The Mets recently lost outfielder Jose Siri to a fractured tibia that will sideline him for a yet-to-be-determined (but obviously significant) period of time. That leaves Tyrone Taylor, Brandon Nimmo and infielder Luisangel Acuña as the three players on the roster with center field experience. Taylor and Nimmo have both played the position extensively in the majors, of course. Acuña has logged 299 minor league innings in center but has primarily been a middle infielder. Outfielder Jose Azocar, who has nearly 6000 professional innings in center (442 in the majors), is down in Triple-A but not on the 40-man roster.
Though they have plenty of candidates to help cover Siri’s absence, the Mets are apparently considering an outside-the-box possibility to further bolster their center field depth. Manager Carlos Mendoza announced today that Jeff McNeil’s next start during his minor league rehab assignment will come in center field (video link via SNY).
“He’s off today. He’s going to play center field tomorrow in Port St. Lucie,” Mendoza said. “This is nothing new for him. He’s played there before. We wanted to take advantage of this opportunity in the minor leagues. He’s on board with it. … We’ve also got Acuña, we’ve got Tyrone, but we just felt like since he’s down there now, why not use this opportunity to get him some exposure?”
McNeil does indeed have some experience in center, but it’s fleeting at best. He’s logged three partial big league games at the position — a total of 16 innings. He handled all six fly-balls that went his way without issue. McNeil has had some sporadic center field appearances in the minors as well, but he’s totaled only 28 innings there in his entire professional career. He’s surely had additional reps in non-game settings, but it’s not exactly a familiar position for him. McNeil has more than 2200 total innings of corner outfield work under his belt between the minors and the big leagues, however.
Asked if getting McNeil some occasional time in center with the big league club was a real consideration, Mendoza replied: “Well, there’s a reason we’re doing it.” It seems unlikely that McNeil would be installed for regular center field work, but there’s little harm in expanding an already versatile position player’s skill set in the wake of a notable injury — particularly when it can be done organically while on a minor league rehab assignment.
McNeil has missed the entire season thus far after straining his right oblique late in spring training. The two-time All-Star and 2022 NL batting champion is coming off a pair of down seasons, at least relative to his prior standards. McNeil has been a league-average hitter dating back to 2023, slashing a combined .257/.323/.381 over his past 1120 trips to the plate in the majors.
In place of McNeil, the Mets turned to Acuña and Brett Baty to handle second base in the season’s first few weeks. Baty had enjoyed a monster performance in spring training but has gotten out to a dismal start while playing second — a position that’s still largely unfamiliar to him. The 25-year-old former first-rounder is a third baseman but has begun to see time at second in the wake of Mark Vientos’ breakout last year. However, Baty is struggling once again in what’s now his fourth season with at least some time in the majors; he’s received 36 plate appearances but turned in a .139/.139/.222 slash. Acuña, despite being on the short side of a would-be platoon, has seen an uptick in playing time as a result and is batting .265/.359/.353 in his own small sample of 39 plate appearances.
ALthough they’re not great choices for different reasons, both Starling Marte and Jesse Winker also have experience in center too. You should correct the article.
Has Marte even played the field this year?
No. And nor should he.
Karen, is that you?
Yes, and I demand to see your manager!
Pointless point, and purely semantics. They are absolutely horrible options who have no business being in the OF at all, let alone in CF. Yes, they technically made a mistake. let this one go and move on.
At this point in their careers, I would say Marte and Winker are CF options like how Anthony Rizzo is an option as a relief pitcher
Uh Winkler can barely play LF
Heeey, the Fonz can play All da fields.
The only good fielding thing Marte can do any more is throw. His range has been severely diminished by age and injuries. Last year, Marte ranked 211th in the league in DRS for RF with a -6 despite only 680 innings there. If he’d played the whole season there, he was on pace for a worse DRS than Nick Castellanos, who finished last with -11.
Yes. And throwing isn’t worth much if he can’t get to a ball.
Hope the Mets pitchers can strike batters out. A lot of players out of position.
Thiss feels like a bad idea…
yeah, I’m sure playing a competent Centerfield in the MLB is something you can just learn on the fly, attached onto a rehab stint
Good luck with that.
Jackson Merrill learned it in 3 weeks, and has been outstanding.
ah, so therefore, 33 year old McNeil, whose defense has declined in each of the last 3 seasons, will be able to handle it because an athletic 21 year old did it. I see.
@ RonDarling Yeah, and Brandon Nimmo played there for nearly seven years in the minors and still struggled with it his first three or four years in the majors.
you have no idea how large of an indictment this is on Brandon Nimmo.
Enlighten us!
Btw, Yes. Nimmo is well on his way to full time or part time DH, possibly as soon as next season.
Yeah, part time DH is definitely in the cards at some point this year. Full time will depend on how his foot / leg hold up, and what replacements the Mets can line up moving forward.
Nimmo’s range has diminished plus he’s coming off of plantar faciitis. CF would be a bad move for the Mets.
