*In our second installment of the Future Impact series: How does Jason Bay factor into the Mets future?*

(To read the first installment: "Future Impact: Robert Alan Dickey", click here)

• Born (Age): September 20, 1978 (32) (Wiki)
• Current Contract: 4 years, $66M (2010-2013), $17M club option (2014) ($3M buyout) (Cot's Baseball Contracts)
• Season Statistics: 176 PA, .303 OBP, .576 OPS, 41 TB, 44/20 K/BB (Baseball-Reference)

Jason Bay is not a young player. He's 32 years old. He'll be 33 before the season is over. However, he is going to be a part of the Mets future for at least the next 2 seasons, over which they owe him more than $36M. Normally, if a team is paying a player $36M over a 2 year span, that player is going to be one of your biggest contributors. As any Mets fan would tell you, he has been anything but that. In his two years with the Mets he's hit just 8 home runs with a .697 OPS. That's not going to cut it if he hopes to even approach earning his salary. Let's see what he's going to mean to the Mets going forward.

When Omar Minaya decided to give Jason Bay the contract he's under now, Bay was coming off one of the best seasons of his career with the Red Sox. In fact, he was one of the best hitters in baseball that season. He hit 36 home runs while posting a .921 OPS. To put that in perspective, if that was his current OPS he'd be ranked 7th in the category in the NL. That's the type of production the Mets expected when they signed Bay. That is not who Bay has been for the Mets. He really hasn't been much better than the random players they would throw out in left field before they signed him. 

So what are the chances that Bay can be productive for the Mets over the next 2+ seasons he has left on his current contract? It's incredibly hard to tell. It's not often that major league sluggers fall off a cliff quite like Bay has done. Whether it has something to do with Citi field's dimensions, or the incredible amount of money he makes now making him a bit less aggressive as far as keeping his production, I'm not sure. There are plenty of holes in any of the arguments being thrown around. Whatever it is, I don't really know what to think about Bay going forward. But I do know this. Don't expect the Mets to be able to trade him. With all of the money he's making no team is going to take him off their hands without a large portion of his contract being paid for. I don't see the Mets doing that with their current financial situation. So know this. We're stuck with him, for better or worse. 

*In our first installment of the Future Impact series: How does R.A. Dickey factor into the future of the Mets?*

• Born (Age): October 24, 1974 (36) (Wiki)
• Current Contract: 2 years, $7.8M (2011-2012), $5M Club Option (2013) ($300K buyout) (Cot's Baseball Contracts)
• Season Statistics: 75.2 IP, 4.04 ERA, 48/24 K/BB, 1.388 WHIP, 4.16 FIP (Baseball-Reference)

I thought I'd start off the series with one of the more interesting cases on the team as far as future impact is concerned. As you probably know, Dickey is old. He's 36 year's old to be exact. So what kind of future can Dickey really have in the Mets organization? Actually, he could have a lot more value going forward than some might think for a couple of reasons. 

The first reason is he's a knuckleballer. Knuckleballers tend to last longer, showing the ability to pitch into their 40s. Joe and Phil Niekro are obviously prime examples both pitching into their 40s (43 and 48 respectively). Another example would of course be current Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield. He's currently 44 years old and is still chugging along for the Red Sox. He's now the longest tenured member of the Sox sticking on the roster since the 1995 season. So there is clearly a precedent for knucklers to hang around. Granted, these are some of the best to ever let the ball flutter, but Dickey has shown in his two years with the Mets that he can be effective. Speaking of which…

In his two years with the Mets, despite a shaky start to this season, R.A. Dickey's gotten back on track and he has shown that he can be a very good pitcher without overwhelming velocity. He does have a mid-80s fastball which is rare for a knuckler to employ, if not completely unprecedented. This is really the key to his success in my opinion. His uniqueness as a pitcher really throws off opposing hitters. Not only does he get a strong differentiation between the speed and movement of his pitches. But unless you've seen him a few times as a batter, it's incredibly difficult to compete with him given the fact that there aren't any other pitchers like him in the majors right now. Batters just aren't used to facing a pitcher like Dickey.

So what does all of this mean for Dickey and the Mets going forward? It means that maybe you should get used to seeing Dickey in a Mets uniform, because there's a possibility that he's going to stick around for awhile. He's under contract for next season with a club option for 2013. He'll be 40 years old in the 2015 season. Anyone want to bet against the fact that he's still a Met by then? I don't…

It seems like I just watched this same Broadway musical 1 year ago. 

Remember last season when the Mets started Mike Jacobs at first base, and batting cleanup? Remember how everyone was fuming that Ike Davis didn't make the opening day roster and start at first base, which we all knew he deserved? 

