Davis to Play, Reyes to Sit

The New York Mets

6:18 p.m. | Updated The Mets, off to a 4-8 start and slumping at the plate, promoted first baseman Ike Davis, their top prospect, from Class AAA Buffalo on Monday.

Davis will be in the lineup Monday night, batting sixth, as the Mets play the Chicago Cubs in the first game of a four-game series at Citi Field.

Meanwhile, Jose Reyes, who has been slumping badly since his return to the Mets — he is batting just .154 — will be rested. Reyes said he was not injured. “Just a day off,” he said.

To make space on the roster for Davis, the Mets optioned pitcher Tobi Stoner to the Bisons.

Davis is batting .364 with two home runs and four runs batted in over 10 games, after hitting over .400 in spring training and impressing the players who will now be his teammates.

Davis, 23, from Edina, Minn., bats and fields left-handed, and was the team’s first-round pick in 2008. He is 6 feet 4 inches and 215 pounds, and the Mets hope he will give them a reliable left-handed power hitter, something they have lacked from the first day of the season.

Davis flew from Buffalo to New York, and arrived on the field at 4:44 p.m. He was greeted with soft applause, friendly verbal greetings and big hugs.

“It hasn’t hit me yet,” Davis said after taking batting practice.

He got the word of his promotion, he said, at 12:10 p.m. in Buffalo after taking batting practice for the Bisons before a day game.

“I thought I was going to be batting fourth for Buffalo,” Davis said. “And I got even better news.”

His father, Ron, was a former pitcher with the Yankees and Twins. When he called his father, Davis said he told him “he was proud of me and to go out there and be myself.”

Mets General Manager Omar Minaya said he thought Davis’s major league pedigree would help him to adjust to the new environment.

“New York is not a stranger to him,” Minaya said. “This kid is the kind of kid who’s going to be able to handle an environment like New York.”

Manager Jerry Manuel said Davis had “easy power, fluid power.” He said Davis impressed him in spring training and he called Davis “a very rhythmic player.”

“He understood the rhythm and the flow,” Manuel said.

Neither Minaya nor Manuel were definitive on the subject of Daniel Murphy, last season’s first baseman, who injured his knee late in spring training. Murphy could miss as much as the first month of the season.