bay has outright sucked for the Mets. But to insist that CF can't be a factor is, to me, 100% illogical. Defending CF's dimensions on the basis of the occasional 430+ foot HR makes no sense to me. CF has, in some areas, significantly high fences and also, the largest fair ball area in the league. How can this not matter to a hitter? Are you saying that no one ever hits a ball that stays in the park at CF, but would've been a HR in practically every other park? I say that not only is CF a factor, but that the design of its' dimensions represents a gross act of stupidity that goes far beyond aesthetics or a simple preference for one style of baseball over another style.

I'll ask Mike Stanton. But you go and ask David Wright.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

All I know is, even if you set the on-field performance issues aside, it's tough to trust someone who goes with turkey-and-cheese-- dry, no less-- as his favorite sandwich on earth.