Paul Articulates – Pressure is building

It is very early in the MLB regular season, where players and fans alike are enjoying the opportunity to get outside after a long winter and hear the crack of the bat and pop of leather.  Optimism still reigns supreme because every player and every team has a chance to put together a tremendous season.

For one player on this New York Mets team, the early season unfortunately is bringing a good dose of pressure.  Eduardo Escobar, a seasoned veteran with almost 1300 MLB games under his belt was the starting third baseman for the Mets last year and continues into this year in that role.  Escobar, a career .254 hitter with a .741 OPS, is off to a very slow start this year on the heels of a 2022 season that saw him struggle for the first five months.  Last year Eduardo was given more than his share of opportunity to turn things around and finally did, going on a tear in the month of September.  However, this year is different.  Prospect Brett Baty arrived late last year and showed that he was major league ready, setting up a battle for the 3B position in 2023.

The spring went very poorly for Escobar, who slashed .118/.205/.147 while his younger rival Baty posted a .345/.460/.425 line.  In the first week of the regular season, Eduardo has started just as slow with a .063/.063/.063 line through Sunday while Baty is destroying AAA pitching to the tune of .357/.400/.857 for a 1.257 OPS.  

Most folks in the media (including many of us at Mack’s) were calling for Baty to be the starting third baseman this year.  The Mets leadership decided on a different path, giving Escobar a chance to earn the $9.5M he is due this year while Baty gets the opportunity to play full time in AAA Syracuse to hone his skills.  One would anticipate that Escobar’s chance to maintain his spot has a very short leash.  The fans are impatient to see Baty on the field and the Mets need to generate wins to compete in the very strong NL East division.

I understand the position that Billy Eppler took.  He is paying Escobar handsomely this year, so it would be good to get value for that salary.  He needs to make a decision on the $9M club option for Escobar in 2024, and you don’t get the information to make that call if the player is sitting on the bench.  But there is only so far he can take this trial if the Mets can’t generate the offense to win 60% of their games in April.  The price of falling behind in the division is too steep to evaluate a player’s age 34 value.

There are other things to consider as well.  For as much promise as Brett Baty has shown in his brief 2022 MLB debut and his awesome 2023 spring, he is still a young player that needs some learning time against major league competition.  As we painfully learned last year with the Mark Vientos call-up to the DH slot in September, minor league success does not immediately translate to MLB success.  It takes some time.  The Mets are going to have to make a decision on which third baseman will finish this season before they get to the all-star break to ensure there is enough maturation time.  

We also can’t forget about the infield utility player role.  If Baty is called up to play third base, he will have to get plenty of playing time – not just a platoon situation.  That means Escobar would have to slide into a utility role.  But that’s not as easy as it sounds.  Luis Guillorme is so good in the utility infielder role that Buck Showalter was lobbying last year for a utility role on the all-star team.  If Escobar is moved off third, he goes behind Guillorme on the depth chart.  His advanced defensive stats (-11 DRS, -7 OAA, and -4.4 UZR) do not hold a candle to Guillorme’s  numbers (+2 DRS, +6 OAA).

I don’t wish anything bad for Eduardo Escobar.  He has had a terrific career and is a terrific teammate on the New York Mets.  I am just pointing out the reality that he hears footsteps behind him on a very deep team with several hot prospects.  He is under pressure to perform at a high level to keep his job.  Sometimes pressure works – there are clutch players that are their best when the pressure is on.  He will have to prove that he is one of those guys relatively soon, because the timeline is short.