If you only read one article about Jason Bay, ever, let it be this one, by Mark Herrmann in Newsday. And if you can’t use your one free Newsday article per day or figure out a way around Newsday’s paywall to read this, I feel for you. It’s so amazing and Canadian.

Herrmann catches up with former Islander Ray Ferraro, who used to hang out with Bay’s mother’s sister in tiny Trail, British Columbia. Check it out:

Folks in Trail realize the value of earning your way. It is an earnest hardscrabble village less than 10 miles north of the U.S. border. People think nothing of working seven days a week in a family owned cement plant, as Ferraro’s father did. Or working at Teck Cominco, a zinc smelting firm that also handled gold mining. That is where Bay’s father Dave worked.

Readers of this blog know I usually have little patience for praise lavished upon players for their “blue-collar” mentalities, which is exactly what this piece does for Bay.

But what separates Bay from Alex Cora is the actual ability to play baseball, so that’s good, plus — and this must not be understated — once the verb “smelting” comes in to play, all bets are off. His father is a zinc smelter? That’s badass.

Jason Bay: Officially a blue-collar, badass, hockey-loving Canadian who’d probably be smelting zinc if he wasn’t playing Major League Baseball.

I’ve already said my piece about Daniel Murphy this offseason, but I did that — I think — before his list of most similar batters through Age 24 on baseball-reference came out. So I figured I’d take a look at those and consider Murph’s future once more.

With some of these guys, it’s hard to tell exactly why baseball-reference deemed them reasonable comps — especially 1880s stud Harry Stovey. But I am not here to doubt baseball-reference.

Lee May — the top comp — had a season pretty similar to Murphy’s as a 24-year-old in 1967, then busted out to hit 162 home runs and post a 130 OPS+ over the next five seasons. Never did walk much, but I imagine Mets fans would sign up pretty quickly for that type of production from Murphy.

Bob Chance tallied 106 more at-bats in his career. Adam Lind broke out with 35 home runs for the Blue Jays as a 25-year-old last year. Stovey retired as the all-time leader in homers and stolen bases in 1893. Jeffrey Hammonds had a couple of nice seasons, but could never stay healthy for a full one. Norm Siebern took a step back at age 25 then earned three All-Star nods in the early 1960s.

Conor Jackson followed his decent but unspectacular Age-24 season with similar ones at 25 and 26 before falling victim to valley fever in 2009. Jack Fournier spent the rest of his career mashing in one league or another. Reid Nichols most decidedly did not.

What do these men have in common other than presence on Murph’s most similar list? Not much. Through roughly 600-700 plate appearances through age 24, they had all managed to not embarrass themselves as Major Leaguers, and that’s really it. Stovey, Fournier, and to a lesser extent Siebern and Ross had distinguished themselves by that age, and so probably are not the best comps for Murphy.

As for the rest? Well, no one could tell what the future held for them when they were only 24. And so it is for Murphy. Sure, May and Lind had better histories of Minor League production, but Murphy’s got that businesslike persona and disciplined approach everyone seems to like so much.

Based on the baseball-reference comps alone, eliminating the four guys that don’t seem right, I’d say there’s a 33 percent chance Murphy becomes a legitimate slugger, a 33 percent chance he really contributes anything, a 16.67 percent chance he becomes a decent but injury prone player, and a 16.67 percent chance he has two more decent seasons then succumbs to valley fever.

Of course, it doesn’t really work like that. The point is that, while it might seem easy to judge a player on his first 707 plate appearances, it’s just not.

I’m not certain Murphy is the answer moving forward for the Mets at first base, but since he’s young, inexpensive, and appears able with the glove, he should be given the chance to play himself out of the position in 2010. A right-handed hitting complement like Ryan Garko would be a nice acquisition, but Murph is too young to be given up on entirely.

Every time I read an update on the Mets’ pursuit of Bengie Molina, I think about the following scene from the best television show of all-time:

The latest report — the one linked above — says the Mets are willing to give Molina a one-year deal with a vesting option, but Molina is holding fast in his demand for three years. Obviously.

I spend a lot of time making fun of Molina in this space because he’s incredibly slow and he’s not fun to watch and he’s an old, overweight catcher, but I don’t actually think a one-year deal for the man would be the worst thing in the world. He’ll be a catcher, and he’ll hit a few home runs, and he won’t get on base enough to clog up the basepaths.

That would be, I suppose, the baseball equivalent of the end of the scene linked above, which unfortunately is not included in the clip — GOB and Buster plow into each other in slow motion. It is silly, but ultimately harmless.

The vesting option is troubling, and it seems as though vesting options may be becoming Omar Minaya’s new folly of choice, but without the details it would be hard to analyze.

