Mets Reportedly Extend Offer To Jason Bay

That other New York baseball team showed its first involvement in the MLB free agent shopping spree on Thursday when they repotedly made contract offers to both Bengie Molina and Jason Bay. The big name there is obviously the latter, a 31-year old left fielder who has hit at least 30 home runs in five of the past six seasons.

According to a source with knowledge of the situation, the Mets determined over the winter meetings that they could be players in the bidding for Bay, John Lackey and/or Matt Holliday. With the market for Bay appearing fairly static, the team felt that it could make a play for the outfielder. Now, with reports of the official bid, it appears that they are coming closer to finding out just how good its chances are of acquiring the All-Star.

Amazin' Avenue points out that while Bay has his faults, he'd certainly be an upgrade, at least for the short-term.

Jason Bay is a very good player, a fantastic hitter, a sharped-dressed man, and a poor fielder. We can speculate that the fielding might not be as bad as it seems, with the Green Monster and Fenway's other leftfield quirks, but that's small comfort. He'd be an improvement, but not the best long-term investment for a NL team. CHONE projects +21 batting runs and -4 fielding runs (I'd take that). He does two things well that the Mets aren't used to: walking and hitting homeruns.

And their analysis on Molina: "Bengie Molina is not good!" Well said.