Morse up, Bay gone

Michael Morse will rejoin the Mariners for their road trip to Boston and Baltimore, according to multiple sources. The corresponding move will be a major league DFA, and Jason Bay is the man getting the axe. Jon Morosi was the first to report the news on Twitter.

Morse had been rehabbing a quad injury that had kept him out of the Mariners lineup since June 20. He played six games in Tacoma, hitting .250 with a home run and two RBI. He was supposed to play a seventh game yesterday, but as Mike Curto reported on Twitter last night, he was pulled from BP and was handshaking his teammates on the way out. Morse, who was hitting .251 with 11 homers and 23 RBI in Seattle before his extended DL stint, will provide the Mariners with an important right-handed bat in the middle of their order for as long as remains healthy. The Mariners need right-handed hitting, as their stink bomb against Scott Diamond on Friday showed.

Bay could not provide the right handed hitting the Mariners needed. In 68 games with the Mariners, Bay hit .204 with 11 home runs and 20 RBI. He had an OBP of .298 and slugged .393. Bay wasn’t good, but he was what most people expected him to be. The roster decision between Bay and Casper Wells at the beginning of the season (a decision that prompted my first ever post for SM) turned out to be a choice between two pretty weak assets (Wells is hitting .167).

Bay’s production has tapered off significantly, and it was time for the Mariners to pull the plug. After hitting .267 in April, Bay hit .193 in May, .200 in June and had plummeted to just .103 in nine games in July. Bay was one of the best pure hitters in baseball from 2004-09, and it’s sad to see his career fall apart like it has. But it was time to move on, and the M’s should be commended for doing just that.