What's behind Jeff McNeil's decline at the plate a season after winning batting title?
Jeff McNeil, at .287 in second half before winning 2022 batting title, knows his hits come in bunches. Credit: Jim McIsaac
In a particularly sullen clubhouse after another Mets loss, Jeff McNeil sat at his corner locker, back to the room, head drooped, scrolling on his phone. Francisco Lindor, his double-play partner and dispositional opposite, sidled up briefly to offer conversation before leaving him to it.
These are bad times for the Mets, who have fallen to the fringes of the playoff picture, and worse times for McNeil, the majors’ defending batting champion who has suffered about as severe a dropoff as any hitter on the team.
In a loss to the Astros on Wednesday, McNeil had four at-bats, two strikeouts and no hits. His average is down to .267, its lowest in more than a month. His slugging percentage is .338, barely better than his average a season ago.
McNeil, contact savant, is far better than he has shown. His teammates know this. His coaches know this. He knows this — but, you know, a reminder would be nice.
“You get a few of those hits to drop,” he said, “and you start feeling good.”
Hitting coach Jeremy Barnes offered: “I feel like there’s a confidence thing right now. And he’ll get it back.”
The reasons for McNeil’s struggles are not as simple as lagging confidence, though. In the vicious cycle of trying to hit, being unsure of oneself is as much an effect as is it is a cause.
Barnes described the problem as a little bit of psychology, a little bit of luck and a little bit of swing/mechanical specifics. Those all build on each other.
“It’s a little bit of everything, right?” he said. “Can we get better with our swing? Yeah. Can we get better with our swing decisions? Yes. Can we get a little luckier? Yes . . . I just don’t think we’re that far off. A little bit of luck changes the confidence level. Then we just keep rolling. We know he has a good swing. We know he’s a good baseball player. Get pitches that you can hit and shoot your shot.”
Some of the underlying numbers are encouraging. McNeil is walking a tad more and striking out a bit less than he did last year (and the year before that). He is hitting the ball about as hard. And his batting average on balls in play is well below his 2022 mark and career norm, which can be a sign of unluckiness.
McNeil’s rate of infield pop-ups has nearly tripled — it doesn’t matter how hard he hits the ball if he hits it straight up, because those are virtually always outs — but the other metrics tempt Barnes to think, OK, maybe there isn’t anything super wrong. He is close.
“It’s not where I want to be, but I’m still hitting .270 and still getting some big hits,” McNeil said. “The extra-base hits haven’t come because I haven’t hit the ball down the line a lot. A lot of my doubles comes down the line. I’ve been staying in the middle of the field and getting singles.”
Last year, McNeil made fools of opposing teams that used defensive shifts against him, slapping the ball to the opposite field seemingly at will.
Might MLB’s new rules regarding defensive alignments — including a requirement of two infielders on each side of second base — be negatively impacting him?
“I mean, it doesn’t give you that free hit when you want it. It’s probably the only thing. You get more pull base hits,” McNeil said. “When there are three people on one side and one on the other, you can be super late and try to just shoot it that way. But that’s a single. I’m getting plenty of singles. It’s the extra-base hits right now that we’re after.”
Barnes said: “That stuff is really hard to judge.”
And manager Buck Showalter: “I‘ve heard some theories about the lack of shift actually has hurt him, which tells everybody where they should’ve been playing instead of where they were. I don’t buy that (shift idea).”
Then again, as McNeil pointed out, he bottomed out at .287 in late July last year, then wound up at .326.
He was better than everybody at getting hits. This year, he ranks 60th among 157 qualified batters.
“I was hitting .287 in the second half of last year. That’s what people don’t understand. I was hitting .287 in the second half of last year — and I won a batting title,” he said. “I can get extremely hot. My hits come in bunches. The extra-base hits will come. I’ve hit a few balls down the line that have hit the side and kicked out for singles. I’ve hit some balls hard that have been caught at the track. They’ll fall.”
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.
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