I feel like it's all happening again in 2011. Instead of giving the 2B job to Justin "Red Rocket" Turner, who clearly was the top performer in Spring Training, we went to a decision to merely protect a player we acquired specifically to compete at that spot. It's just a story that keeps repeating itself each year, and I expect the same thing to happen next year. While a lot of us hoped Nick Evans would make the roster, he was bumped for Willie Harris, who we signed in the off season. Rather than give the ball to Dillon Gee as our #5 pitcher, a roster spot he clearly earned in Spring Training, we gave it to two pitchers with injury-riddled careers — and now one of them, Chris Young, is done for the year. 

Sometimes I really question our organization's ability to put the right players on the field. They played around too much with Fernando Martinez, and are doing it again by wasting the 22-year old's talent on our bench, and they continuously burn out the first month of the season trying to preserve the untalented players they acquired in the off season. Maybe they are trying to prove that they were right to acquire these players, but it seems to always result in making a big roster change. That change has happened, and for the better. Dillon Gee has been very good for us, coming out of Triple-A Buffalo and making 8 appearances, 5 starts. During his time here he has a 3-0 record with a 3.44 ERA and a 1.265 WHIP. While he is allowing roughly the same amount of walks and hits per inning pitched as last year, his strikeout ratio has gone up already. Last year he struck out 4.6 batters per 9 innings, this year he has 6.6 per 9 innings. 

Justin Turner is finally getting the starting time he deserves, and I have to admit I think he should remain in the lineup on a daily-basis, at second base, when Ike Davis returns to the lineup. He has just been too good to throw back on the bench or play in a platoon situation. Turner simply has this confidence that can't be taken away, and if he continues to hit even half as well as he has the last 10 days then I want him in my lineup every day. The kid's got 55 at bats, 1 home run, .364 AVG, 14 RBIs & 7 doubles already. 

I just hope the Mets stop making the same mistakes in April. They seem to correct them come May, but it's just becoming an old act at this point. All the fans knew who belonged and didn't belong here on Opening Day, and yet management still screwed up. Granted, they can't be perfect — but sometimes their mistakes are just silly. With Emaus and Young, they were silly. 

The Mets seem to be in a bit of an awkward situation at this point in the season. They're currently 14-18 in the standings, good for last place in the NL East, a game back of the Washington Nationals. They've had some injuries here and there, but nothing absolutely unbearable like we've seen in the past. The general diagnosis at this point is that the Mets have talent, but they haven't gotten the consistent starting pitching they need in order to be successful. As a result, rumors have begun to fly about almost every major part of the major league roster. That includes Carlos Beltran, Francisco Rodriguez, Johan Santana, and even David Wright and, of course, Jose Reyes. The latter two guys seem to hold the most value on the market, and for good reason. I find it hard to believe David Wright will be traded, mostly because the status of his contract. The Mets hold control over him for another 2 seasons, so there is still a good chance to build a good team around him while he's still under his current contract. The story is different for Jose Reyes.

Reyes is going to be a free agent at season's end barring an unlikely extension. The question for Reyes is, will the season expire with him manning shortstop for the Mets, or another major league club? Many people believe there will come a point where the Mets will have no choice but to trade him. With the way the new front office operates, most people don't think Reyes will get an offer from the Mets similar to the long term contract he may draw on the open market, ballooning to a value as high as the one Carl Crawford received from the Boston Red Sox, and that's a fair point. But consider this. At this juncture in the 2011 season, according to FanGraphs, Reyes has been the 7th most valuable player in all of baseball, 1st among shortstops (a list including Mets-slayer Troy Tulowitzki) by a fairly large margin considering we're only about 5 weeks into the season. He has been absolutely unreal to be quite honest. He's on pace to hit about 15 triples in addition to over 50 doubles. In case you were wondering, both those totals would have led the major leagues in 2010. The triples total would've also led in 2009. Not in 2008 however, since Jose Reyes himself hit 19 that year. The long and short of it is this. Jose Reyes is really freaking good.

Quite frankly, with all due respect to Ike Davis, Jose Reyes has been the bright spot on the Mets roster so far this season. When healthy, his combination of tangible production and overall excitement is something no other baseball player on the planet earth can match. And no, I don't think I'm exaggerating. Back in 2006, when he was healthy, hitting his stride as a baseball player, and the Mets as a team were having their most successful season of the decade while coming inches away from the franchise's 5th pennant, Reyes was widely considered the most exciting player in all of baseball. While he isn't playing for that same team, right now, he's playing like that same Jose Reyes. He may not put up the same totals for various reasons (team is more conservative about stealing bases/team behind him isn't as good so he won't score the same amount of runs or get the same number of plate appearances) but the player we're watching now is every bit as good as that player from 2006. Why on earth would any team be stupid enough to trade a guy like this way? He's a completely unique player who can never be replaced. Not really. 

