Frustrated Ike gets a day off

Ike Davis delivered 19 homers and 71 RBIs as a rookie and hit .302 with seven homers and 25 RBIs last year before suffering a season-ending ankle injury in May. But when he looks in the mirror now, Davis has trouble recognizing himself.

The 11-month journey back from the disabled list has been harder than expected, and Friday night's come-from-ahead 5-4 loss to Arizona was especially rough. Davis went 0-for-4, hit into an inning-ending double play with two on, struck out with a man on third and was charged with an error that ignited the Diamondbacks' three-run rally in the eighth.

So it wasn't a big surprise that manager Terry Collins replaced Davis and his .172 average in Saturday's lineup with Justin Turner, especially with lefthander Patrick Corbin pitching for Arizona.

Asked if there are times when a player needs a psychological rest as much as at-bats, Davis paused and then said: "Sometimes. Obviously, the average isn't going to change if I'm on the bench. It's hard both ways. I want to be out there because the only way to perform better is to play. If it's going to give our team a better chance to win at this point, then he's got to do what he's got to do."

The lefthanded-hitting Davis recently showed signs of breaking out with a five-game hitting streak. He wasn't unhappy with most of his swings Friday night, just the results.

"I had decent at-bats until the last one," Davis said, referring to his strikeout. "Did I get hits? No, but I stayed on the curveball the other way and hit it right at the shortstop. The next at-bat, I stayed on the curveball and hit it right at the second baseman. If I pull it a little more, it's a base hit. When you're in a slump, everything you do is kind of magnified."

Collins' concern is that Davis might be uncertain because he's never faced this much adversity in his three-year Mets career.

"I don't know if he's ever had a slump," Collins said of Davis. "He went through the minor leagues without having to deal with failure. Now he's facing the toughest time of his career at the major-league level. That's very, very difficult. Not even talking about the market we're in."

As if Davis' troubles at the plate aren't enough, he couldn't help but think official scorer David Freeman piled on by charging him with an error on a hard-hit ball by Arizona's Justin Upton that curved around the first-base bag and skipped under his glove untouched.

"He tends to do that to me sometimes," Davis said of Freeman, who shares scoring duties at Citi Field. "Both errors I've had this year I haven't touched, and they've been tough plays. But I think he's giving me respect because he knows I should catch the ball on tough plays. Should I have made the play? Yeah, I feel like I should have. But it was a tough play."

And so it goes for Davis, who got in only for defense in the top of the ninth Saturday.