Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a non-native speaker, I never really tried to reason about what letters are silent or not. It's all seemingly nonsensical, anyway, so I might as well just take it at face value.
Are you aware that less than 15% of English words have irregular pronunciation (which is not to say the "regular" rules aren't baroque). And the pronunciation of "bay" is certainly regular: it's not that "y" is silent, but rather "ay" is a digraph that is pronounced in a regular way.
Well that's my point! I haven't found it useful to figure out or reason about whatever regular rules there are, because they are baroque to the point that I find it easier to just go by intuition, for the most part.