Jeff McNeil is the reigning NL Batting Champion and a player who has been described as having elite bat to ball skills. McNeil is a terrific player, one that is great to see on the Mets. He’s a versatile player, both in the field and at the plate. My preference is for him to be the type of hitter he was in the second half of 2019, one who looked to pull the ball for power.
Most people prefer a guy who hits the ball to all fields. There’s nothing inherently wrong about having that particular style. It’s just that the vast majority of players are more productive when they pull the ball. In 2022, McNeil hit the ball to the opposite field 94 times and had a .610 OPS. That same season, he pulled the ball 140 times and had a 1.204 OPS. It was a good year for him pulling the ball. But that’s been the pattern for him his entire career. Lifetime, he has a .675 OPS when hitting to the opposite field and a 1.071 OPS when he pulls the ball.
If McNeil’s numbers were reversed, my preference would be for him to hit to the opposite field. This is not a style of play preference. Instead, it’s a simple desire to see a guy be as good as he can.
My hope coming into the year was that McNeil would shift his focus from concentrating where the infielders were playing him to focus on where the outfielders were aligned. Without the shift, McNeil could hunt holes beyond the infield and tap once again into his power, looking for doubles and triples into the gap, along with a couple of extra home runs, too.
That hope has yet to materialize in 2023.
McNeil has just 10 XBH in 242 PA, which has led to a dismal .070 ISO. Last year’s ISO was .128 and in 2019 it was .213, even though the power he showed didn’t come until late in the year. So, what’s happening with McNeil I 2023?
He’s pulling the ball 42.1% of the time, his highest rate since 2019. He’s just having lousy results when he does. McNeil has pulled the ball 61 times so far this year and has just a .739 OPS, a drop of .332 points of OPS from his lifetime mark in the category.
Of those 61 balls he’s pulled, a whopping 45 of them have been ground balls to the first or second baseman where he did not get a hit. All told, 30 of them went to the second baseman, with the vast majority being 4-3 putouts. There were also 15 hit to the first baseman, resulting in a mix of 3-1s, 3Us and a few fielder’s choices where they went for the lead runner.
Perhaps not all of those grounders were officially pulled ones.
Baseball-Reference shows McNeil with 80 ground balls. Their box scores do not show which base hits were of the GB variety. No doubt there were grounders he pulled for a hit. But there were several comebackers, along with groundouts to the shortstop and third baseman, too. McNeil is batting .238 on grounders, which is right around league average, with 19 of his 80 grounders becoming hits.
It’s been frustrating watching the games and seeing all of the grounders hit to the second baseman. Somehow, the ones to the first baseman didn’t stand out as much to me, yet there have been quite a few of those, too.
Previously, my hope for McNeil was to pull the ball, figuring that was his best chance for an extra-base hit. Until further notice, my preference is for him to hit a line drive, even if the vast majority of those just end up being singles for him this year. Line drives are always the batted ball with the highest AVG and this season, McNeil has a .655 AVG when he hits a liner. Again, that’s right in line with MLB average, as hitters bat .648 when they smack a line drive.
A line drive single to center is way better than another 4-3 grounder. It’s just not that double or triple that happens with a ball smoked into the gap. Everyone focuses on the lack of singles for Francisco Lindor. Instead, my question is: Why can’t McNeil, Starling Marte and Daniel Vogelbach deliver extra-base hits at a rate anything close to what they did in 2022?
No doubt it’s Hugh Quattlebaum’s fault.
I am glad to see this article. McNeil seems to get a pass this year when players are getting called out for under-performing. Winning the batting title again is not a fair expectation, but his drop in multiple offensive categories is hurting the team.
I’d say that McNeil’s woes as well as Lindor’s (further embellished in the prior article) are major reasons for the Mets offensive collapse this year. Their (the team, not just McNeil and Lindor) approach at the plate seems quite different too. How many times last year did the Mets wear out the opposing starter with a 25-30 pitch first inning? Those often led to first inning runs, an early lead, and an earlier entrance by the other team’s bullpen.
I’ve not read much about this, but I can’t help but think that the hitting coach change has a lot to do with this. Chavez seemed like a real natural in that slot and it seemed like he received a lot of praise from the team. This year, almost nothing is said about Jeremy Barnes. What’s his background? Was he a Chavez protege? If memory serves, Chavez was new to coaching so he could not have been developing his backfill for very long. I can appreciate that Chavez has his own career aspirations, so I don’t begrudge him his promotion to bench coach, but the team surely misses him in his former role.
Perhaps I am overstating the role of the hitting coach, but in my view, Barnes may be a big part of the problem.
I just did a wee bit of Googling and learned that Barnes was the assistant hitting instructor behind Chavez last year but otherwise had spent his career in player development. He does have MLB playing time. I thought that Chavez had zero coaching experience but he was an interim manager for the Sacramento Bees earlier.
Not that any of that matters very much, but I do wonder if Barnes has installed his own strategy or if his chemistry with the team is less. If that’s the case, I have to think that Buck, Chavez, and the front office are aware of this too.
Keith Hernandez always says that a pitching coach is more important to pitchers than a hitting coach is to batters. Besides, Chavez is still right there. If any hitter feels that Chavez helped him more than Barnes, I’m sure Chavez would be happy to spend some time with him to get him going. And my guess is if Buck got wind that Player X missed Chavez, he’d likely order his new bench coach to spend some time with the player.
What great research Brian. Just another hidden data point on why the Mets collectively are a .500 team.
Thanks for the kind words, Mike!
McNeil’s BABIP is a big drop, which I suppose is obvious. But right now it seems he has really been impacted by the anti-shift. his *natural* state is an all fields guy, which is quite obvious in his preferred approach at the plate. He clearly is not getting the opposite field hits any more. When he went all pull / all power power, it was an unmitigated disaster (see 2021). I agree with you on the line drive. I wish he was a gap-to-gap doubles hitter, like last year when he had 39 doubles. He’s on track for only *half* that this season. And that sucks.
BTW. DeGrom is having Tommy john surgery.
This is simply not true.
Last year, McNeil had a .269 AVG on hits to the opposite field
This year, he has a .343 AVG on hits to the opposite field.
Lifetime, he has a .294 AVG on hits to the opposite field.
McNeil is having more success going the other way in 2023 than he did last year or compared to his lifetime rate.
Furthermore, he had 94 PA last year where he hit the ball the other way. The Mets have played 60 games, which is 37% of 162 games. And 37% of 94 PA is 34.8 0r 35. And right now, McNeil has 36 PA where he’s hit the ball the other way. So, it’s not like he’s hitting the other way fewer times because there’s no major shifts.
Everything, and I mean everything, that’s wrong with McNeil is he’s hitting too many balls on the ground to the right side.
Great point about McNeil and the lack of the shift
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