Going past one guaranteed year, though, for a 35-year-old catcher who is pretty obviously not in prime physical condition, doesn’t strike me as a good idea. Not when Josh Thole is readying himself in Triple-A, or when both Joe Mauer and Victor Martinez could be free agents next offseason, or when the catcher in question isn’t that good to begin with.

Defenders of the deal point to Molina’s ability to handle pitching staffs. Always. And that’s nice. All I can say to counter that is that people said the exact same thing about Brian Schneider two years ago, only to have Dan Warthen throw Schneider under the bus for the same quality this season.

Handling a pitching staff, I would guess, is the type of thing to which there is actual value, but for which a catcher’s ability varies greatly by situation and pitcher and is impossible to completely define. Maybe Brian Schneider really was great for the Nationals’ young pitchers in 2007, and heck, maybe he was great for Mike Pelfrey in 2008, but for some reason his Brian Schneider Staff-Handling Magic Dust was not as effective on John Maine and Oliver Perez. Maybe Bengie Molina’s will be, or maybe it won’t be, or maybe it’s nonsense. Since it’s not something I imagine could ever be properly evaluated, it’s not something I would ever recommend paying for.

I imagine if the Mets sign Molina, he proves to be a nice guy, and Perez gets off to a nice start, you’ll hear a ton of talk about Molina’s positive influence on Ollie. Then, when Perez inevitably tanks, no one will say anything about how Molina has stopped being able to handle him. That’s how these things work.

Again, that’s not to say they’re not there. They are, I’m sure. But we never really know to what extent, and so mostly they just make for good stories.

Anyway, none of that will matter until someone chickens out and gives in to the other’s demands or they agree on a compromise. The Mets have more leverage as long as Miguel Olivo and Rod Barajas are still available, but Molina can lord over the Mets his indisputable Bengie Molina-dom, which they apparently value.

I promised hdarvick I’d post something about Nelson Figueroa yesterday and failed, but here’s something.

Conventional wisdom says that Nelson Figueroa should not be allowed to pitch more than a certain limited number of innings in any given Major League stint before he’s exposed and big-league hitters figure out his stuff, but I’ve never been much one for conventional wisdom.

Figueroa pitched well for the Mets down the stretch last season, long after the wheels had already come off for the rest of the team, and exceptionally well in Buffalo. It’s difficult to put too much stock in the 70 1/3 innings he totaled for the big-league club in 2009 because of the sample size, but they can’t be entirely discounted either. He finished with a perfectly average 100 ERA+ and a reasonable 2.46 K/BB ratio, highlighting his season with the Mets’ only shutout at Citi Field.

Figueroa has a long history of very good Triple-A stats, but he did pitch better than usual at both that level and the Majors last year, and it’s difficult to decipher why. There was probably some luck involved, since Figueroa significantly lowered his home run per flyball rate and batting average on balls in play — figures that usually normalize in time — in 2009.

Judging from Fangraphs, using a limited sample, it appears Figueroa threw his slider a bit harder, more frequently and more effectively last season than he did in 2008.

I’m not certain if that’s the whim of small sample size or the sign of a real adjustment. Figueroa is a crafty guy, and maybe he made some change to his grip or delivery that allowed him to pitch to more weak contact.

I don’t think the Mets or most of their fans would be thrilled to see Figueroa penciled into the rotation for 2010, probably because he’s unspectacular, or because he’ll be 36 in May, or because of that old conventional wisdom.

But Figueroa’s great value is in his durability. As he told me back in 2008, he has thrown 153-pitch games and 280-inning years. I’m unclear on his contract status, but he’s still listed on the 40-man roster on Mets.com, and good. He should compete for a long relief role in Spring Training and is a great option to have around for spot starts for when someone in the rotation inevitably goes down.

Rob Neyer’s usually spot-on, but I think he misses the mark a bit in his remarks on Jeff Passan’s recent rip-job of the Mets’ front office. Neyer and Passan agree that the Jason Bay signing, to paraphrase Neyer’s headline “continues a disturbing pattern.”

If you read this site or my columns with any regularity, you know that I’m the first to criticize Minaya when he deserves it. In fact, I actually touched on a lot of the same themes Passan did in this column in August.

I’m certainly not out to excuse the club for refusing to spend above slot on draft picks. I still can’t, for the life of me, figure out what that’s about, unless it’s playing nice with the league in an effort to secure an All-Star Game at Citi Field.

But throwing money at Jason Bay, while perhaps shortsighted given the length of the deal, does not really do anything to hurt the Mets’ farm system. In fact, if there’s a year the Mets should be signing a Type A free agent, it’s this one, when their first-round draft pick is protected.

And citing Rubin’s work to rate the Mets’ farm system, as Neyer does, well, I don’t know. I’m skeptical. Organizational winning percentages are nice, I guess, but I don’t imagine they matter much, since it’s the performance of the prospects that matters more than the performance of the organizational guys who fill out most Minor League rosters.

