The New York Mets announced today that they have traded first-baseman Ike Davis to the Pittsburgh Pirates for minor-league righty pitcher Zack Thornton and a player to be named later. The question “if” Ike would be moved was an easy one. The question of “when” was the tougher part to predict.
It’s no secret that the Davis fell out-of-favor with Mets’ management, and Met’s fans can only think: what could have been?
The 27-year-old burst onto the MLB scene in 2012 where he hit a career high 32 home-runs, according to href= http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/davisik02.shtml >Baseball Reference. He drove in 90 runs, played a terrific first-base, and seemed to be locked into the Mets first-base plans for a very long time. This, all after starting the 2012 season very slow.
In 2013 however, the productivity disappeared and he once again started the season slow. He battled through injuries and could never get it going, only totaling nine-home-runs while hitting .209.
If the decline in productivity was not enough, a few Davis’ incidents sealed his fate, including one run-in with New York Post reporter Mike Puma. This past February, Puma ran a story about Ike “concealing” an oblique-injury during the 2013 season. Davis was so furious with the story that he exploded in anger in the locker room, disputing the story.
"It shouldn't have been a story, anyway, because that's what we talked about before you wrote it, was we shouldn't write this because it doesn't matter. But that was nowhere in the article. It's just an overblown thing,” Davis told Mike Puma of the New York Post, according to href= http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/ike-davis-irate-about-report-that-injury-caused-struggles-1.7186844 > Marc Carig of Newsday.
For a guy with such a great personality (or seemingly so), it’s been very strange to see the hostile interaction between him and the New York media through these years. The biggest mistake a New York professional athlete can make is to show your frustration, and Ike has not “concealed” that.
The feeling towards this guy has been great potential, but somewhere else. It’s been a known fact that the Mets have been shopping the first-baseman, and hopefully he does grab onto that fresh-start in Pittsburgh.