Lennon: Mets using their heads regarding Bay's concussion

PITTSBURGH

Forty-eight hours.

In order for Jason Bay to be cleared for significant physical activity, the Mets have been told that the outfielder must be headache-free for basically a stretch of two days. That hasn't happened yet, not since Bay first reported the symptoms of a concussion on the team's charter flight from Los Angeles to New York on July 25, almost a month ago.

When asked about Bay's course of treatment yesterday, assistant general manager John Ricco explained that 48-hour window as the necessary starting point for any progression in his rehab, and the Mets still are in a holding pattern with Bay.

"Each person's brain is different," Ricco said. "As soon as anyone begins to show symptoms, you have to take a very conservative approach."

The Mets learned a hard lesson two years ago in the case of Ryan Church, who suffered two concussions in the span of 11 weeks and wound up losing a season because of the debilitating head trauma. As much as the team was criticized then for its handling of Church's head injuries, new information is always surfacing about concussions. Just this past week, a study linked them to a syndrome that mimics ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Neuropathy and Experimental Neurology, and done by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine, suggested that Gehrig's disease might have resulted from repeated concussions.

The more that is discovered about the long-term damage of concussions, the more carefully the symptoms are handled, and the Mets tried to put the brakes on Bay early in the process. While it's true that Bay did play in two games after colliding with the leftfield wall at Dodger Stadium, he was convinced that he never struck his head against that bullpen gate.

What Bay didn't realize - and neither did the Mets - is that he suffered a whiplash-effect concussion when his head snapped backward from the impact. Once Bay complained of headaches on the flight home, he was examined the next day in New York and diagnosed with what the Mets initially described as a "mild concussion."

By now, the Mets should know that no concussion is truly mild, and that's become painfully obvious as Bay's symptoms have dragged on much longer than anyone could have anticipated. The team waited five days to put him on the disabled list in the hope that his headaches would clear rapidly, but his condition remained unchanged, and it seems as though he's shown only minimal improvement since then.

What that means for the remainder of the season is almost impossible to tell. Bay had lunch with Jeff Francoeur last Friday and visited with his teammates, but he's mostly stayed away from Citi Field, trying to shake the symptoms by resting at home.

Church followed the same protocol two years ago, as did David Wright, who suffered a concussion last August after he was drilled in the head by a 93-mph fastball from the Giants' Matt Cain. Church was diagnosed with a Grade 2 concussion - Grade 4 is the most severe - but the Mets never specified the grade for either Wright or Bay. Wright missed only 16 days; Bay has been out more than three weeks.

At this point, it probably makes more sense for Bay to sit out the rest of the season and make sure the symptoms are gone for good. By the end of this month, the minor-league affiliates will be finished, leaving Bay without a place to begin a rehab assignment. And because he's been on the shelf for so long, it's very unlikely that Bay could get up to speed again without playing in the minors first.

While the Mets won't say Bay is done for this year, they won't commit to his return, either. "We just have to be sensitive to how he's feeling," Ricco said. "We have to listen to what the doctors are telling us."

Farm report: Dillon Gee

While the development of Jenrry Mejia attracted most of this season's early attention, the stealth success of Dillon Gee reached another level Wednesday when the 24-year-old righthander set the modern-era strikeout record for Triple-A Buffalo.

Gee whiffed eight batters in the Bisons' 7-6 victory over visiting Rochester and rung up Jose Morales for No. 138, which snapped the previous record set by Vicente Palacios in 1990.

Gee now sits at 144 strikeouts in 145 innings and should be in line for a September call-up in less than two weeks.

Before the Mets settled on R.A. Dickey and Hisanori Takahashi as early replacements for John Maine and Oliver Perez, Gee was in the mix but never got another look because the Mets haven't needed much help in the rotation. They've used nine starting pitchers through 120 games - as compared to 11 last year, when each one made at least seven starts and seven reached double digits.