Darin Ruf hoping first impression doesn't last in second Mets season
New York Mets designated hitter Darin Ruf at spring training on Tuesday. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Let’s skip the surname puns and just say it: Darin Ruf was bad for the Mets last season.
The team knew it. The booing fans knew it. And he certainly knew it.
But as he arrived at spring training this week, ready to slot back into a designated hitter platoon once he gets over a seemingly minor wrist problem, Ruf said he knows that he is capable of better, of being the crusher of lefthanded pitching that the Mets thought they were getting at the trade deadline last summer.
“Obviously, I didn’t perform as well as I wanted to,” Ruf said Tuesday. “Baseball is a very, very tough sport. Throughout any at-bat, you look for the positives in it. I hit a few foul homers that started fair and went foul. Nobody cares about those because they ended up in strikeouts probably.”
That is a fair assessment. Ruf’s numbers over the relatively small sample of 28 games (74 plate appearances) included a .152 average, .216 OBP and .197 slugging percentage. He hit zero home runs and struck out more than a quarter of the time.
His failure left the Mets searching for someone, anyone, to complement Daniel Vogelbach, the DH against righthanders. Prospects Mark Vientos and Francisco Alvarez got brief shots. No one stuck.
Ruf’s steep drop-off was a surprise given his track record of success against lefties. When the Mets acquired him from the Giants on Aug. 2 — for J.D. Davis and three minor-league pitchers — they thought he would be an effective replacement for Davis, a younger player with a similar skill set who had not been productive over the first half of the season.
Davis exploded for San Francisco, mashing eight homers. Ruf had 10 total hits.
“I think midseason trades are tough on anybody,” Ruf said. “Performance stems from being comfortable, being in a rhythm. Whenever a midseason trade happens, it affects people differently. My performance suffered from that.
“As a baseball player, you always go through high points and low points. You have to have the mentality that it’ll turn around for you at some point. In such a short amount of time, it didn’t turn around for me as quickly as I would’ve liked it to.
“If you look around this locker room, you’ll see guys that have gone through 50-at-bat stretches also where they didn’t perform as well as they had wanted to. Mine just happened to come on a new team in a new place. So I think it was magnified.”
Ruf’s 2023 is off to a poor start because of what he described as arthritis in his right wrist. He received a cortisone injection on Monday and did not participate in hitting drills — the baseball activity that most causes the pain — on Tuesday. Buck Showalter described it as the Mets “slow playing” Ruf, holding him to partial participation for what is supposed to be only a few days.
The wrist bothered Ruf for “the past few years,” he said, and when he began ramping up for a new season in early January it was worse.
“It got to a point where I thought it would be beneficial to take care of it instead of trying to grind through it another year,” he said.
Vogelbach, meanwhile, has his own health history on the Mets’ minds. He’s been plagued by hamstring problems the past two years, including late last season when a balky leg further limited his already reduced mobility.
He lost weight over the offseason, which the Mets hope helps.
“He’s in a different spot conditioning-wise,” Showalter said. “We think that might help it, too. The challenge isn’t getting where he got — it is somewhat. The challenge is going to be staying there.”
The Mets have options if they want a different DH partner with Vogelbach, but for now Ruf is getting a second chance.
“I’m lucky to still be here,” Ruf said, “and have a shot at it.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
