Ron Davis doesn’t mind the Mets shopping his son Ike throughout the offseason, he just doesn’t like the way they’ve handled it.
“I think how the Mets really screwed up in that situation is because they’ve publicly done it so much,” the elder Davis said Tuesday. “Saying to my son, ‘We don’t want you anymore. … We want to trade you but we want ‘X’ amount, but with Milwaukee getting [Mark] Reynolds and [Lyle] Overbay, now they’re backed into a corner.”
General manager Sandy Alderson, who admitted he was trying to move Davis earlier in the offseason, has more recently said both Davis and Lucas Duda might compete for the first base job during spring training after Davis’ disastrous 2013 — especially now that potential trading partners have found other alternatives.
“Whatever team he goes to, he’s going to be really happy and try to make them a winner,” said Ron Davis, who was at the Baseball Assistance Team’s fund-raiser at the Marriott Marquis in Midtown. “Including the Mets. If the Mets keep him, he’s got to continue playing the game. You have to make it work.”
Davis’ old hitting coach, Howard Johnson, thinks his former pupil can still do well with the Mets.
“I’m an Ike believer,” Johnson, now the Mariners hitting coach, said at the BAT event. “I think he can have success here again, knowing the kid and his pedigree.”
It won’t be easy, and Ron Davis acknowledged Citi Field hasn’t done Ike any favors.
“I don’t think the team needs a fresh start, I think the ballpark needs a fresh start,” Davis said. “In right field, with the wind coming out of the tunnel, being so far, it’s a bad ballpark for a left-handed hitter. Take him to Colorado or Baltimore or Milwaukee or Texas, those are home-run hitter ballparks.”
For now, Davis will have to continue in Queens.
“I was released three times, traded three times and sold once to Japan,” said Ron Davis, who was a relief pitcher for the Yankees and several other teams. “It’s part of the game. It’s like I told him: ‘You’re like a piece of hamburger meat. You sit there in the grocery store when you’re first out there and you look real good. … The older you get, you get brown and tarnished and people don’t pick you as much.’ ”
Johnson said he was surprised Robinson Cano signed with Seattle.
“Sometimes with big free agents, a lot of games go on, and maybe he was using us to get something out of the Yankees,” Johnson said. “But I think he was sold on what we have out there. He’s going to like it. … And I’m sure the extra money helped.”
He said he hasn’t spoken to Cano since the signing, but he knows his swing.
“To me, he’s got the perfect swing,” said Johnson, who spent last season as the hitting coach at Triple-A Tacoma in the Mariners organization.