Ike Davis would rather forget most of the first half of this season, but he will go into tomorrow’s All-Star break as red-hot as the scalding weather.
Davis, who suddenly leads the Mets in homers (12) and is second in RBIs (49), crushed a two-run home run in the second inning yesterday, lifting the Mets to a 3-1 win over the Cubs in front of 26,096 at Citi Field.
“I’m just trying to help the team win, via if I get walks, base hits, homers, doubles, whatever I do; I just want to help the team,’’ Davis said. “Obviously I put myself in a pretty big hole at the beginning of the year. … But this year I’ve still got half a season to see how far I can raise it up. I don’t know how high.’’
Davis, who started the season 0-for-16 and has had to battle Valley Fever, has been scorching the past month. After falling behind Jeff Samardzija 1-2 yesterday, he got around on an 86-mph splitter and pulled it off the Pepsi Max sign in the loge section for a two-run homer. Though Davis is hitting just .205, his numbers in his past 24 games have been impressive. Dating back to June 9, he is batting .309 (25-for-81) with seven home runs and 28 RBIs.
“It’s nice,” Davis said. “Obviously it’s nice to feel like I’m doing stuff. For 2 1/2 months I felt like I wasn’t really helping the team, and wasn’t doing a whole lot of anything. It’s just nice to help the team win and feel like I’m part of the game.
“At one point this year I was glad just to be over .100. Do I want to be .200? No; I want to be closer to .300. But I’ve got a lot of games left. It’s going to be a grind, and we’ll see what at the end of the year it ends up being. I can’t really think about numbers. I have to think about having good at-bats.’’
Which Davis has had plenty of recently. He has 15 hits in his last 34 at-bats with runners in scoring position, hitting .441 with six homers and 31 RBI in those clutch spots.
“He put three pretty good swings on it, and one of them got out,’’ manager Terry Collins said. “But you look up and see a guy’s got [12] homers and [49] RBIs and he’s hitting [.205], I’ll take those homers and RBIs, especially with his defense because he brings something else to the table that’s hard to replace.’’