Dominic Smith’s hot start complicates Buck Showalter’s DH decision

From my office chair, the Mets needed to install Jeff McNeil as their second baseman without going thru any dog and pony show about how a hot Spring Training from Robinson Cano could result in some type of time share at the position. New manager Buck Showalter agreed and indicated that McNeil would get the vast majority of playing time at the position. Hopefully, the early vote of confidence from the new skipper will allow McNeil to relax and concentrate on getting his offense back to pre-2021 levels.

While Showalter acted with decisiveness with the potential 2B problem, he’s gone the other way with the team’s designated hitter. With all of the years managing the Yankees, Rangers and Orioles, Showalter has tons of experience writing the DH into a lineup. But he hasn’t declared a winner at the NL’s newest position. And it looks like the biggest beneficiary of Showalter’s deliberateness here will be Dominic Smith.

When we last saw Smith, he was chasing pitches he had no business swinging at en route to a .667 OPS, which was .270 points lower than the OPS he put up over the combined 2019-20 seasons. Smith had fewer than 200 PA in both 2019 and 2020. The 493 PA he accumulated last year was easily an MLB high for the former first-round pick. Many concluded that what he did in the two previous seasons was merely a small-sample illusion, a belief buttressed by Smith’s .344 BABIP in that time period.

Last year, Smith had a .298 BABIP and his numbers cratered. The drop in that metric was expected. What caught me off guard was the drop in power. Over the 2019-20 seasons, Smith had a .571 SLG and a .272 ISO. Last year those numbers were .363 and .119, respectively. Smart money would have been on both of those numbers falling off in 2021. But anyone who says now they expected a .119 ISO is lying.

Clearly, pitch recognition and the decision on which pitches to swing at played a big role in the power decline for Smith. Now we’ve heard that he played last year with a partially torn labrum. That’s an issue that we usually associate with pitchers. But it can’t be fun to try to play thru that injury as a hitter, either.

No one wants to be seen as soft. Plus, with the Mets experiencing so many injuries elsewhere, there’s little doubt that Smith felt the need to push onward, allegedly for the good of the team.

So far in camp, we’ve seen Smith hit two homers off Max Scherzer in an intra-squad game and he also delivered a triple and a homer in the club’s first exhibition game against the Nationals. It’s easy to read too much into the results of early Spring Training competition in a rushed environment. At the same time, Smith had just one game all of last season with two homers and they didn’t come off a CY Award winner. Also, he didn’t hit a single triple in 2021.

During the lockout, my opinion was that J.D. Davis should get the bulk of the playing time at DH. My belief was that Smith should get some time there, too, but that most of his playing time should occur in the outfield, giving the occasional day off to Starling Marte and Brandon Nimmo, with more playing time subbing in for Mark Canha.

No one really wants to see Smith in the outfield. But it’s my firm belief that days off are a good thing for the regulars. Plus, my expectation is that a renewed emphasis on plate discipline would produce better results in the power department for Smith.

But the knowledge that Smith was playing hurt last year changes things. Davis may be more consistent but Smith may have the higher upside. Perhaps Showalter starts the year off with a platoon of the two players at the position. When he was first acquired, the thought was that Davis would be used as a lefty masher. But he’s proven able to hit RHP, too. His biggest challenge has proven to be staying healthy. Davis’ production fell off in 2020 after getting hit by an Aroldis Chapman fastball. And last year his results early were great but several injuries took their toll.

And to further muck things up is the presence of Cano. Assuming he’s on the roster when Opening Day rolls around, Cano will get a handful of starts at 2B. But he’s likely to get playing time at DH, too. So, Showalter will have to balance three people for playing time at the position. It’s hard to run a straight platoon with three players involved.

It’ll be curious to see how Showalter handles the DH position. The trend recently in the AL is for multiple people to play the position, rather than having one primary guy to handle the spot. But that’s more due to not having a big slugger without a position to utilize, rather than a preferred way to run things. Here are the teams with the most production at DH in the AL last year and the players with at least 80 PA at the position on the team:

Angels – Shohei Ohtani
Red Sox – J.D. Martinez
Twins – Nelson Cruz, Josh Donaldson
Yankees – Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge
Indians – Franmil Reyes

The Twins traded Cruz during the season, necessitating another player to fill the position. And they essentially swapped one regular for another. Injuries limited Stanton to 139 games last year and he was the DH in 108 of them. Six times he took the field as an outfielder in an NL park and five times he was a pinch-hitter. Additionally, 12 times he played the outfield came after September 1. Thru the heart of the season, if he was available, Stanton was the DH.

Here’s how the three teams in the middle of the pack for production from the DH spot last year filled the position:

Astros – Yordan Alvarez, 425 PA; Michael Brantley, 132 PA
Orioles – Trey Mancini, 287 PA; Ryan Mountcastle, 168 PA, Anthony Santander, 84 PA
Royals – Jorge Soler, 181 PA; Salvador Perez, 163 PA; Ryan O’Hearn, 107 PA

Maybe the Mets end up with a situation like the Astros, with two people getting the lion’s share of PA from the DH spot and with a clear number one between those two.

My hope is the Mets finish among the league leaders in production from the DH spot. For years, we’ve heard how they’ve tried to play people out of position to get their bat in the lineup. But they’ve upgraded the team defensively since Steve Cohen arrived, adding better defenders in Francisco Lindor and James McCann last year along with Mark Canha and Starling Marte this past offseason. Now they can further improve with putting an offensive player in the DH spot.

The top five teams in the AL all got at least an .800 OPS from the DH spot in 2021. The Angels led the way with a .972 OPS from their DHs. Meanwhile, the Astros got a .761 OPS from their DH crew. The Mets’ goal should be to have top level production from the DH spot, significantly above what the Astros received last year. The question for Showalter is how to achieve that type of production. As for Smith, he’s now got to be viewed as a legitimate option to get significant playing time in the spot for the Mets.