“Believe it or not,” Lucas Duda said Wednesday afternoon, “I was kind of tall and skinny. In my later years, I got bigger.”
That would explain why his football career — he played quarterback — concluded even before he began Arlington High School in Southern California. Maybe it explains also why it took a while for Duda, listed at 6-foot-4 and 256 pounds, to find his footing as a major leaguer.
At age 28, with the first-base position largely his, Duda indeed has gotten bigger — in value. He contributed an RBI single and an important flyout Wednesday night as the Mets won their season-best fourth consecutive game and fifth in six games, 4-1 over the Braves at Citi Field.
The primary discussion item now shouldn’t be whether the Mets chose right in keeping Duda and trading Ike Davis to Pittsburgh in April. It should be why the Mets bothered to create so much drama out of such a no-brainer in the first place.
“He’s developing into a pretty good hitter,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said Wednesday of Duda. “He’s not an easy out. He’s not a guy where you just spin the ball and he’s out.
“That comes from a lot of at-bats. For me, he’s an established major-league left-handed hitter.”
He now lays claim to 1,369 major-league at-bats, and 1,589 plate appearances — more than two seasons’ worth, spread over five campaigns. By posting a .260/.358/.483 slash line in his first 307 plate appearances of 2014, with 13 home runs, he’s approaching his career best line of .292/.370/.482 from 2011, and this is a more oppressive time for offenses. He has reached base safely in 15 of his last 16 games.
“Lucas is starting to do what we thought he’d do,” manager Terry Collins said.
After reaching base five times (two doubles, a single and two walks) Tuesday in the Mets’ 8-3 victory, Duda initiated the scoring in the first inning Wednesday. With Daniel Murphy on second base and two outs, Duda lined a base hit to right field off Atlanta starter Ervin Santana, sending his teammate home for the 1-0 Mets advantage.
When Mets starter Dillon Gee, returning after a nearly two-month absence while on the disabled list, allowed the Braves to knot the contest at 1-1 in the sixth, Duda helped push the game back the Mets’ way. David Wright started the seventh by hustling out a double when his fellow Virginian Justin Upton took his time returning the hit from left field. Duda worked the count from 0-and-2 to 2-and-2 and ripped a fly ball to deep right field on which Wright tagged and went to third base.
That proved critical when, after Bobby Abreu walked, Kirk Nieuwenhuis lined a sacrifice fly to right, bringing in Wright for the 2-1 Mets edge. Rookie Travis d’Arnaud followed by popping a two-run homer for insurance.
“I always talk about playing the game right, and part of playing the game right is hanging your ego at the door,” Collins said after the game. “And when you’ve got to get a guy over, get him over. That’s what the situation calls for. If you drive him in, that’s a plus. And Lucas had a great at-bat tonight.”
It’s not fair to contrast the soft-spoken Duda as low-maintenance to the human roller coaster Davis became the prior two seasons. Duda, too, hit multiple speed bumps, drawing demotions to Triple-A in both 2012 and 2013. Yet his slumps weren’t as epic as Davis’, nor did they seem to drag down the entire team alongside him. You can attribute at least some of that to the hope and hype surrounding Davis as a 2008 first-round draft pick and the son of former Yankees pitcher Ron Davis.
In tendering Davis a contract last winter, the Mets wound up costing themselves about $360,000 in salary (the Pirates picked up the remaining $3.14 million of his contract once they acquired him) and some agita through spring training and the first half of April. The benefits from that decision lurk in the minor leagues, as the Mets received 26-year-old reliever Zack Thornton and 18-year-old left-hander Blake Taylor from Pittsburgh. Eh.
Meanwhile, Davis carried a .240/.358/.351 line, with five homers in 268 plate appearances, into the Pirates’ game Wednesday night at St. Louis. So if the February-through-April angst impacted either of the Mets’ two first-base contestants, you can’t say that Duda emerged the worse for it.
To the contrary, triumphing in this derby seems to have boosted Duda’s confidence and enhanced his already strong level of happiness in the Mets’ clubhouse.
The Mets themselves are late bloomers, as it took them eight years to post their first winning record in 1969. Now they’re trying to end a losing run of five years. They’ll need more help, and more payroll, to make their ballpark bigger, as in more crowded. Yet they’re further along because they stuck with Duda.