The Mets’ Minor League rosters certainly lack depth. And they haven’t, under Minaya, produced a whole lot of top-flight Major League talent. Some warm bodies, for sure, but no All-Stars. That’s all true, and it’s certainly not good.

But for the first time in recent memory, the Mets now actually have a crop of intriguing prospects set for the higher levels of their farm system. Fernando Martinez, Ike Davis, Jonathon Niese and Josh Thole should all start the season in Triple-A. Brad Holt, Jenrry Mejia, Reese Havens and Kirk Nieuwenhuis should all start at Double-A Binghamton.

Granted, as a Mets fan, I’m probably overvaluing some of these guys. But all are still quite young and have performed well in the Minors, and so appear to have at least decent shots at becoming decent Major Leaguers.

And thus far this offseason, coming off an embarrassing 2009 campaign, Minaya has resisted the urge to trade any of them for a proven starting pitcher or an everyday catcher or a power-hitting first basemen.

I’d say, given the Mets’ history of quick fixes, that actually bucks the disturbing pattern.

Would I have signed Jason Bay to a four-year, $66 million deal with a vesting option? Probably not. Do I think he’ll help the Mets? Almost certainly. Would I choose him over Matt Holliday? Definitely not. Do I think his acquisition dooms them forever? Not at all.

The deal will probably hamstring the Mets financially down the road, especially since, in Minaya’s administration, they’ve had a whole, whole lot of problems grasping the concept of sunk cost.

But they have the advantage of playing in a huge market, so they can take one on the chin and recover if they can find cost-effective contributors elsewhere. And if they let their prospects develop into Major Leaguers, they’ll be doing just that.

Plus he’ll hit. It’s just not that disturbing.

With rumors swirling about the Mets’ pursuit of free-agent catcher Bengie Molina, I thought I’d touch base with my friend Dailey, a San Francisco Giants fan, for a very formal and professional interview. Dailey has a first name, I believe, but I am not entirely sure what it is, so I am crediting him here as “Dailey McDailey.” The interview follows:

TedQuarters: yo can I interview you?

Dailey McDailey: OK, what do I have to do?

TQ: answer my questions about Bengie Molina
via IM

DM: OK
His official nickname is Big Money, but I call him Snoopy Gut

TQ: OK, first off, are you, in fact, a San Francisco Giants fan?

DM: Yes
It would not be easy to kill me

TQ: is that so?

DM: Die Hardest
not even with a vengeance

TQ: wow, that’s for real
tell me about Bengie Molina

DM: He’s not good
He doesn’t make me want to not watch baseball any more (like, say, Barry Zito)
but he has an annoying proficiency at being put out.

TQ:: can you identify anything that he does well?

DM: I assume you mean on the field, so eating doesn’t count

TQ: yes, on the field

DM: I can identify things with which he’s CREDITED as doing well: call games, manage a staff, hit clutch home runs

TQ: are you certain that he does any of those things well?

DM: Not really. I will go out on a limb and say he does them all better than A.J. Pierzynski

TQ: Are you at all concerned that Tim Lincecum will completely suck next year when he’s pitching to Buster Posey or Sandoval or whoever?

DM: The only thing Tim Lincecum is going to suck is the end of a [tobacco] pipe.

TQ: Does Molina get punched in the face as well as A.J. Pierzynski?

DM: Probably better. Lots of face flesh to take the blow.

TQ: Who would you bet on in a footrace, Bengie Molina or continental drift?

DM: Bengie, because one of his footfalls would most likely push the continent backwards.

TQ: why do you call him Snoopy Gut?

DM: You know how snoopy has two skinny little legs and then a spherical body that hangs over them? That’s exactly what Bengie Molina looks like in his uniform.

TQ: That’s a good point
why do others call him Big Money?
and is that an alarming prophecy for Mets fans?

DM: Big because he is large, and Money because that is slang for clutch
Knowing the Mets, yes

TQ: BM are also his initials, you know

DM: Wow. That had escaped me.

TQ: I’ve got amazing powers of observation
As a Giants fan — and this part is important — not named Brian Sabean, would you recommend signing Bengie Molina to a multi-year free-agent contract?

DM: Absolutely not. Under no circumstances. No.

TQ:: Why not?
I thought he’s money
and big
and has a snoopy gut

DM: All these things are true. My #1 Bengie Molina memory from 2009 is him hitting a game tying home run in the 8th or 9th and waddling his large self around the bases.
However…
72% of the time he is asked to not make an out, he makes an out. And that is how you lose baseball games.

TQ: I’ve heard that
but he’s a great staff handler
and he’s so good with young pitchers, right?

DM: So they say, but can it be proven that the Giants’ stable of young, awesome, stallion-like arms would not thrive under the slimmer, less-money, more-gooder-hitting tutelage of a league average catcher? I say no.

TQ: Your logic befuddles me.

