PORT ST. LUCIE — Let’s give Jason Bay this benefit of the doubt because — if nothing else — the Mets certainly believe his failure as a Met is about caring too much, not too little.
It is about the left fielder falling into a hole instantly in 2010 and losing confidence while gaining advice. It is about a destructive cycle of wanting to please so much that too many voices got beyond the velvet rope in his brain, too much counsel was heeded to tinker here and readjust there.
His ears became a meeting place for the well intentioned to feed a series of recommendations that worked as harmoniously with one another as oil and water. Executives around the Mets couldn’t remember an accomplished player who turned every at-bat into a mandate on the positioning of his hands, the angling of a foot.
Bay admits he got so bogged down with the perfection of each individual body part that the whole mechanism became crippled, bat speed lost to analysis. Pretty soon even a search party couldn’t find Bay’s swing or recalibrate his thought process. He was in a vortex spinning away from who he was and melding further into some horrible conglomeration of doubts, insecurities and a bundle of counter-productive suggestions.
Throw in a 2010 concussion and the lingering effects that seemed to stick around just to add more mental anguish, to taunt a guy already hounded by uncertainty and bedeviled by the hollow results astride his substantial contract.
This is the Jason Bay who turned to Mets hitting coach Dave Hudgens last September, lost and bewildered, as confident as a rabbit among crocodiles. He blocked out the many and put himself in one person’s trust, and, oddly, it was not Hudgens. It was a guy named Jason Bay.
Hudgens was merely the conduit to get Bay to reconnect to himself. To set up the side-by-side film of Bay with the Mets compared to Bay with the Pirates or Red Sox. At first, Bay did not believe he had changed so perceptibly. But then, boom, there was the evidence. There was this guy in his uniform who seemed to be doing six different dances at once and ended up looking like Elaine on “Seinfeld.”
“I still feel regardless what has happened the last few years that I am still that guy,” Bay said. “I have to be that guy consistently.”
That guy does not fool himself. He knew he was slump-prone. He knew good pitching would more often than not conquer his pull-happy tendencies.
But he also knew the vintage version of himself did not let mistakes escape; hang a slider, misplace a tepid fastball and the price was paid on the other side of a fence.
In the six seasons with the Pirates and Red Sox from 2004-09, Bay hit between 21 and 36 homers each year and generated an aggregate .519 slugging percentage.
As a Met he has 18 homers — in two seasons. His slugging percentage is .386. Remember pesky little Lance Johnson? His career slugging percentage was .386. So was speedy Mookie Wilson’s.
Bay was brought to New York to make Citi Field play smaller, not find himself in comparisons with former Mets center fielders like Johnson and Wilson.
“I wasn’t playing to my strengths,” Bay said.
In September, he felt strong again, felt the film sessions had empowered him to “relearn” how to be himself. Bay hit .351 with a .632 slugging percentage in his final 18 games.
It is a small sample size, but offered a positive reinforcement that a veteran hitter with confidence issues craved. He felt himself shake the robotic movements, regain the rhythm in his swing.
Now those Citi Field fences actually are moving closer. As Bay said, “I don’t see how that can hurt.”
So can Bay help? The Mets want to believe this is not self-deception, that at 33 Bay really has rediscovered himself and shed the struggling self-doubter who has been wearing his uniform. They have invested in him beyond the money. He plays hard, he cares and manager Terry Collins wants to use him as leader for those reasons. But the nice guy also is the one who let everyone into his head, triggering all the alterations in stance and approach.
Bay needs to honor this new old style by selfishly listening to just one voice. His own.