Well, after adding a golden sombrero to his collection, Ike Davis has to be Las Vegas-bound now, right?
The problem for the Mets is, assuming they demote their imploding first baseman to Triple-A, another storm should arrive imminently. Just because that’s the way baseball goes, especially in New York.
There’s only one way for the Mets to truly escape being consumed by such sagas, and that’s to start winning ballgames regularly.
Last night, in a literal storm at Citi Field, the Mets settled for a temporary tie. Pelted by a driving rain, they rallied with a two-run bottom of the eighth to counter the Braves’ two-spot in the top of the inning, and the 5-5 game will resume at 6:10 tonight with the top of the ninth before the Mets and Atlanta kick off their scheduled contest.
Whether Davis remains in the game as the first baseman or whether he’ll report immediately to Vegas, we’ll see. But gosh, did he look awful, striking out in all four of his trips to the plate to give him one hit and 18 strikeouts in his last 42 at-bats.
“I’m not sure,” manager Terry Collins said, when asked how much longer the Mets could stick with Davis. “Right now, we have to do what’s best for Ike Davis. Because you still have to look at the long term. This guy is too big a piece of our offensive puzzle to continue to struggle like he’s struggling. If we’re going to be a team to contend with, that bat has to be in our lineup, hitting. And right now it’s not.”
Davis didn’t make himself available for comment.
Remember, before we had the Ike Watch, we endured the ridiculous story of Jordany Valdespin’s styling after a home run and the subsequent chaos — which led to Collins taking on Mets fans. And after Davis’ situation is resolved, another narrative will be waiting.
As Collins told reporters during the Valdespin nonsense, the reason he was discussing Valdespin at length was because of the team’s constant losing.
Since the Mets play in New York, they’re going to have an intense fan and media following even when they’re both bad and boring, which is very much the case this season. There are newspaper pages, Internet space and radio and television time to fill, and many Mets fans — bless them — are loyal to a fault and can’t just quit watching.
So this is what happens. We go to town over a first baseman who has proven himself to be merely adequate during his three-plus seasons in the big leagues, who doesn’t merit this quantity or quality of conversation.
The Mets traded R.A. Dickey to Toronto last December primarily because they found an offer they liked very much. Yet before that deal became reality, general manager Sandy Alderson admitted he was reluctant to take Dickey back on the remaining year of his contract — without giving him an extension — because of a concern Dickey’s status could overshadow the greater cause of the team.
You can be proactive in trying to limit the narratives that can dominate a team and its environment. You can’t make them disappear altogether, though.
You can minimize their damage by diverting folks’ attention with positive results. Remember how brutally Jorge Posada’s career with the Yankees ended two years ago? The Posada subject never eclipsed the 2011 Yankees themselves, however, because the Yankees were en route to a 97-win season. Before the game, we talked about whether Posada was in the lineup. After the game, we discussed the other 24 players.
Or you could just look on the other side of the field here, where new Braves center fielder B.J. Upton, kicking off his five-year, $75.25-million contract, now has a brutal .497 OPS. It’s a subject of conversation — just not as much as the fact the Braves reside atop the National League East.
“These players get to the big leagues because they’re very talented guys,” Collins said. “They haven’t had to deal with much failure in their lives, and when they deal with what he’s going through right now, it’s pretty hard to take it. You’ve just never been there before. Sometimes you think it’s a growing lesson, but other times it can break you down.”
The Mets won’t break this cycle of numbing narratives until they can find enough good players to provide coverage for the bad ones.