For one night, Bay makes Citi Field look like a bandbox
Suddenly, Citi Field doesn't feel that big anymore to Jason Bay. For one night, anyway, Bay made the spacious ballpark feel as cozy as his former home, Fenway Park, as he hammered a pair of home runs off the Yankees' CC Sabathia.
Bay went deep for the first time since April 27, which also was at Citi Field, and snapped a career-long drought of 108 at-bats. The multi-homer game was the 14th of his career, with the most recent coming April 11 of last season for the Red Sox at Angel Stadium.
In the second inning, with Alex Cora at second base after a two-run single, Bay clubbed a 2-and-1 changeup that traveled about five rows deep into the left-centerfield seats. The estimated distance was 405 feet, and it still barely cleared the high wall that Bay has peppered many times with doubles.
Bay opened the fifth inning with his second homer, this one a long drive to right-centerfield that landed in the Mets' bullpen. For the encore, Bay crushed a 92-mph sinker, but the Yankees didn't give him a chance at the hat trick.
Sergio Mitre replaced Sabathia for the sixth inning, and with two outs, he nailed Bay on the left shoulder with an 0-and-1 pitch. It was a 75-mph curveball, but given Bay's earlier pounding of Sabathia, plate umpire Marvin Hudson immediately warned both benches.
Heading into last night's game, Bay's slugging percentage was a little light at .429 - he finished at .537 a year ago - but he still was batting .298 and was in the middle of a 14-game hitting streak at Citi Field.
He went 4-for-4 with a double in Saturday's 5-3 win over the Yankees and was batting .400 (24-for-60) in his last 16 games. Other than the size of the park itself, Bay has no issues with Citi Field, where he was hitting .356 with a .447 on-base percentage before last night. He was just waiting for his power numbers to catch up.
"You try tinkering with things and making adjustments," Bay said, "but at the end of the day, you go back to doing what you've always done."
With only one home run at the season's quarter pole, Bay was far behind the 36 he swatted for Boston a year ago. Not what the Mets envisioned when they signed him to a four-year, $66-million contract last winter, and the power drain on the middle of their lineup was a big reason for their sluggish 21-23 start.
Still, neither Bay nor Jerry Manuel expressed much concern about the dramatic dropoff. With June only a week away, it wasn't feeling so early anymore, but Manuel preferred to cite Bay's past production as an indicator of better days ahead.
"I'm sure he's as frustrated with the lack of power numbers as anyone," Manuel said Saturday. "I do believe that if a guy hits 36 one year, I do believe we're in for a good hot streak. I have faith in that. But it's been tough in that sense that when you look to some of the things we felt we could have won a game with - a three-run homer here, a ball hit out of the park there.
"We're lacking that from where we thought we would get it. But that being said, for the most part, he's been a good teammate, he's played hard, he's played every day. He's a good ballplayer. It's just the power has not been there so far."
