Every team has a history of making mistakes with young ballplayers. Sometimes it is a matter of giving up on them too soon. This scenario often results in a player who didn’t hit the ground running after making the attempt to become a major league regular. We’ve all see teams jettison these slow bloomers and sometimes much to their future chagrin.
The opposite situation is the guy who has been given chance after chance based upon either minor league pedigree or a hot period of several months in the majors who then can never seem to replicate that early star promise. Here the question becomes how long do you keep waiting for the magical resurgence that apparently is simply not destined to happen?
In the former situation you saw the Mets trade away some players who did not exactly set the world on fire during their trials in the big leagues. Brandon Sproat from the pitching side and Luisangel Acuna from the offensive side would seem to fit into this categorization. Is it possible they get it together and turn themselves into solid major leaguers? Obviously, yes it is a way of making David Stearns look bad for giving up too soon on would be solid ballplayers.
Right now to hear many Mets fans and some media types tell it, the Mets simply need to cut him loose with a DFA since he is out of minor league options and his planned available on-the-field opportunities have been usurped by others. Given the theoretical new orientation to defense it adds fuel to the fire for his expulsion since DH is the only place to put him if he was indeed hitting well and would hide his inability to hurt the team with his glove.
Unfortunately, there could be some validity to this viewpoint given Vientos’ struggles in Florida before departing for the WBC where his inability to get on base regularly once again has surfaced in a frustrating and visible manner. However, bear in mind that February and March performance metrics don’t always mean anything. Have you noticed that last year’s .317 hitter Bo Bichette has taken a 100 point dip in batting average? Or how Marcus Semien hasn’t yet shown offensive productivity at all?
Some advocates of potential and doubters of some of the 2026 roster moves suggest that giving up so soon on someone with game changing power while still in his mid 20s and earning close to major league minimum would be a perhaps hasty transaction to make. This position also has a bit of good thinking to it, but it puts an awful lot of faith on the turnaround everyone has given up expecting may or may not ever happen.
The potentially most sensible approach for folks to take is an 11th hour trade to bring someone of value back in exchange for Vientos. Right now you’d be dealing from weakness and roster crunch which would mitigate the ranking of whomever you could get in exchange for him. The risk here, of course, is that it puts even more pressure on Jorge Polanco, Brett Baty and (if he makes the team) Carson Benge to deliver results that meet or exceed expectations. Still, getting anything in return for Vientos would be superior to a DFA and getting nothing at all.
17 comments:
If you do anything with Mark, he has trade value, for 2 reasons…
1) past performance reflects real power that could ignite elsewhere.
2) cheap. His salary is still under $1 million.
So, no DFA for Mark.
DH, yes.
Semien is hitting a mere .148, so the two man race to the bottom of the hitting barrel is underway,
Vientos is the 2026 Kirk Nieuinhaus.
Not true. Vientos at least had one good year. Nieuwenhuis never did.
Everyone on this site constantly bashed Vientos, yes he did have a down year last year for what was expected because of his prior year but..... If you calculate his AB's for a full season from last year (550 ABs) he would have around 24/25 Hrs and 75-80 RBI's. I dont think we have ever had that kind of production from a Full time DH. He is still young give his so time before we throw him out with the trash.
Patience with a relatively short leash is the Rx.
Unless a trade for a controllable reliever that also had a good year but is likely struggling. Only trade to fill a MLB need right now. Otherwise wait
Reese,
Would Vientos be a player one of the teams who have an extra 2026 draft choice be willing to trade that draft choice? The Mets do not have a second and fourth round choice this year. Thoughts?