Agree completely. But this is a bit of an all hands on deck situation. The Mets will likely try to cobble together a combination of less-than-satisfactory options, at least until Taylor (middling CF defense) hits better. On any given day, Nimmo could wind up being one of those options.
It’s too bad. Nimmo’s now a slightly above average LFer with iffy feet, and a bat that’s been in trouble since the 2024 ASB.
And the Mets have him for the next six years, until 2030, at $20.5m a year. Expensive CFers 30 and up with spotty track records on health coming off career years are not good bets. It would be interesting to have seen Stearns handle Nimmo’s free agency.
Did they go cheap at DH in the expectation that Nimmo would have to move there by 2026?
Might as well trade for Luis Robert. Mets don’t have a great farm but his stock is low now anyway.
To add to this, I wish Hahn could have pulled off a deal to trade him before he was canned in 2023.
I’m leaning toward Acuna in CF. He provides a similar player profile to Siri. The bat is questionable in both cases. Good vibes on Acuna. He plays like a pro. Hoping for a .750 OPS from LAA.
We’ll see. While I like the idea, he has only 289 innings in CF, all in the minors? Is that enough. Again.. we’ll see.
As for the Siri comparison, I don’t agree. Siri has more speed, coupled with significantly more HR power, and utterly superb defense. If Acuna’s defense was anywhere near that good, he’d have played more CF in the minors.
Let’s keep this in perspective: the ChiSox did not trade Robert in the off season because they do not want to sell low on him, and are hoping for a rebound. They can maintain that posture for two or three more months before pivoting.
One good year since 2021, fell of a cliff in 2024 and has yet to recover, average in the field now, high asking price.
Still fast, though.
The Mets will probably do better even in the short run betting on their prospects including Acuna to fill CF, or look up the likes of Harrison Bader at the Deadline. .
This now marks 4, star potential players from the prior rebuild that fell off a cliff in which should be their peak years (TA, Eloy, Moncada, and now Robert).
“This is nothing new for him. He’s played there before.” Technically the truth, the Mets PR machine in full gear right now
This over performing pitching staff will come crashing back down to Earth soon. 3rd place Mets maybe 2nd if the Braves don’t get out of their own heads.
As usual, too much overreaction to a Mets report. He’d be a depth piece in case of an emergency.
Also worth noting that Jose Azocar was not in the AAA lineup yesterday, even though Syracuse had the day off Monday.
Hope Drew Gilbert gives himself a chance to play some centerfield for the Mets this year.
Overly optimistic. First, despite the gaslighting by the NY press, it is only corner defense where Gilbert excels. his CF defense is actually questionable, not good. Its the reason that (again, contrary to what NY press tells you), all – yes, all – the projections have him as a starting corner, or a 4th OF, depending on whether his HR power grows.
Sometimes players will surprise you. Just saying I hope he does.
Could happen. Michael Conforto was supposed to be a bad defensive OF when he was drafted. So muich so that the scouts were speculating over whether he would hit well enough to move to 1B. But after only a 1 year and a half in the minors, he was already a good corner OF when he was called up, and even played a very credible CF for a little while a couple of years later.
On the other hand, Nimmo was supposed to be a good defender, and spent 6 years in the minors. But he was a poor OF when he was called up. His sub-par D in CF, was the reason they moved Conforto to CF in the first place. But Nimmo developed over time.
Taylor more than fine in CF.
Yes. He was fine last year. But it was also one of his best years defensively. And he did have two operations in November. They were not supposed to affect him this far in. But look where his hitting has been thus far.
I agree with your assessments of the centerfield options. Having said that, Jeff is back at 2b soon. Acuna will probably get some reps in CF, especially if his offense is better than Taylor’s offense.
Yeah. Anytime a team gets into a situation where there is no clear answer, I think they have to go with the hot hand. Right now, that is Acuna. That said, I do hope Taylor rebounds to be what he was last year.
It really sucks cause Siri was off to such a hot start. s/
Who would have thought Jose Siri and his slash line that begins with .050 would be that hard to replace
That is what he gets for singing John Fogerty songs.
In the long-standing, but recently dormant Mets fan tradition of bemoaning those players we traded away, this seems like the right time to complain about the utterly pointless trade of Pete Crow Armstrong for Javy Baez to “bolster” a team that won 79 games.
A painful misjudgment. Granted, at the Deadline the Mets looked to be in good shape, but their Pyth record had them as a .500 team, Half the lineup and half of the rotation was MIA, and deGrom was almost certainly out of action for the rest of the year.
So many ways to shore up the team as a nod to fans without dealing a top prospect for a rental. (Adding Rich Hill helped and barely cost, so they couldn’t plead ignorance.) The 2025 team would look vastly different if Cohen hadn’t played de facto GM the first three years he owned the Mets.
It’s a calculated, data-driven gambit to exploit an emerging 2025 trend of increased ground-ball contact, particularly from left-handed hitters, by leveraging McNeil’s versatility to address a subtle outfield arm strength deficiency.