The surging Jeff McNeil and the impact of the Baez deal

Jeff McNeil’s RBI double in the first inning Friday night extended his hitting streak to 16 games, the longest by a Met this season and the longest since Wilson Ramos had a 26-game streak in 2019. The club record for longest hitting streak is the 30 games that Moises Alou had back in 2007. If McNeil gets a hit tonight, he moves into a tie with David Wright, Jose Reyes, Lance Johnson and Keith Hernandez. If he extends the streak to 20 games, he’ll move into a tie with six other players for the 10th-longest streak in club history.

The hitting streak is nice but the important thing is how productive McNeil has been in it. The streak contains more multi-hit games (7) than 1-4 outings (5) and on top of that, he’s starting to deliver some extra-base hits, too. In his last five games, McNeil has five doubles and a homer. The power numbers are a welcome sight because McNeil hasn’t delivered much of that this season previously. Before the last five games, his ISO was just .087 for the year. For a comparison, McNeil had a .213 ISO in 2019.

That’s always one of the debates people have about McNeil. Many want him to focus on being a singles hitter and trying to win the batting title. Why anyone would want a guy capable of delivering a .213 ISO to focus on singles is beyond me. Now, that doesn’t mean that McNeil should become a guy looking to hit a homer every time he comes to the plate. It means he should look to drive the ball and not be content to flick the ball to the opposite field. Anyone who saw the transformation Daniel Murphy made in 2015 should be pulling for McNeil to do the same thing.

In 2019, McNeil had an AVG as high as .356 in early June. But in the second half of the season, McNeil started to turn on the ball. In his last 39 games that year, McNeil hit “only” .285 but he posted a .962 OPS. When he had the nifty .356 AVG in June, he had a .933 OPS. And the thing is that the hits weren’t even falling in for McNeil at the end of the year. He had a .261 BABIP in that time frame. Compare that when he was focusing on singles and had a .392 BABIP. You can make the argument that if he was going for contact/singles that we might expect an elevated BABIP. But that would be a mark in the .330s not the .390s. He had an OPS 29 points higher when the hit gods were working in opposite directions. How big would his OPS advantage during the power streak be if the OPS difference was 40 points, rather than 131 points?

In his current 16-game hitting streak, McNeil has a 1.014 OPS. But in his first 12 games of the streak (there’s an extra game in there because he walked in his only PA on 7/7, which didn’t either add to or end the streak) McNeil’s OPS was .845 but in the last five games, it’s 1.471 in 17 PA. And that’s with just 1 HR. The high number of doubles is making a big difference. It’s why you want him to drive the ball whenever possible. There are times you have to protect and be happy with an opposite field single. But if it’s early or you’re up in the count, the thought should be a hard-hit ball in the gap or down the line.

McNeil’s hot hitting extends beyond the current hitting streak. He’s batting .365 for the month of July. But what people don’t recognize is that McNeil was getting out of his slump to start the year before hitting the IL. In his first 14 games of the year, McNeil was batting .163 with a .529 OPS. In his next 17 games, he had a .304 AVG and an .846 OPS. The hamstring injury couldn’t have come at a worse time, either for McNeil or the Mets.

Eliminating those first 14 games of the year, McNeil has a .311/.386/.427 line in his last 184 PA.

Yesterday’s acquisition of Javier Baez throws McNeil’s status into doubt. Initially, Baez will play shortstop and McNeil will remain at 2B until Francisco Lindor returns from his injury. When the Mets made the trade, my first thought was that Lindor’s injury might be more significant than the club was admitting. But during yesterday’s game, Gary Cohen said that Lindor was on the field during BP taking grounders, the first time he’s done that since being sidelined.

The assumption is that Baez plays second and Lindor plays short. So, where does that leave McNeil? The Mets could play him at 3B but the last time he was at the hot corner, his throws were all over the place. It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that those cluster of errors were a small sample issue. But in a season where everyone has noticed how improved the Mets’ defense is all over the field, do you really want to throw a wild card into the equation defensively?

Perhaps the Mets are thinking that’s a problem that’s three weeks away and the important thing is to stay afloat until Lindor and Jacob deGrom return. Okay, but McNeil is a +3 DRS in 433 innings at 2B this year. The last time he played 2B, Baez was a +4 in 699.2 innings in 2018. How big is the defensive upgrade really going to be?

If the real reason for the deal wasn’t a longer than expected IL stint for Lindor, wouldn’t it have made more sense to get Kris Bryant, who’s also an impending free agent and one who hits LHP even better than Baez? Luis Guillorme has been doing a fine job in Lindor’s absence, with an .882 OPS since July 4. Or is the thinking that once the playoffs start that Brandon Drury’s power bat from the right side is more important than Guillorme’s defense? Does the Baez trade eliminate the need for Guillorme?

The reality is that when Lindor comes back, either Drury or Guillorme goes unless they go with one fewer pitcher. We should be rooting for the extra position player, as Drury/Guillorme should be more valuable than Yennsy Diaz once the team stops using two TBAs as starting pitchers per week. But if somehow the Mets are married to carrying 14 pitchers, they should consider dropping Jonathan Villar, instead. Since the end of his two-week hot streak, Villar is batting .209 in his last 30 games. Guillorme is a better defensive player and Drury is likely a better offensive one, certainly a bigger threat as a pinch-hitter. And the one area where Villar has a clear advantage – baserunning – has been put into serious question with his brain farts on the bases this season.