The Mets have designated outfielder Aaron Altherr for assignment, Deesha Thosar of the New York Daily News reports.
It’ll be the fourth designation this season for Altherr, who was outrighted by New York in June after being cut loose by the Phillies and Giants earlier in the campaign. It’s been a season to forget for the 28-year-old, who’s slashed an ugly .082/.136/.164 (-22 wRC+) in 64 plate appearances. He did show signs of life in a brief stint with Triple-A Syracuse, slashing .274/.384/.565 in 73 plate appearances with the club.
It’s been a rollercoaster career for the longtime Phillie, who’s alternated sturdily productive seasons (2015, 2017) with outright dreadful ones (2016, ’18, and ’19) since his debut late in 2014. Altherr still boasts a mostly even split vs righties and lefties over the course of his big-league tenure, so he’ll mostly need to work on cutting down the strikeouts if he’s to stick as a bench option at the MLB level.
About damn time
Altherr has been awful for a couple of years now.
About time! Worse hitter than Zack Grienke.
That’s disrespect to Greinke.
Zack Greinke is posting an OPS+ of 120 this year. Whole lot of guys are far worse than him. Probably not getting the point you want to get across by using Greinke.
Also entire mets pitching staff!
Dude never should have gotten a second chance here he’s clearly done.
we were paying him; we were ‘on hook’ for major league minimum, so we were paying him about $400,000…and thats 400,000 reasons why wilpons gave him second chance; its not about winning with the wilpons..its all about the money…winning is secondary, winning is fortunate; profit is important, profit is everything.
We?
Interesting fact: Aaron Altherr is 1 of 7 hitters so far this year that only have 1 PA for a single team. His only AB came for the Giants was a strikeout. The other 6 players are
Travis d’Arnaud-Dodgers
Dylan Cozens-Phillies
Rob Brantly-Phillies
Kevin Kramer-Pirates
Raudy Read-Nationals
and Jose Rondon-Orioles
That is, indeed, and interesting fact. Thank you.
Another odd fact is that even though he batted under .100 as a Met, Altherr is one of three players who hit a homerun in the very first at bat as a Met during the regular season this year – Robinson Canó, Rajai Davis, and him.
Ooh. I like this one. Very cool.
All three made BIG contributions to a team that will be best described in typical Met Speak—they almost contended for a wild card.
I’m always amazed when a player with obvious talent fails epically. Is it mental? Is it emotional? Is it the failure of coaching? Or is is it simply that pitching charts don’t lie and players fail to strengthen their weaknesses?
I know every hitter has hit zones and unhittable zones, but pitchers miss too. Altherr truly has me perplexed.
I think it’s pretty simple actually. He just isn’t good enough to keep a roster spot at the major league level. Not many players can, that’s usually why those spots are reserved for the game’s best. Many AAAA players exist for a reason.
How about Cano?
Or is he simply Fits, over-the-hill?
see you on the somerset patriots next year!!
Please don’t wish that on the good fans of Central New Jersey.
… and there was much rejoicing.
So long overdue. It was like playing with a 24 man roster, because you cringed every time he was last man in the bench, or inserted into the starting lineup. The Mets scouting department really needs to get their eyes checked. He looked sickeningly bad in Syracuse too.