No player is without their question marks going forward, Jose Reyes is included. It's one of the reasons guys like Mets GM Sandy Alderson would want to refrain from doling out long term contracts in general, not just to players like Reyes. And when I say players like Reyes, I mean players with a history of injury problems and a guy who relies heavily on his speed to produce as a major league baseball player, and I think both concerns are fair. Let's start with the injury history. At least for now, Reyes is healthy. We don't know if the injuries will crop up again, but I will say this. I think that his injuries have been grossly mishandled in the past by people like Omar Minaya. In 2009 when Reyes missed 126 games, he should've immediately been placed on the disabled list when the injury first cropped up. However, he was kept around for several weeks while the Mets hoped he'd be able to get better and stay off the DL. The Mets current regime has shown very emphatically that when a player on their roster shows the smallest signs of injury that they will be placed on the DL immediately in order to reduce the risk of any further injury. I think this philosophy will work wonders for Reyes going forward should he remain with the franchise. And as far as him aging badly goes, does anyone really think he'd be absolutely nothing without his speed? Is he not a smart baseball player with a fantastic attitude? He makes good contact at the plate and he's learning to be more patient and draw walks. He'd also still be an above average major league shortstop. In no way am I saying he's going to be the same player at 35 as he will be at 28 or 29, but he'll still be a good major leaguer. And even paying him an average of $18+ million a season during a contract, he'd still offer a surplus in value in the early years of the contract that could make up for his decreasing value later ala Carlos Beltran (though so far this season Beltran's been very good). 

The real question for Sandy Alderson is this. Is it worth giving Jose Reyes the long term contract? Like I said before, Reyes could warrant a contract as large as the one Carl Crawford received from the Red Sox, a 7-year, $126 million contract. Now whether or not the Wilpons could actually sign Reyes to this contract could put a damper on this whole discussion. I believe they'll be able to due to the large sum of money coming off the books this winter in addition to the new minority ownership coming into play shortly. So assuming Alderson has the means to do so, would he pull the trigger? The Mets GM is not one to make gut decisions on such things. He's going to go to the data he has and make a decision based on that. He'll talk to all of his scouts, consult all of his statisticians and doctors at his disposal and make an educated decision. When it comes down to it, the question Alderson will answer is this, just like he probably does with every other player he decides to sign or not. Will Reyes add more value to the team over the course of that contract than what the Mets are going to be paying him in dollars and cents? If that answer is yes, the Mets will hang on to him. We've heard Alderson say in the past he knows the fans love homegrown talent and it is a factor he considers. Why would he not try to keep one of the best around at his position if he's worth it and homegrown? Spoiler alert: he WOULD keep him. 

I have no doubt that if the time comes and Jose Reyes is forced to put on an Angels, Reds, or Giants uniform, it's going to be a bleak day in Mets history. I just hope it never does. 

Yesterday the Mets got some upsetting news that their top pitching prospect, Jenrry Mejia, had torn his MCL in his right elbow.

Mejia went for an MRI and one doctor said that he will need surgery to repair the tear. Mejia will go for a second opinion, but that doctor will most likely tell him the same thing.

With an injury like this Tommy John Surgery is recommended to fix it, and it will most likely be the option that Mejia chooses. In any event, Mejia's 2011 season is over.

Mejia was off to a great start in Triple-A Buffalo. The 21-year old started five games, pitching 28.1 innings with an 1-2 record, a 2.86 ERA, with 21 strike outs, and 14 walks.

It takes about a year to recover from Tommy John, so Mejia should be able to pitch in the 2012, but I doubt it will be a major league level.

It looked like Mejia was going to pitch a full season as a starter down in Triple-A and then start the 2012 season in the Mets rotation. Now, it appears highly unlikely that he will in 2012, and it might not be until 2013 that Mejia will be in the rotation.

I guess the good news here is that Mejia is still young, so coming back from this surgery won't be the hardest thing in the world. The problem with this type of surgery is that it can greatly change who you are as a pitcher. Some players get Tommy John and are never the same when they come back from it. In recent years, the surgery has had higher success rates, with pitchers coming back at the same level they were before the surgery, sometimes even better.

Personally I don't think this injury will jeopardize Mejia's career, but Mets fans are going to have to high a bit longer to see their best pitching prospect take the mound at Citi Field.

Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen told the Daily News that:

"Mejia works really hard to throw the baseball, and I worry about the volume of pitches during the course of a year. I think you find a lot of torque on your elbow and your shoulder."