Mets demote .161-hitting Ike Davis to Triple-A

Well, no one can say the Mets didn’t give Ike Davis an opportunity to turn things around.

After sticking with Davis for 55 games of a brutal .161 batting average and .500 OPS the Mets demoted the 26-year-old first baseman back to Triple-A, where he last played in 2010.

Here’s what general manager Sandy Alderson said about the demotion, via Mike Vorkunov of the Newark Star Ledger:

I think with something like this you just have to say to yourself, this is not in his best interest. And I’ve been one of his biggest supporters. I just felt that at some point we’ve got to get him out of here. Hopefully he’ll be back in a short period of time. But he needs to go there. He needs to be able to play every day. He needs to be able to work on his swing without worrying, necessarily, about the outcome. We felt this is in his best interests.

That sounds about right. Last season Davis got off to a similarly brutal start before eventually turning things around with a big second half, but counting on that happening again would be wishful thinking. No player in baseball has more plate appearances and lower OPS than Davis this season and if he’s going to tinker with his mechanics it’s obviously better to do that in games that ultimately don’t matter a ton. And in the meantime the Mets are better off, as they might actually get some production at first base.