Finally Jason Bay reached the seats.
After 68 at-bats and 20 games without going yard to open the Mets’ season and his Mets’ career, Bay hit his first homer of the year yesterday, drilling a solo blast in the Mets’ 4-0, Game 1 win over the Dodgers at Citi Field.
“We were waiting for this,” Johan Santana said, “for a while.”
Bay has been waiting even longer. He had gone 108 at-bats — 33 games — without hitting a homer, a career-worst stretch that dated to last Sept. 21, when he took the Royals’ Lenny Dinardo deep while Bay was a Red Sox.
“Obviously it is [a relief],” he said, “but it wasn’t something that was looming over my head.”
Of course, a homer every 69 at-bats and 21 games isn’t an acceptable pace for the Mets’ $66 million slugger, but at least Bay’s finally off the homer schneid.
And at least his homer was important — his fourth-inning shot off righty Hiroki Kuroda gave the Mets a 2-0 cushion. Bay also delivered in the Mets’ 10-5 nightcap win, ripping an RBI triple to the wall in center field and making a terrific tumbling catch to rob Jamey Carroll of a hit.
After slumping for the first few weeks, Bay’s hitting has improved, especially during the Mets’ 8-1 streak. In those nine games, the left fielder has gone 10-for-29 (.345) with six walks, raising his average from .217 to .267.
Bay thinks it’s a coincidence that he struggled in his opening few weeks with a new team in a new city, though he admitted he couldn’t be sure.
“You could write it and I wouldn’t deny it because I don’t know,” Bay said.
After grounding out in his first at-bat against Kuroda, Bay came up to lead off the fourth with the Mets up 1-0. On a 1-0 pitch, he crushed a drive over the Mets’ pennants that are hanging on the left-center-field wall.
“I’m glad he broke it at home,” manager Jerry Manuel said of Bay’s homerless streak.