Jason Bay has been decidedly mediocre for the Mets this year. He's obviously not remotely as poor as Francoeur, in that he's playing above replacement level (1.3 WAR as per Fangraphs), largely because he's getting on base - but he hasn't been very good either, and has clearly underperformed expectations substantially. This is a theoretical question, since obviously the Mets are not going to do anything of the sort: Assume the Mets begin to play better and remain in contention for a playoff spot, but that Bay continues to muddle along the way he's going now. How much more rope would you give Jason Bay this year (clearly, he'll be around for a while, but this is just for this year) before benching him in favor of, say, something along the lines of a platoon of [Chris Carter/Lucas Duda] and [Nick Evans/Mike Hessman]. It's at least possible that such a platoon would out-produce Jason Bay offensively, although it might be rather poor defensively (I don't know much about Duda defensively, but the other 3 would likely be below-average or well-below-average left fielders). Again, this would obviously involve some roster manipulation depending on the platoon (e.g. DFAing Frenchy and/or one of the catchers), but assume that you can do that. Basically, what I'm curious about here is: to what extent does Bay's previous track record of production, combined with his current above-replacement-but-not-great production, warrant continuing to play him every day, and to what extent do people think that a platoon along the lines of what's suggested above might be an improvement?