A few positive developments can be found buried deep within the detritus of the Mets’ otherwise soul-killing 14-inning loss [1] at Arizona Wednesday night.
• Carlos Beltran drove in his first run since September 30 and is now only 43 behind Jason Bay for the season.
• Angel Pagan was one triple shy of a cycle. And Jason Bay was one base short of a single.
• Rod Barajas hit his first home run since the end of May. Jason Bay has yet to hit a home run in a standard National League road ballpark this season.
• Oliver Perez didn’t implode on contact, automatically earning him the status of Best Ex-Pirate On The Mets Who Isn’t Elmer Dessens.
Jason Bay would be the worst.
We all need our scapegoats, and Bay is mine. I’d like to believe it’s temporary, though temporary is suddenly rounding third and heading for August. On a night when few did much and many did little, Bay continued to brave the storm in a skiff made of futility, standing in proximity to home plate six times for no immediately discernible reason. He produced a groundout, reached on an error and then struck out, struck out, struck out and…struck out.
0-for-6 with four strikeouts, none of which came with a Met runner on base, which prevents me, in all good conscience, from picketing the team hotel in L.A. this morning while chanting:
HEY, HEY, JASON BAY!
HOW MANY METS DID YOU STRAND TODAY?
I am the proud owner of a Jason Bay bobblehead, and every day I stare at it and wonder what the hell it’s doing here. That is, why did the Mets choose to make Jason Bay their poster doll for 2010? Oh, right, because, in addition to showing next to no marketing imagination, they threw $66 million at him in late 2009 and are obligated to propagate the pretense that he is a star.
He’s not a star. He’s not much of anything at the moment, but when he’s not sucking like Jason Bay has sucked as a Met, he is, I sort of recall [2], not as bad as Jason Bay has been. But I’m in possession of his rather bland ceramic figure just as the Mets are stuck with his fabulously extravagant contract through 2013. Until then, they can throw it on the pile over there with Castillo’s, Perez’s and that clever quarter-century buyout genius Steve Phillips cooked up for Bobby Bonilla [3].
The whole team’s been Bayish, of course. The Diamondbacks were rumored to be horrendous, yet they’re 3-0 since the Mets passed through Phoenix on their way to nowhere. That bullpen of theirs was supposed to be the most flammable item since Mrs. O’Leary’s barn, but it extinguished every Met hope for three nights. Then this series ends with Chris Snyder smacking a ball over the head of — who else? — Jason Bay in the fourteenth. Best thing you can say regarding the losing run is Kirk Gibson didn’t drive it over the fence [4] in the twelfth.
I’m sure the Mets aren’t any happier than they’ve made us. And if they are, Alex Cora will be certain to dampen their mood even further. “Have some respect!” Cora chided giggling reporters [5] and maybe Mike Pelfrey in the Met clubhouse Tuesday night.
Score some runs, Mets fans chided back.