‘Tis the season for stupid headline puns. Mike Francesa broke news that the Mets agreed to a deal with Jason Bay yesterday, and now everyone’s weighing in.

I’d still really like to reserve judgment until we know more, though. Specifically: the terms of the deal. By all accounts, it’s worth about four years and in the neighborhood of $66 million. By some accounts, it’s backloaded. By most accounts, it’s got a vesting option for a fifth year that will bring it to about $80 million.

That’s the part I’m curious about, and I expect in the coming days we’ll get a much clearer picture as to exactly what that vesting options means. If it’s as easy as Joel Sherman suggests, then I’m not sure why the Daily News is showering Omar Minaya with praise for holding his ground on the four-year deal when that’s, well, not what that is.

I suspect part of the motivation for including the vesting option is just that — maintaining the perception of holding firm while actually compromising with the player — and so good for Minaya if his intention was to convince the Daily News that he was strong-willed.

If his intention was to build the best possible club for the years beyond 2010, though, I’m not so sure the vesting fifth year was the best idea. Nor is a backloaded contract, if that’s the case.

But I’m getting ahead of myself; I’ll whine about the terms of the contract when I know the terms of the contract.

What I know for certain is that Jason Bay is a terrific hitter. He was a terrific hitter in Pittsburgh, and he was a terrific hitter in Boston, and he will likely continue being a terrific hitter in Queens. He mashed pitching in the uber-competitive AL East and returning to the NL should be a relative cakewalk for him.

Sure, he was aided a bit by Fenway’s friendly confines and short left-field wall. But there’s evidence that Citi Field plays well for right-handed pull hitters, and the Mets put out word (through Francesa) that they had data that Bay’s power would play better at their home park than would that of fellow free agent Matt Holliday.

They had me at “data.”

He’s patient, befitting his reportedly quiet professional demeanor. In fact, as I Tweeted yesterday, Bay walked 20 more times last year than Daniel Murphy, Bengie Molina and Jeff Francoeur combined.

He does strike out a bunch, and he’s not a great defender. It’s tough to tell to what extent, since it’s tough to evaluate defense in general and especially tough to judge defense in Fenway Park, as Sam pointed out in the Amazin’ Avenue post I linked earlier. And at 31 and with knee trouble in his past, he’s probably not getting any better in the outfield.

The good news is the Mets have Carlos Beltran, and when he was healthy in 2008 and the Mets began haphazardly trotting out infielders with no outfield experience into their outfield corners, Beltran responded by making an obscene number of out-of-zone plays, clearly deciding that the chumps alongside him had no business catching fly balls when he could do it so much better.

It’s no safe bet Beltran will again be the defender he was in 2008, nor am I certain that his ability in center allows the Mets to sacrifice defense in left, but the combination of a rangy Beltran and a plodding Bay should at least inspire some aesthetically awesome running grabs from the graceful center fielder.

So that’s cool.

Wait, how did this post about Jason Bay become about Carlos Beltran?

Oh, because Carlos Beltran is awesome, that’s why. And now he has Jason Bay in the lineup to drive him in sometimes. So that’s cool, too.

I’ve already said my piece on Mike Pelfrey and the illusory nature of his supposed regression in 2009, but Howard Megdal passed out an interesting factoid via email that I figured I’d, in turn, pass along:

One of the actual knocks against Pelfrey from 2009 could be that his walk rate ticked up a tiny bit, from 2.87 BB/9 in 2008 to 3.22 BB/9 in 2009. Not a huge change and maybe not even a significant one, but not a good trend, for sure.

But as someone Howard corresponds with named Alan Topal (must give proper credit here on the Internet) points out, Pelfrey intentionally walked eight guys in 2009 after intentionally walking only one in 2008.

So Pelfrey’s unintentional walk rate held fast at 2/83 BB/9.

So that’s cool.

As you may have heard by now, Mike Francesa reported today that the Mets will announce after the weekend that they’ve agreed to terms with Jason Bay.

Francesa did not state the terms, and so I’ll reserve judgment on the deal until we find out what they are. If they’re reasonable, then good. If they’re not, then not good.

One hilarious aspect about signing a player whose last name is also a noun is it means great things for the local tabloids. Flushing Bay will obviously be a popular headline in the coming years, but I’m hoping the Post editors will have some clever tricks up their sleeves.

In addition, Bay also rhymes with tons of stuff, so they have that to play with too. It’s all a rich tapestry. Between him and David Wright, it gives local newspapermen their best combination of headline-fodder players since the invaluable Jae Seo-Ty Wigginton duo graced the 2003 and 2004 clubs.

My favorite from that era, I should mention, came after Seo pitched a gem with the Mets firmly out of the race one year — I think 2003, because I’m pretty certain I was working in the deli at the time — and the post ran “SEO WHAT?” Classic.