That’s nothing when you consider Bay’s quagmire of a contract, which still has another guaranteed $35 million left over the next two seasons and a vesting option for 2014 worth $17 million. Not the kind of money anyone wants to be paying a .234 hitter that Terry Collins is now considering to bench in favor of Scott Hairston.

Remember when Bay appeared to have his season turned around? Well, he’s back in a 3-for-30 skid since his two-homer night July 5 at Dodger Stadium , and yes, those are singles. His problems only deepened yesterday, when Bay went 0-for-4 and stranded five in the Mets’ 8-5 loss to the Phillies.

– David Lennon, Newsday.

Yeah, it turns out we were kidding ourselves when we were squinting hard at Jason Bay and seeing how he might be coming out of the funk he’s been in since he signed with the Mets before last season. This is brutal. He still manages to get on base every now and then, and the Mets can carry his wholesale lack of power when they’ve got Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes in the lineup. But in these past few games with the club reduced to a star-free lineup full of pesky singles hitters, Bay’s inadequacies are more obvious.

Both David Wright and Jose Reyes appear set to return to the lineup later this week. With Ike Davis still out, it seems likely the Mets will shift Daniel Murphy to first base and use one of Justin Turner and Ruben Tejada at second base. That leaves Lucas Duda out of the mix.

But though Duda’s first 113 plate appearances this season haven’t been much to speak of, he’s a 25-year-old lefty hitter with a recent history of crushing Triple-A pitching, and a player that might contribute to the Mets in the future. If Bay were going right, he should be starting every day in the Mets’ outfield and the middle of their order; there’s still a lot more evidence that Jason Bay can be a capable Major League hitter than there is that Lucas Duda can.

As it is though, a case could be made that Duda should get playing time in left against right-handed pitching, against which Bay has been pretty much useless. Granted, the Mets aren’t paying Bay $16 million to occupy the short half of a platoon, but then that money is spent whether Bay provides any return on it or not, and the Mets might as well get about winning games the best way they can figure. The Mets’ priority should still be getting Bay on track, but since it doesn’t look like the current approach is working, they might as well try one that doesn’t involve him playing every day.

I guess I’m just sick of watching him ground out every damn time.

What better, easier way to recap the first half of the Mets’ season than to link to a bunch of stuff I’ve already written about the first half of the Mets’ season? And yeah, maybe you’ve already read some of this stuff, but maybe you’re new to this site. Or maybe you’re really bored and want to look back on what has been an interesting 91-game span of baseball and baseball-related stuff via this silly filter.

In any case, I’ve got a meeting and a bunch of stuff to attend to about the office, so here’s a trip down recent memory lane. I picked the posts based partly on popularity, partly on relevance, and partly on what would make me look smart now:

April 1: Blame Mighty Casey (season preview)
April 3: Are the Mets the best team ever?
April 12: Commence hand-wringing
April 18: Absolutely nothing
April 21: What [R.A. Dickey] said
May 2: Hey, baseball
May 11: Why we can’t have nice things: Josh Thole quits Twitter
May 13: The redemptive beauty of Carlos Beltran
May 18: No such thing
May 23: Wilpon’s curveball
June 2: Did anyone see that awesome baseball game?
June 8: The Kid
June 15: What we carry
June 28: The 2011 Mets: Not the worst team ever
June 30: Points at Jonah Hill
July 5: Following up
July 8: Curtain call

As you know by now, the Mets traded Francisco Rodriguez and cash to the Brewers for two players to be named later. We don’t know which players yet, so it’s impossible to fully assess the trade. There has been some talk of how the Brewers gutted their system in trades in the past offseason — and that’s true — but they’ve still got guys playing games in the Minor Leagues. Obviously there’s a pretty broad range of quality there. So let’s hang tight on that one.

The good news is the deal guarantees Rodriguez’s ridiculous $17.5 million option for 2012 will not vest. This assures the Mets’ front office some much-needed financial flexibility this offseason.

Rodriguez did not pitch terribly for the Mets.  In 168 innings, he posted a 130 ERA+ and struck out more than a batter an inning. He allowed a lot of baserunners, of course, and he blew some saves and punched a man in the family room. It wasn’t always good. But no closer besides Mariano Rivera is Mariano Rivera. The Mets got what they overpaid for.

But if the first three years of Rodriguez’s pricey contract were excusable given the Mets’ position after the 2008 season, it was the fourth-year option that ushered the closer out of town.

Terry Collins and the 2011 Mets probably could have managed it better, keeping him out of  more three-run wins and six-run losses to suppress that games-finished total. But for whatever reason, they didn’t. With 34 games finished and 71 left to play, Rodriguez was careening toward that option, necessitating a deal.

Essentially, the Mets loaded up the bases in the ninth in a tight game. They worked their way out of it and now we are celebrating on the mound, perhaps a bit too brazenly.

Meh, maybe the metaphor isn’t perfect. If you listened to the podcast a couple weeks ago, you heard me insist that Alderson had something up his sleeve, and there was no chance the Mets would let that option vest. So maybe the most innocent explanation here is the correct one: The Mets were using Rodriguez as best they could to help them win as many games as possible before moving him, knowing all along they’d be able to move him.

As for what happens now: Despite the LOLtastic “news” treatment of the trade the New York Post, it is hardly the death knell for the Mets’ chances of contention in 2011. That’s still a longshot, but it’s only made slightly longer by the absence of Rodriguez. Hanging onto a guy who could financially cripple the team in the future in the name of a 46-45 team that’s 7.5 games back of the Wild Card would be downright moronic, I am sorry to say.

Bobby Parnell probably takes over as closer. In a very small sample in 2011, Parnell has been extremely similar to or slightly better than Rodriguez in just about every category.