Reese Kaplan -- All of the Sudden the Infield is Crowded

Do you remember not long ago when it was pretty set in stone who played where on the infield?  Go back two years and you would find Pete Alonso at first, Jeff McNeil at second, Francisco Lindor at shortstop and Eduardo Escobar at third.  

Now fast forward through September of 2023.  Escobar is gone.  Outfielders Tommy Pham and Mark Canha are gone.  McNeil finds himself playing the outfield these days more than the infield.  Lindor is still Lindor and Alonso is still Alonso, but throw in injured Luis Guillorme to the mix as well.  The current and future baby Mets have a lot to prove and can work a multitude of ways into the lineup as the folks at the top (David Stearns, Billy Eppler and manager Buck Showalter) try to figure out who belongs where.

Take Friday's game and you see a show stopping play from Ronny Mauricio at third base when playing the hot corner wasn't even really part of his projected assignment for the major leagues.  Not only did he make a nice backhanded play, but then set and through a bullet the long way across the diamond to be fielded successfully by Alonso to turn what could have been a double if not fielded and certainly an infield single once fielded into what the box score would show as a routine groundout.  

The news about Jett Williams has been prolific and he's made it all the way to AA this season as a teenager.  He's showing the batting eye of a long term veteran having drawn over 100 walks in this combined minor league season while pilfering his way towards 50 SBs for the season.  He's even flashed a little more power than people expected though the likelihood he becomes more than a 10-15 per year slugger is pretty slim.  Still, a guy with his fielding competence and versatility to accompany his eye and his speed suggest his arrival to New York could mirror the time frame experienced by Francisco Alvarez.

Where it gets real interesting are about the next two guys who are just a few months apart in age but who have not yet shown at the major league level the kind of dominance they delivered working their way up through the minors.  The slender 6'3" lefty hitting Brett Baty has logged the equivalent of about two full seasons of play over his parts of four in the minors after college.  

Looking at his numbers via this metric would show a guy hitting .290 with 24 HRs and 90 RBIs per season.  That performance is certainly commendable but then the bad numbers arise, too.  He drew 73 walks per year (in this aggregated two-year total) but struck out 148 times per season.  When your strikeout total more than doubles the walk rate it suggests there could be some major holes in the bat as he faces better and better pitching. 

Towards that statistical analysis, he did start off rather nicely in his brief trials in the majors but then the wheels fell off and he has been fighting lately to stay over the Mendoza line.  Given his current state of injury, the time off is not necessarily a bad thing as he was not contributing much towards putting W's in the big club's record.

We won't rehash the ponderous benching of Mark Vientos most of the season he has been in the majors, lately the midyear trades and injuries have forced him into the lineup.  He started off even worse than Baty, but his numbers have started moving up while Baty's are headed in the opposite direction.  Following his career pattern, he always seems to take awhile to adjust to each new level of pitching, but once he does he flourished.

During his long climb from high school to the majors he has logged slightly over three full seasons working towards his debut at CItifield.  In a typical year he would hit .277 with 30 HRs and 108 RBIs per aggregated single season split into three parts.  

However, like his lefty swinging teammate, he fanned way more than you'd like to see while drawing a reasonable but not outstanding number of walks.  For each "year" of performance he would whiff 142 times while getting a free pass 60 times.  Again, those numbers are imbalanced and suggest the big swing for the fences may result in a lot of breeze.

Neither of the two of them have resembled an All Star defensively and understandably Vientos is getting more ABs as a DH than playing the field.  Right now with Mauricio usually slated at 2B and McNeil in the outfield it leaves 3B for Baty.  

The question the Mets must answer going forward is whether either of these would-be solid hitters should remain a part of the big club, or do they need to be put into the possible trade bait pile while Mauricio and McNeil in some combination flank Lindor while awaiting the arrival of Williams and others to work their way up the system.  

Right now with the ABs from Vientos starting to look more appealing and Baty not playing it's hard to draw definitive conclusions.  Neither have the electricity that Mauricio has carried over from the minors and no one is questioning the 2022 batting title winner McNeil's value to the club.  With others in the minors available in the 2025 season if not sooner it may be that the less-than-stellar showing by both of these rookies may hasten their end to major league tenures at least while in a Mets uniform.