True
Kirk had one good GAME
DJ -- Other than competitive balance draft picks, MLB prohibits trading of draft picks. I wish I knew what to expect from Vientos. What I liked about him when he was at AAA was his ability (that Baty did not display at that time) to find his way out of a slump, which is as much a psychological and personality trait as it is anything else. That no longer seems the case which makes me believe that he has lost his confidence. He has two issues with his swing/at bats, both curable in principle, but so far not in practice. First he has a real problem with pitch recognition which shows up less in his takes than in his swings and misses. Lot a number of hitters, he has difficulty laying off fastballs up and in. That is not a deadly sin on its own. However, he has nightmarish inability to deal with pitches down and away that move that way, both sliders and curves --especially sliders. So his at bats feature bad swings that make no contact or no hard contact. The gives a pitcher absolutely NO reason to throw any other pitch if Vientos is behind in the count other than a fastball up and in or a slider on the outer half or beyond and down. He also has a relatively steep angle of attack swing path which makes it impossible to hit the up and in pitch out of the zone. I will show a video on how to shallow the swing path correctly in one of my posts next week. Occam's razor tells us that the simplest explanation may be the best. I don't view that as any more than a heuristic device, but it is helpful sometimes to keep it in mind. In 2024 pitchers hadn't figured out how to exploit Vientos' weaknesses. They did in 2025, and he hasn't been able to adjust. He hasn't lost his talent; he's lost his confidence due to an inability to make the adjustment. I'm surprised that he has been unable to do so over the course of the offseason. People underestimate how hard it is to make movement and other changes. Two years ago, he drove sliders that were on the outer half and thigh to belt high into the right center gap. A year later pitchers changed those pitches slightly to more away and more down, thus giving him incredible problems along the extreme points of the diagonal plane. Draw that plane and then, if you are a coach, drawn the path of his best swings that intersects that diagonal. Then you can identify where he can do damage and where you get him out. If he does nothing to force a pitcher to throw in or around the place where the lines intersect, he is in effect not adjusting to what the pitchers have done, and in effect getting himself out.
You cannot just leave him in there and hope for change or make projections. A person can't be a major league hitter only hitting a pitcher's unintentional mistakes.
It takes a lot of work to change body movements. One last thing. A steep plane in his swing makes these pitches feel to him like they are in his wheel house. But they are not because by the time he gets his bat into the hitting zone, the up and in pitch is above his path and the down and away is below it (and outside it). When Keith talks about liking a level swing, what he is really saying in the modern parlance is a shallower pland of the swing. If you have a shallower path that you ingrain, the up and in, and the down and away no longer strike you as in your wheelhouse. It doesn't mean you don't get fooled. It means you don't fool yourself
Trouble is there is no place on the roster for Mark to prove himself. Needs to be traded.
The only position available to Vientos is DH and he has formative competition there also
The problem is that trading Vientos now is like selling stock at the bottom. You will get nothing useful and then Vientos will start hitting again. I think you have to start the season with him at DH and work out the kinks in his swing.
Let’s play a game:
- Benge makes your opening day roster.
- You keep Tauchman
- You still have Mauricio
Who do you not need? Hint: all these guys are lefties.
Otherwise, I’m keeping Vientos and wishing Tauchman well.
True game
I don't think they can trade Vientos unless he is packaged with someone else to bring in a quality reliever. His bat would play in Boston against the wall, but his fielding would not -- though they have a void at the position. As does St. Louis who has a reliever that the Mets would be interested in. If Benge makes the team, Baty is the 5th outfielder, or 1st B and Mauricio the ulitiy infielder. Actually he plays 2,SS and 3rd, not 1st; Baty plays 1, 2nd, 3rd but not SS, Polanco plays DH in my scheme and fills in also everywhere. There is so much good redundancy around the infield, there literally is no position that Vientos could play other than platooning at 1B which he is not ready for and DH which Polanco has covered. He is just a power bat off the bench, but he is one of those hitters who needs more at bats to work on his problems and is someone who runs the risk of being exposed if he plays too much. He has no speed either. But if it is between Vientos and Tauchman, it's a choice between a RH bat off the bench and a more versatile player. Maybe they choose Vientos because ..... he is RH
Jacob Reimer’s footsteps are getting LOUDER coming up behind Vientos by the day.
The Rhymer has been on base 9 of 21 times this spring. And yes, the Rhymer bats righty.
You would think with all the technology available today someone would iron out his flaws.
I wish it were that simple. The technology is never as important as the eyes. Technology confirms what you are seeing. Also people underestimate how hard it is to change a movement pattern, especially under conditions of pressure. Under pressure people revert very easily. A real movement pattern change should feel very uncomfortable and different. Vientos's movement pattern is not the main problem. It's pitch recognition. I personally would change his swing to be less steep, and that is not all that difficult because the rest of his pattern can remain intact pretty much. In my. teaching, I always teach contact alignments first, that is what it looks like when you may contact with the ball well. what your body looks like, where your arms and hands are, where your head is, etc. That can help all on its own to incentivize other changes. Then I teach change in path.. The idea is to ingrain first what it feels like when you are making contact solidly. Then a lot of adjustment can come naturally. Then path to finish off the change. Sometimes you have to change loading after that because some people find it hard to get into the right position to take the path to the ball that is most efficient from where they naturally start and load. It takes time and reversion is the main problem, especially because when you are working on a movement pattern change, you can't allow yourself to be impacted by where the ball goals. You can't look at results, because if you do you can be easily discouraged at first and you will revert.
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