Reese Kaplan -- Who's Supporting Juan Soto in the 2025 Lineup?

To hear many tell it, the arrival of Juan Soto caps the entire off season and the club now has one of the pure best hitters in the game in the lineup day after day.  To that group, the work has been done on the offense and they’re set for Spring Training to begin.

Ummn...no.  Let’s remember that there is no Pete Alonso, no Harrison Bader, subpar years from Jeff McNeil, Starling Marte, Francisco Alvarez, Brandon Nimmo and 4th outfielder numbers from Tyrone Taylor.  There has been talk about having Mark Vientos cross the diamond to take over for Alonso, but David Stearns publicly stated that Vientos is his third baseman. 

You do have a few AAA level prospects ready to make the leap to Queens, but Ronny Mauricio must prove his health and Luisangel Acuna must demonstrate consistency as his September cup of coffee with the Mets and his Winter League outputs more closely parallel what he did in 2023 and beforehand.  2024 in Syracuse was a tough one. 

So if you are the front office, where exactly do you begin?

At 1st base there are a lot of ways to go.  You could make the effort to re-sign Pete Alonso which would be expensive but also pretty much guarantees 40 HRs and 100 RBIs out of the position.  While Steve Cohen has shown winning is more important than payroll, the dollars are there if they decide he is the right choice.  He, Soto and Vientos provide a powerful trio for other teams’ pitchers to fear. 

However, what if Alonso wants to go elsewhere or the Mets feel his 2023 and 2024 downward trend statistically suggests paying him for 6 years of diminished production at $27 million or so per year is simply not a good long term investment? 

The free agent pickings include natural first baseman like Christian Walker (multi-Gold Glover to boot), Paul Goldschmidt, Carlos Santana and a handful of others.  Trade candidate Nolan Arenado said he’s open to crossing the diamond if it would be helpful.  Other trade options could surface and surely Plans B, C and D are all being feted by the front office.

For second base, right now it would appear that Jeff McNeil and his inflated paycheck are penciled in at this position, though it is also possible the Mets may try to do a discounted paycheck deal to open up the position to a competition between Mauricio and Acuna.

Today’s outfield includes Nimmo, a share between 4th and 5th outfielders Jose Siri and Tyrone Taylor penciled in for center and Juan Soto in right.  Where does that leave Starling Marte?  Is he a DH or is he facing a last-year-of-his-contract buy down to make him palatable to another club to accept in trade? 

Speaking of Siri, if I told you he once had a season with 24 HRs, 71 RBIs, 46 SBs and batted .293 you’d be pretty jazzed about him becoming a member of the Mets.  Unfortunately that was back in 2017 in A ball and his parts of four seasons since then have resulted in a .210 batting average with 54 HRs, 136 RBIs and 43 SBs, you’d be skeptical but still intrigued.  

Unfortunately those numbers aggregated over approximately two full seasons in the majors which suggests that he’s an all or nothing swinger who happens to have a great glove.  Of course he earns about $9 million less than Bader did, so all glove and not bat is at least reasonably priced.

At DH the Mets have thus far since the rule changed been experiencing a black hole from that position.  J.D. Martinez was likely the best they had and his output in 2024 was nothing special.  Don’t even get started thinking about Daniel Vogelbach, Darin Ruf and others poorly handed that responsibility.  

There are some sensational hitters as free agents the Mets could pursue here but the problem is that they would either command megabucks or you’d be getting them in the twilight of their careers.  This spot in the lineup is still a great unknown.