David Wright is paid to get hits and drive in runs, but he wasn’t upset when the Dodgers walked him in a key situation in the seventh inning yesterday.
“I’ve got a really good hitter hitting behind me,” Wright reasoned.
That’s usually the case, but yesterday that hitter, Jason Bay, continually failed in the clutch in the Mets’ 4-2 loss at Citi Field.
Bay’s biggest failure came after that walk to Wright, which loaded the bases with two outs and the Mets trailing 4-1. He came to the plate against hard-throwing righty reliever Kenley Jansen, worked the count to 2-2, then delivered a useless fly ball to left, ending the Mets’ threat.
That at-bat was just the last of three in which Bay choked with runners on base. The $66 million left fielder went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.
How many runners did he leave on base? Try six. And he even led off in the sixth inning — and struck out.
His first missed opportunity came in the first inning, when he came up with runners on first and third and one out, but went down looking at a Clayton Kershaw fastball. In the third, with a man on first and one out, he grounded out to third.
Bay, who suffered an oblique injury during spring training and took a two-day paternity leave last week, has played just 14 games for the Mets since returning from the disabled list on April 21. The Mets are 10-4 in the games he has played, but Bay is batting a measly .241 with one home run and four RBIs in 54 at-bats. Worse, he has struck out a staggering 17 times in 60 plate appearances — once for every 3.5 times he has stepped into the box.
Even worse, Bay is 2-for-14 with men in scoring position this season. And he heads with his teammates into the opener of a three-game series at Colorado in a 4-for-31 funk.
“[I’m] still waiting to be consistent,” Bay said. “It seems like every day we’re working on something. . . . I feel like I’m getting close to it. But it’s still a work in progress.”
Bay said the issue is not mechanical, simply the way he feels in the batter’s box. He was careful to say he doesn’t want to overreact to a two-week sample. Nevertheless, in his year-plus with the Mets, the 32-year-old is batting .256 with seven homers and 51 RBIs in 109 games.