Brett Baty shows he belongs on Mets' roster
Mets infielder Brett Baty hits a double during a spring training intrasquad scrimmage on Feb. 24 in Port St. Lucie, Fla. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
In late March, a week before Opening Day, I asked Brett Baty how he felt being on the Mets’ roster bubble.
Baty more or less was having a spring training similar to what Anthony Volpe was doing over in Tampa, but the Yankees’ top prospect already had locked up the Yankees’ shortstop job. Despite Baty’s own stellar audition at third base, the Mets did not display the same confidence in him.
“I’m just going to go wherever they want me to,” he said that morning. “If it’s here, then I’m going to play really hard. And if it’s somewhere else, then I’m going to go there and show them I belong here.”
“Belong” being the operative word, and Baty wasn’t kidding around.
Two days after making that comment, he was demoted to Triple-A Syracuse along with fellow prospect Mark Vientos. And because the Mets didn’t realize their mistake at the time, Baty planned to make it crystal-clear to them.
After his April rampage in the minors, the Mets finally caved by summoning him to the West Coast for Monday’s game against the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine.
From the moment Baty picked up a bat in Syracuse, he swung it with that singular purpose: to force the Mets to regret sending him there. Through nine games, he was hitting .400 (14-for-35) with five homers, 15 RBIs and a 1.386 OPS.
When the Mets broke camp, I figured a conservative target for a Baty promotion would be in the neighborhood of May 1, and only if Eduardo Escobar cooperated by being a near-zero at the plate.
Turns out, the Mets’ patience with Escobar evaporated much sooner than expected, and that says a lot considering what he had going in his favor. Escobar is owed $10 million in this final season of his contract and is a very popular clubhouse figure. The Mets also were clinging to his MVP-caliber September of a year ago, when he slugged eight homers and had a 1.042 OPS.
But Escobar, at age 34, appears to have rapidly eroded since and is off to a terrible start. After going 1-for-4 in Sunday’s 4-3 win over Oakland, Escobar is hitting .125 with 12 strikeouts and a .402 OPS.
Typically, two-plus weeks into a season would be considered a tiny sample size, not significant enough to merit any serious roster shuffling.
But with owner Steve Cohen spending $375 million on this year’s team, everyone is under extreme pressure to perform, from general manager Billy Eppler to the 26th man, so the Mets can’t sit around waiting for problems to correct themselves.
Unfortunately for Escobar, the solution for him happens to be the Mets’ second-rated prospect crushing it at Triple-A.
“He deserves everything he’s getting right now, now that he’s getting called up,” Escobar told Newsday’s Tim Healey on Sunday through an interpreter. “He’s put in the work. He deserves to come up here and play and do what he does, because he’s that good of a player. He’s the future of this team.”
Speaking of that future, the Mets may want to re-think how they’re handling that next generation, because during the past nine months or so, it’s mostly been done on the fly.
In Baty’s case, he spent only six games (22 at-bats) at Syracuse last year before his mid-August promotion, homered in his first major-league plate appearance and went 7-for-38 (.184) in 11 games with the Mets before thumb surgery ended his season.
In spring training, Baty spoke of that brief taste as a great learning experience, one that made him want to get back there even more. With what he did in the Grapefruit League, then with Syracuse, the highly motivated Baty left little doubt of his intention to return to the majors sooner rather than later.
However, the Mets’ haphazard approach with Francisco Alvarez, who began this year as the top-ranked prospect in baseball, is tough to rationalize.
Last year, Alvarez was on his way from Syracuse to Miami to begin his offseason when the Mets made him take an unplanned detour to Atlanta’s Truist Park for a weekend showdown with the NL East title at stake. Not surprisingly, Alvarez was overwhelmed by that stage and then didn’t have a great spring training, hitting .107 (3-for-28) with three singles and 10 strikeouts before an early demotion.
No need for an explanation. Alvarez’s development supposedly was of paramount importance. But that soon took a back seat when the Mets lost starting catcher Omar Narvaez, and Alvarez — the only prospect who didn’t hit at all in spring training — became the first one to be called up.
The Mets’ win-now mentality isn’t suited for experimentation at the big-league level and Alvarez has struggled early, so it remains to be seen how much this could set him back in the long run.
Baty is a different story, however. He’s obviously at a different point on the learning curve, and the same probably can be said for Vientos and maybe Ronny Mauricio, two more bat-first prospects raking at Syracuse who should be on the near horizon when the Mets inevitably will have to fortify their DH spot.
For now, it’s Baty’s moment. And the Mets have to hope they got the decision right this time.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
