The turn of events is striking.

On Tuesday, the Mets and Jason Bay agreed to terms on a four-year, $66 million deal that includes a vesting option for a fifth season, according to a major league source, that could push the value of the deal above $80 million. This represented the culmination of a months-long strategy in which the Mets and general manager Omar Minaya were convinced that Bay was the best available option, worthy of lengthy, patient and ultimately expensive courtship.

That Bay should now be on the cusp of finalizing a deal that would bring him back to the Mets and Minaya is, in some respects, a commentary on his remarkable career path. For it was just seven years ago that both of those actors deemed Bay utterly expendable.

In 2002, Jason Bay was virtually irrelevant to Minaya, then the general manager of a Montreal Expos franchise that faced potential doom. The specter of contraction loomed over everything the franchise did. The sole focus for the organization and Minaya was to win at the major league level in the here and now.

Bay had come from nowhere — a 22nd-round pick out of obscure Gonzaga University who signed for $1,000. Then 23, he was coming off of his first professional season, one in which he had started in high-A ball, been demoted to low-A Clinton of the Midwest League, struggled so dramatically that he was certain that his playing career would come to an immediate end, and then rebounded to win the 2001 Midwest League batting title.

The following spring, the Expos were still a franchise, but one that operated as if the 2002 season was its last. Minaya’s sole responsibility was to win in the here and now given that, by the end of the year, every player in the organization might be subject to a dispersal draft.

So, just before opening day, Minaya and the Expos made a move to acquire reserve outfielder Lou Collier from the Mets. In return, New York was happy to receive Jimmy Serrano, a small right-hander who had posted big strikeout numbers in Double A the previous year. The Mets also acquired a relative unknown in Bay.

“[Bay] was the second piece,” former Mets GM Steve Phillips recalled during the 2009 season. “He was an older guy who played at the low-A level. I hadn’t seen him. … The reality is that Omar traded him really not knowing him. We had Triple-A projections on him when we traded for him.”

That trade afforded the first glimpse of Bay’s ability to adapt well to new circumstance, and to outperform expectations with a new franchise. The outfielder was assigned to the high-A Florida State League — a level at which he’d flopped the previous year — and hit a very solid .272/.363/.437/.800 with nine homers before a midyear promotion to Double-A Binghamton.

There, Bay again improved his numbers, delivering a .290/.383/.477/.859 line that helped change the Mets view of him to that of a future big leaguer. Still, he was hardly regarded by New York’s baseball operations department as a future centerpiece.

“I didn’t get a chance to see him play. When I got a chance to go down to Port St. Lucie, we’d moved him to Binghamton. At that time, he was a prospect as more of a fifth-outfielder guy,” said Phillips. “We thought he was an extra outfielder guy. But he just kept getting better.”

Bay’s continued improvement, however, would take place in another organization. For the second time in roughly four months, he proved expendable that summer.

As the trading deadline neared, the Mets stood on the fringes of the wild card. On July 31, they were 4.5 games behind the Dodgers in that playoff race. The team’s starting rotation was flagging, and the bullpen was struggling from overuse.

And so, the Mets dealt Bay — along with left-hander Bobby Jones and minor-leaguer Josh Reynolds — to the Padres in exchange for starter Jason Middlebrook and reliever Steve Reed. Bay’s inclusion in a deal was not something that gave Phillips any pause.

“Our guys liked [Bay], but just didn’t think he was a priority guy,” said Phillips. “We got a starter and reliever out of the deal, is what we thought. Reed pitched well [a 2.08 ERA] for us as I recall. But we were desperate for bullpen pitching depth at the major-league level at the time.

“It was a chance to get a potential back-end starter in Middlebrook and a quality reliever in Reed,” Phillips continued. “We thought we had some extra depth in the outfield. [Bay] was an extra outfielder guy.

“The lesson learned there is that Canadian players may blossom a little later than other guys do. They get more playing time and experience, they can figure it out.”

The Padres had some suspicions of that notion, thanks to the scouting report of current Red Sox vice president/international scouting Craig Shipley. Shipley was a trusted evaluator in the San Diego front office, and played a pivotal role in having the Padres make Bay the key player they received in return.

“[Shipley] was really the guy behind it. He was the guy who pushed the deal. He was one of my go-to scouts here in San Diego,” former Padres GM Kevin Towers recalled in 2008. “[The Mets] had given us a list of names. Two or three outfielders. Ship was the one who said, 'Take Bay.' … When your scout has that strong a conviction, you go with it.

“[Bay] was the key to the deal at that point in time. … Craig Shipley, I thought, has always had a good feel for hitters. He had written a real good report on Bay. He said if you get a chance to get this guy, he's a professional hitter. He'd put up very good numbers everywhere he'd been at.”

 

Ultimately, Bay’s career blossomed into that of a three-time All-Star, though one who would continue to be traded even as his stock rose. The Padres dealt him to the Pirates, the Pirates sent him to the Red Sox … and now, finally, Bay’s career is coming full circle, in a sense.

Seven years after Minaya and the Mets made independent determinations that Bay was a roster afterthought, the player who slugged 36 homers in 2009 for the Red Sox and who essentially replaced Manny Ramirez’ production in Boston became the centerpiece of New York’s offseason strategy.

He is viewed by the Mets as a difference maker, a player whose tremendous pull power can play well in CitiField, thus giving the club a middle-of-the-order power presence that was absent for much of 2009. For that, Minaya’s franchise was happy to open up the purse strings, a tacit acknowledgement of the mistakes made several years ago by a baseball industry that once undervalued a player who has emerged as one of the elite power hitters in the game.

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