The Cautious Optimism for Mark Vientos
With the DH role being Mark Vientos' to lose, the Mets should be expecting him produce much more than he did last season
Image credit: Roberto Carlo
Baseball is back.
Pitchers and catchers reported on Valentine’s Day and the New York Mets start the spring with drastically different questions than they’ve had in previous offseasons. Before this season the questions sounded a lot like this:
“Can the Mets rotation have both the Cy Young and Cy Young runner-up?”
“How far into the playoffs will the Mets go?”
“Is this the best Mets team we’ve seen?”
What a difference a year makes. Now the questions surrounding the club are much more tempered:
“Can enough things break right for the Mets to finish above .500?”
“What team will Pete Alonso be playing for next year?”
“Who is gonna be the DH?”
The last question seems to be the one most pressing because it directly relates to the first. For this Mets team, there’s no question about the production they’ll get from staples like Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, and Alonso. But for a team that had such promising prospects like Brett Baty, Mark Vientos, and Ronny Mauricio, the offseason was spent speculating who could be brought in to be a productive bat at DH to protect Alonso in the lineup.
Image credit: Roberto Carlo
While Mauricio was victim to a freak injury, Vientos and Baty have been hard to watch and have left the fans and Mets’ brass with a small margin for optimism at the Big League level. If your faith in those guys has waned, I get it. But with as much of an objective approach as I can take as an actual Mets fan, I actually believe that both guys can be better at the major league level moving forward, with a particular emphasis on Mark Vientos.
When Jorge Soler signed a three-year contract with the Giants, the most notable name left in free agency for the Mets to sign was J.D. Martinez. Itching for more free agent spending and household names, Martinez made sense at first glance if this year hopes to be competitive in any sense. With over 300 career homers and a lifetime OPS of .874, it seems sensible for Martinez to be a bat to slot behind Alonso. Last year, the 35-year-old hit 33 home runs and was good for a 1.9 bWAR in 113 games. This year, however, the projections are much more bearish on J.D. as ZiPS pegs him to hit 17 home runs, 62 RBIs with 98 wRC+ in 100 games.
In comparison, ZiPS has Vientos posting 103 wRC+ with 22 homers and 72 RBIs. While projections are just that - projections, there’s something to be said about Vientos being picked to outperform J.D. at much less money and at a much younger age. Now, while the criticism may be that the Mets need as much guaranteed production as possible and not hypotheticals, there’s reason to believe that Vientos’s production isn’t just based on a favorable projections system.
Image credit: Roberto Carlo
For the final month of the lost 2023, Vientos was given regular playing time for the first time all year and what he produced is better than what the surface shows. Over 87 at-bats, Vientos slugged .490 with a .739 OPS (his .280 on-base percentage dragged this number down) with six home runs and 11 RBIs.
This may not seem like much initially, but over a full season, it’s a 40-homer pace with 74 RBIs. I’m prone to thinking that a poor performance in a limited sample, plus an impatient and frustrated fanbase is the result of Vientos being written off way too early. If you were told J.D. Martinez or Jorge Soler would hit 40 homers this year, you’d be elated if the Mets signed either of them to a contract worth $15M+.
The reality is that Vientos is 24 years old, only has 233 Major League at-bats, and has hit the ball hard whenever he’s gotten a chance to play regularly. Some other metrics to consider for Vientos heading into this season:
His HR/FB ratio was 19.1%
His average exit velocity was 92.5 MPH
His hard-hit rate was 51%
All of these suggest that Vientos’s power is real and if given enough playing time, can be translated into offensive production that the Mets so desperately need. A comparable MLB player based on his numbers would be a Chris Carter or a Khris Davis if he can increase his plate discipline a tick.
Can he play the field well? No. Will he have to work on not chasing pitches out of the zone? Of course. But I think that Vientos is being highly undervalued despite being in a prime position to showcase his very real power swing. Newly appointed President of Baseball Operations David Stearns has made it clear that they need to see what their young players are able to do and given the sky-high expectations of past seasons, that opportunity hasn’t really been afforded to guys like Vientos.
This year, with much more tempered expectations, it looks to be a year in which the kids can show what they can really do and that should be a reason to give Mets fans something to look forward to for the upcoming season.