If you’ve read this blog before you’re aware of my utter disdain of Omar Minaya and his administration of the Mets the last few years. I don’t claim to be a Mets fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d rather see them do well than do poorly as the other New York team, and it irks me to see him run them by a fucking retard. Move after move turns out to be bad (signing Oliver Perez for 36million, signing Castillo to a four year deal when no one wanted him for one, ruining their farm system, etc etc) and yet somehow he still has a job, how can this be? Does Omar have naked pictures of the Wilpons with a goat or something? I digress. As bad as the Mets moves have been in the last few years under Omar, I feel that Minaya may have stumbled into a halfway decent move by signing Outfielder Jason Bay to a four year 66 million dollar deal. Although the move hardly erases the litany of prior terrible moves by the much maligned GM, and there is still much to be done to improve the Metropolitans, adding a player of Bay’s ilk is never a bad move for a team and can only improve their chances in the NL East.
As you may have heard there are numerous voices in the media that loathe the move of signing Jason Bay, particularly Jeff Pearlman of Sports Illustrated. Pearlman, admittedly a far greater sports writer than I could ever hope to be, claims that the outfielder on the wrong side of thirty is a porous defender and is a bad fit for a Mets team that should be built on pitching and defense. Pearlman argues that the money spent on Bay could have been better spent requiring a starting pitcher like John Lackey or Javier Vazquez or position player like Jose Reyes who can use the spacious dimensions of Citi Field to their advantage by turning doubles into triples. Usually I would agree with Jeff’s criticism and the Mets certainly could use another pitcher (or four), but Pearlman misses the glaring fact about this team that cannot be ignored; the Mets need a lot of help EVERYWHERE. Indeed, this is team that has a 150million payroll and yet lost 93 games, the Mets are a team with a payroll that is quite top heavy on a few players and very shallow everywhere else; there is a dearth of talent at the majority of positions on the field. Thus, to run the risk of being cliché the Mets need some baseball players, guys who are talented and do several things well and bring an offensive spark to their woefully anemic offense. And as a guy .267/.384/.537 in the toughest division in baseball against the best pitchers in the game, signing Jason Bay is a move that can only make the Mets better.
Bay, 31, as I mentioned above, was formally in the Mets organization as a prospect, bouncing around to a couple of teams until he landed with the Pirates where he became one of the most prodigious and talented outfielders in the game. From 2004-8, Bay averaged nearly 30 home runs and 100 RBI’s, all while being on easily the shittiest team in baseball. But more than being simply a slugger, Bay has shown a great eye at the plate, walking 13% of the time his career and swung at pitches outside the zone only 19.4% of the time (compared to the league average of 25%).
To be sure, the combination of power and discipline have made Jason one of the better hitters in the National League, and this trend continued after being traded to the Boston Red Sox during a mid-season trade in 2008. Taking over the left field spot hoping to fill the very big shoes of Manny Ramirez, Bay did not flinch in the face of lofty expectations and represented himself admirably, posting a .293/.370/.527 line in 49 games and quickly becoming one of the big bats in the Boston lineup. And in 2009 Bay continued his hot hitting ways, hitting a career high 36 home runs and a rather impressive 134OPS+ while continuing to be one of the key cogs in the Boston hitting machine. All of these numbers add up to a very productive offensive player, moving from the hardest division to one of the easier, a league that Bay not only performed but excelled, posting a pair of All-Star seasons, what’s not to like?
However convincing the numbers on Jason Bay are, there are concerns as to whether four years and sixty six million will prove to be a worthy investment in the long term for the Metropolitans. Indeed, as mentioned above, Bay is not what we would call a defensive wiz, posting downright terrible Ultimate Zone Rating numbers, last year at -13.0, and the two years before being -18.4 and -11.5 respectively (for reference 0 is average fielding range). Coming into his age 31 season with a pair of balky knees, the defensive metrics suggest that Bay is and will only continue to be a liability to the Mets with his glove in his four years he is under contract. Of course numbers like UZR and all defensive metrics are not a perfect measure of a player’s defensive prowess, particularly with the quirky left field in Fenway Park, so there is a possibility that he will at least come close to the numbers he had in Pittsburgh where he averaged a 3.0UZR, but there’s no guarantee. At least from my own subjective experience, Bay is not a particularly defensive outfielder, who along with a real lousy arm should not bring a lot to the table with his glove this year or in the next three for that matter.
Additionally, as great as Bay’s numbers have been, there are concerns as to whether Bay’s power will translate to the cavernous Citi Field. Moving from the right handed batter friendly Fenway to the distant and high walls of Citi, there is a strong possibility that Jason will sorely miss the Green Monster for filling up the stat sheet. According to Bill James’ 2010 Handbook Citi Field depressed run scoring eight percent compared to a neutral park, sharply contrasted to Fenway’s 11 percent increase over average. For sure, one only needs to look at the two parks to suggest that it will be harder for Bay to hit home runs, but this conclusion is hardly a slam dunk. Indeed, while Fenway’s Monster gives a lot of home runs, it also turns a lot of line drive homes into singles and doubles, and there is a chance that those will turn into home runs in Citi. Further, he’s moving to a weaker league where pitchers rely on fastballs more, a pitch that Bay kills, compared to the American League that features more breaking balls, a pitch that has been Bay’s Achilles heel.
In sum, despite what some pundits and naysayers are saying, I think the signing of Jason Bay is a move in the right direction for the Mets (assuming he can stay healthy). While not a perfect player by any means, Bay exhibits enough qualities in his game to be a valuable player for any team that is fortunate to have him. I for one will be happy to not see him in the Red Sox lineup anymore, and I think that the Mets fans will come to appreciate Bay’s professionalism and respect for the game. The Mets and Omar Minaya still have a long, long, way to legitimately compete with the defending NL Champion Phillies, but they could have done a lot worse than Jason Bay.
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