Jack Flynn On... Juan Lagares

Even after all of the wheeling and dealing of the off-season, the Mets approached Opening Day 2019 with three very questionable players still on the 40-man roster.

General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen spoke aggressively of bringing “the best 25 players” north to begin the season, but Mets fans were painfully aware that this wasn’t actually going to be the case. Jason Vargas was still going to be the fifth starter, Juan Lagares was still going to be in the outfield mix, and Todd Frazier was going to find some way to gum up the works once he was fully recovered from a minor injury suffered in Spring Training.

Vargas, Lagares and Frazier are all in the final year of their contracts, and between them are guaranteed $28 million in salary this year. BVW made no real effort to find an alternative to any of them, although one could argue that the Jed Lowrie signing (remember him?) represented somewhat of a threat to Frazier’s status in Queens, at least as an everyday player.

Fast forward to early June, and two of the three contract albatrosses have performed well enough to justify their roster spot, even if they have hardly set the baseball world on fire. Vargas in particular is enjoying a newfound popularity among Mets fans after throwing a complete game shutout at home on June 5. Frazier has rebounded from a terrible start and has been on a hot streak since mid-May.

And then there is Juan Lagares.

Lagares hasn’t had an OPS north of .700 since April 15. Lagares’s batting average is so low that he would need to show his passport to travel to the Mendoza Line, and both his on base percentage and slugging percentage are so far south of .300 that the starting pitchers are laughing at him behind his back.

The stellar defense that Lagares was once known for seems to have deserted him as well. Defense is still notoriously difficult to analyze, but right now the advanced metrics are no kinder to Lagares than the eye test is. It is no longer clear who the better defensive center fielder is – Lagares or Carlos Gomez, who after last season was widely assumed to be past his defensive prime and better suited for a corner outfield position.

And yet, Juan Lagares continues to don the orange and blue.

This simply cannot last forever. The Mets lack a legitimate center fielder anywhere in their system right now, not with Brandon Nimmo languishing on the injured list. Gomez obviously isn’t the answer; he’s hitting nearly as poorly as Lagares, and no amount of the “energy” he allegedly brings to the clubhouse is enough to get the Mets over .500. No one in Syracuse is knocking on the door either.

BVW has two options; light candles and pray for Nimmo’s speedy recovery, or start scouting the league for a competent center fielder. Either way, Lagares will have to be designated for assignment as soon as a replacement can be secured. There is no way that Lagares will be claimed or traded for, not with that inflated contract, and one would hope he would accept an assignment to Syracuse in a last-ditch attempt to get his career back on track.