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.