Paul Articulates - The Veteran Dilemma

The Steve Cohen / David Stearns plan to rebuild the New York Mets into a sustainable championship contender made great strides last year as the team rode a late season surge to a berth in the National League Championship Series.  

Although the Mets ultimately lost that series to the World Champion Dodgers, they put up a great fight (better than the Yankees in the WS).

So now, as we are a couple weeks into the free agent signing period, how does the front office go about improving upon last year?  Clearly there is a need to bolster the pitching both in the rotation and in the bullpen.  

I believe that there will be some notable additions to the team in this area that will have Mets fans excitedly looking forward to the 2025 season.  There is also the Juan Soto sweepstakes which will go on for weeks.  You can read the tea leaves any way you want, but it will likely be some sort of late dynamic that will seal Soto’s future.

As easy as it is to covet the star players that are available and rationalize that “Steve can afford it”, there are also some other dirty details that must be determined to shape the roster.  Those details involve what to do with some of the older veterans on the team.  That is the subject of this article.

The path to a sustainable championship contender has to be paved with talented youth coming up through the development system.  The economics of MLB roster building requires that some portion of the team consists of players that are still under team control at affordable annual wages so there is enough available money to obtain the star power that makes a good team great.  

If you buy into this premise, then you understand that there has to be a steady flow of talent into the major league team, and that flow has to be matched by other personnel exiting the roster.  Most likely those that exit are marginal bench players and/or aging veterans that have passed their peak.

A quick scan of the 40 man roster for the oldest position players yields two visible stars that underperformed last year: Starling Marte and Jeff McNeil.  Both of those players have had very productive years with the Mets and have earned some loyalty from the fans for bringing many memorable moments to the Citi Field faithful.  

Unfortunately, in the business side of baseball, there is not much loyalty.  Roster decisions are ultimately made through value assessments of each player and their ability to contribute to future wins.  So let us do such an assessment on our two aging stars.

Starling Marte was born October 9, 1988 which will make him 37 years old on opening day 2025.  Marte has compiled an impressive .286/.342/.441 slash line over a 1432 game MLB career.  He is a two-time gold glove winner and a two-time National League all-star.  In 2015 he was named a Wilson defensive player of the year.  

Marte has contributed 304 hits in 298 games since his debut with the Mets in 2022 and 81 of those went for extra bases.  He stole 58 bags during that period which is just over 20% of the stolen bases for the team. He has played primarily in right field for the Mets where he has displayed a powerful throwing arm and above average range when healthy.

“When healthy” is the key phrase where Starling Marte is concerned.  He was a key component of a 101-win season in 2022 but when he went down with an injury in the last month of the season, the Mets slumped their way to a disappointing finish.  In 2023, Marte was less than healthy all season, having had abdominal surgery in the off-season that never really healed before he began playing.  

The result was the weakest season of his career with a .248 batting average and .635 OPS (both career lows).  He flashed some of his skills in 2024, particularly during the team’s late season run, but he also took some plays off and finished below his career averages in average, OBP, and OPS.  A skilled outfielder with a .269 batting average is a positive for just about any team, but the most troubling trend is Marte’s availability.  He played in 145 games in 2018 and his games played have steadily declined each year to less than 100 in 2023 and 2024.  

One of the more relevant statistics for determining player value is WAR.  In Marte’s case where he’s good when healthy the WAR value is particularly telling because you can only accumulate WAR when performing on the field.  In 2024 he contributed 0.6 WAR.  Since every player has their ups and downs, let’s look at a three year span.  Marte’s WAR for the 2022-2024 seasons totals 3.8.  

Marte’s salary for those same seasons totals $53.5M.  That equates to roughly $14M per 1.0 WAR which doesn’t seem to be a good buy.  With a $19.5M salary in 2025, the Mets are paying a lot for just over 1 win.

Jeff McNeil was born April 8, 1992 which will make him 33 years old 11 days after opening day 2025.  Jeff has compiled an equally impressive .289/.353/.430 slash line over an 801 game MLB career.  Like Marte, Jeff is a two-time National League all-star.  He also won a silver slugger award in 2022, the year he won the MLB batting title.

McNeil has meant many things to the Mets over the years.  Not only has he been a great hitter with premier bat-to-ball skills, but he has also shown versatility in the field.  McNeil can play both the infield and the outfield well and has done so many times for the Mets.  

Few players in MLB are capable of playing at McNeil's level in the corner outfield positions and the infield.  This gives the manager the ultimate lineup flexibility because he can switch McNeil during a game to optimize situational substitution.

Age does not seem to have caught up with McNeil in the field, as he played both IF and OF positions well in 2024.  However, his hitting has been very erratic.  In 2021 his batting average plummeted as he tried to add power to his swing.  This recovered quickly in 2022 during his batting title year, but then he regressed in 2023 and that trend continued for the first 3 months of 2024 before he ended the year by hitting .289 after the all-star break.

The erratic hitting makes it difficult to project value into 2025.  Using the WAR method, Jeff earned 9.3 WAR over the last 3 seasons while making $19.5M which yields roughly $2.1M/WAR.  This is a much better figure than Marte.  However, McNeil’s WAR has declined in the past two years and his salary is going up thanks to an extension signed in 2023.  Next season he is on contract to earn $15.75M.

I conclude by acknowledging the difficult job that the front office has during this off-season.  The numbers do not support keeping a Starling Marte on the roster if you are trying to promote youthful talent but it is not easy to unload a $19.5M 37-year old and get much in return.  

With McNeil, one could argue that he still has enough left in the tank to contribute as a utility player, but should not block a LuisAngel Acuna or Jett Williams from proving their abilities in a MLB lineup when they are ready.