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Jason Bay will not buy into the notion he is washed up or even a fraction of the player he once was.
The numbers don’t lie: Bay’s three-year tenure with the Mets has been disastrous, littered by injuries and vast unproductive stretches, but the 33-year-old outfielder says there still is time to change the narrative.
He isn’t off to a good start in his latest resurrection. Bay returned from a six-week disabled-list stint nursing a fractured rib and promptly went 0-for-11 as the Mets were swept three games by the Yankees over the weekend.
It left Bay batting .197 with three homers and five RBIs in 61 at-bats this season and resembling the albatross he’s been to the Mets lineup since his arrival on a four-year contract worth $66 million before the 2010 season.
For Bay, the frustrating part is his heart tells him he still is the player who hit 36 home runs for the Red Sox in 2009 after he emerged as an All-Star with the Pirates.
“Production-wise, it hasn’t been on par, I understand that, but I still feel like I can do those things — that is the frustrating part,” Bay said. “If I didn’t feel like I can do it, I think it wouldn’t be that tough. You wouldn’t be so hard on yourself, but I feel like I can do it and it’s just been a couple of years of searching for it.”
Bay has a vesting option worth $17 million for 2014 based on plate appearances. If he reaches 500 plate appearances this year and next, the option will vest. Likewise, if Bay reaches 600 plate appearances in 2013, the option will vest.
As for the possibility of getting 500 plate appearances this year, Bay realizes “that won’t happen, probably,” given his time on the disabled list, but says the option is the least of his concerns.
“I’m worried about getting through this year and then I’ll get through next year as well,” Bay said. “I’m not playing this game to try and get at-bats to get options to kick in. I want to get back to being productive. [The option] is totally the farthest thing from my mind.”
Bay was asked if he feels jinxed since joining the Mets. Other than the rib fracture, he missed the final two months of the 2010 season after sustaining a concussion. His home run total in three seasons with the Mets is 21 — or 15 fewer than he hit his final year in Boston.
“No, I feel like somewhere along the way I lost rhythm,” Bay said. “You just kind of hit and you mindlessly do it and things happen, and then all of a sudden that’s not happening. And now you’re working, you’re focusing on doing a lot of these things — not that you never worked before — but things were just happening and you could let them happen and right now they’re not just happening.
“I have to go out there and I’m working every day trying to find something that is going to put me in a position to succeed, and for whatever reason it hasn’t been as swimmingly as it was in the first seven years of my career.”
Does Bay ever wonder how life might have been different had he stayed with the Red Sox?
“No, because I could play that game all day and I don’t think it really had anything to do with where I ended up or the ballpark or anything like that,” Bay said. “Maybe that’s the way you deal with it, but that’s the way I truly view it. It’s just the things that came so easy are not coming so easy, and you’ve got to go out there and find a way.”
mpuma@nypost.com