The Big Story No One's Talking About

A little Player A-Player B exercise for you today. Let's start with the stats.

Player A through June 7: .295 AVG, 7 HR, 29 RBI, .350 OBP, .461 SLG, .811 OPS.

Player B through June 7: .292 AVG, 3 HR, 24 RBI, .380 OBP, .439 SLG, .818 OPS.

Any guesses as to who these two players are? Hint, they're two highly touted outfielders whose first seasons with the Mets came five years apart.

Going once, going twice...

OK, Player A is Carlos Beltran in 2005, and Player B is Jason Bay in 2010.

Just like Beltran his first season in New York, Bay is having a terrible season -- by his standards or anyone else's. Unlike Beltran that first season, he's not getting the shit booed out of him.

(An important caveat here: I can't recall exactly when, what point in the year, the Shea faithful turned on Beltran. Certainly he was getting booed by mid-August, when he collided with Mike Cameron in the outfield; his resilience in coming back from that injury silenced some of his critics. But had the booing begun by June 7? Can anyone remember?)

Bay's struggles certainly aren't lost on Mets fans. They're not lost on Gary, Keith, or Ron, nor are they lost on the media (the New York Times, of all places, has run two stories on Bay's struggles). Nevertheless, his struggles haven't been a major story the way they were with Beltran, nor have they made the fans completely turn on him.

Puzzlingly, a fan base known for its impatience (remember when Mike Piazza got booed in spite of his .350 average?) seems to be giving Bay the benefit of the doubt.

It's a curious phenomenon... is there an explanation?

To start with, there are a few critical differences between Beltran's situation and Bay's. Beltran was signed to be a 5-tool superstar; as such, his 7-year, $119mm pact dwarfs Bay's 4-year, $64mm deal.

It's an important difference. With Beltran, we were witnessing a guy who would define our franchise (or at least our payroll), for a few years shy of the next decade.

Though Bay certainly has the capacity to be a superstar player, he wasn't signed to be a savior (another difference from Piazza, as well), and he wasn't given the years to be a next-decade-defining player. The expectation for him was that he would come in and add thump to a punchless lineup. He hasn't done it, and the offense sure has looked anemic at times, but no one is really focusing on his struggles. Again... why?

There are any number of possibilities. It could be because people studying the team's offense are more focused on the ups and downs of Jose Reyes or David Wright's prodigious strikeout rate (the meteoric rise of which has been slowed recently), or, more positively, the return of his home run stroke.

It could be because the circus surrounding Oliver Perez (and also John Maine, to a lesser extent) has served as a lightning rod for the fan base's ire, distracting all from the disappointing season our shiny new left fielder is having.

It could be because people like focusing more on the will-they-or-won't-they-fire-him drama surrounding Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya.

And yes, uncomfortably, it could on some level have something to do with the fact that Bay is white and Beltran is Latino -- I want to give the fan base more credit than that, but is it within the realm of possibility that that's a factor? Yes.

Each of those phenomena are possible explanations. Ultimately though, there's one very, very important difference between Beltran and Bay that isn't captured in the statistics listed above.

For all his anemic productivity, Bay has been an excellent player at Citi Field. He's hit to a .336 average, .429 OBP, .558 SLG, and .987 OPS; he's hit his 3 home runs at Citi and driven in 19 of his 24 runs.

Fans who are frustrated with Bay simply haven't had any reason to boo him at home; no matter how bad a player's going, you don't boo him after he gets a hit or strikes a batter out (it's possible that once upon a time Robbie Alomar or Armando Benitez put the lie to that generality, but it's still a pretty reliable rule of thumb).

Beltran didn't have the same luck. His horrid first year was as bad at home as it was on the road. Fans saw him struggle in a way they haven't seen Bay struggle, and they pounced. More than anything, Bay's productivity at Citi Field, combined with the fact that he wasn't signed to be a savior in the manner of Beltran or Piazza, best explains why he hasn't been torn apart the way Beltran (or Piazza) was.

Even with his home park production, Bay is on pace for an epically bad season. He's currently on pace to hit 9 home runs and drive in 68 runs. Those would be horrible final numbers for a guy making his kind of money; they'd be horrible for almost anyone you trotted out there 162 games a year.

I used to think he'd snap out of it at some point, but now I'm not so sure. I wonder if he, like Beltran, will simply have a perplexingly bad first season as a Met, leaving us all to hope that he comes back in 2011 the player he was before 2010.

If so, he'd do well to keep raking (in a homer-less kind of way) at Citi Field. Those Mets fans can be vicious, man.

- A.F.O.M.G.