Jason Bay Waves Goodbye

Jason Bay and the New York Mets have agreed to part amicably. Bay issued a statement about still having something to give to the game (i.e. a walking example of “replacement level outfielder” (amirite?)). MLBTR has an excerpt from the statement here.

Shuffle, Kick, Hum a Tune…

We’ve one-upped them: Thanks to the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team — which, powered by the MLB Patriot Act, is able to climb into homes through any available orifice (and should no orifice be readily available, it shall make one) and snatch shit off of desks, from under beds, out of cradles, &c., in the name of news — we have the original draft of Bay’s statement. (If you’re curious, it was printed on a dot-matrix printer and stained with what appears to be grape soda.) Here it is, then, in its entirety:

Fans, administrators, whatever the hell Mr. Met is:

I’ve played a full career. It’s actually been pretty bitchin’. But now, regrettably, that career has been taken away — at least as far as concerns the New York Mets and the grand burough of Queens. In my humble opinion, you are all queens, New York. And kings. And some of you are both, New York. Some of you are both. [Sniff.]

I’d like to use this occasion to remember the positives of my time with this organization — there is but one: I made a lot of money, and — just checked my contract, which I keep in my nightstand drawer next to various lotions — there’s more coming to me. So please do pay me all of my monies because you know they’re mine.

Missing you already, JB.

Jason Bay got paid — will get paid. One suspects that contracts like the one he signed with the Mets a couple years ago will become fewer and farther between, and that sad stories like this will go the way of the buffalo. But one never knows, does one? One never knows…

Unless one is Nate Silver. Nate Silver knows.