April 22nd: Soto has been officially activated, as expected, with Senger optioned as the corresponding move.
April 21st: The Mets are planning to reinstate Juan Soto from the injured list on Wednesday, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post. He has been on the 10-day IL for a little over two weeks but will now return without a rehab assignment.
Soto, of course, is one of the best hitters in the league. He put up a huge .355/.412/.516 line in the club’s first eight games. A strain in his right calf put him out of action and sent him to the IL. Soto’s absence almost perfectly aligns with the club’s season going into a tailspin. The Mets won their first game with Soto on the IL, increasing their record to 7-4. They have since dropped 11 straight contests, dropping them to 7-15. That’s the worst record in the National League and only half a game better than the Royals for worst in the majors.
Ideally, Soto’s return will help the Mets to get back in the win column before the season slips away. They still have lots of time to make up ground but they’ve already put themselves in a hole. FanGraphs still gives the Mets a 41.4% chance of making the postseason, which doesn’t seem too bad in the current context, but that’s basically half of the 80.4% chance they had to begin the campaign.
The outfield has been a particular weak spot for the club since Soto landed on the shelf. The club has received a collective .232/.305/.322 line from their outfielders since Soto’s IL placement. That line translates to an 83 wRC+, indicating the group has been 17% below average, with only seven clubs below them in that category.
The Mets had planned on having Carson Benge in right, Luis Robert Jr. in center and Soto in left as their primary alignment. Robert is playing well but Benge has a .143/.229/.206 line on the year. That’s partially due to a rough .182 batting average on balls in play but his struggles have unfortunately coincided with Soto’s absence. Brett Baty has been largely bumped to the outfield by the Mets’ offseason infield additions but he has a .200/.206/.277 line this year. Tyrone Taylor is hitting .214/.241/.357. Tommy Pham is hitless in eight plate appearances.
Due to both Soto and Jorge Polanco being on the IL, MJ Melendez has picked up some playing time in the designated hitter spot. He has a .357/.438/.714 line but in a tiny sample of 16 plate appearances. That’s been helped by a massive .800 BABIP and has come despite him striking out eight times, half of his plate appearances. He won’t sustain this kind of production, especially since he’s a .216/.298/.391 hitter in almost 1700 career plate appearances.
The Mets will have to remove someone from the active roster when Soto is officially reinstated. They are currently carrying three catchers, so optioning Hayden Senger is probably the easiest solution. Recalling Senger for Polanco a few days ago may have been about giving the club the option of using Francisco Alvarez in the DH spot when he was getting a day off from catching, but they have been riding the hot hand of Melendez instead.
Optioning Benge is another option, since he is struggling so much. But as mentioned, some of that is due to poor batted ball luck, so the Mets might keep him around and hope his luck changes. Melendez also has options but the Mets might let him keep going until the hot streak ends. Designating Pham for assignment would be another possibility, since he’s not playing much and hasn’t hit when given the chance.
Photo courtesy of Robert Edwards, Imagn Images
“Here he comes to save the day!”
He is a man, not a mouse.
He likes cheese
Who doesn’t like cheese?
Anyone who is lactose intolerant, I would imagine.
You can still like cheese even if it doesn’t like you.
My son doesn’t like cheese. Especially melted cheese. Crazy never thought id meet a kid who disliked pizza but it happened
I blame his parents. 🙂
I have a friend who doesn’t like pizza. Hated it as a kid, hates it today. It blows my mind.
Here comes Soto to at least save a 0.500 season.
Soto is great, this Mets team is not.
Incoming 12 game winning streak
Soto is great at hitting and hitting for power. Elite eye. Stole quite a few bases last year. High baseball iq. Poor defense. Clubhouse drama seems to follow in his wake. NY media reports he was not in contact with the team or his team mates during his IL stint. Say it ain’t so Soto, say it ain’t so
update: soto has shot himself in the leg to avoid going back to that clubhouse (we miss him in the bronx)
I still don’t understand why he left the Yankees for the Mets. lol Imo a very dumb career move
He has 765 million reasons to disagree.
No, just 5 million. The Yankees offered him 760. He changed teams for a difference of 6 tenths of 1 percent.
Luxury suite for his family @ Citi. He wasn’t going to spend his $ for them to watch the Mutts.
The reason is summed up in one word. C.R.E.A.M.
Probably because he was tired of Aaron Boone hogging all of the clubhouse Gouda.
The Dodgers are what happens when you combine brains and $.
The Mets are what happen when you have money only.
It shouldn’t come down to money at all.
It always comes down to $.
The world literally revolves around it.
Actually, it literally revolves around the sun.
I’d bet you that any country will prioritize $ over well-being, because without $, there is no well-being.
Pb
“Actually, it literally revolves around the sun.”
Actually, it literally revolves around the barysystem (the solar system’s center of mass) which is inside the sun (since the sun is so massive) about 450 km from the sun’s center.
Similarly, the moon doesn’t orbit the earth, the earth and moon orbit the earth/moon barycenter which is about 4500 km from the Earth’s center.
Is your name Cliff Claven?
Really the earth vortexes around the sun as the sun rotates around the center of our galaxy at around 250 m/s
Billionaires can be stupid… case in point, the creamsicle Caligula.
I think I developed cancer from reading this thread. You all deserve each other.
He’s just Juan man; he can’t do everything by himself.
Juan you look at it that way, it makes sense
Not a minute too soon
Mets need Soto back is an understatement. I’d send down Benge.
He’s better off staying on the DL
Than re-joining this trainwreck nightmare
I hope he’s reinstated as player manager.
Under the pump. How weird was Mendoza talking about the trail runner in a walk off situation. Big Steve couldn’t be happy with that.
Haha, I gotta go find that clip to watch.
If Soto comes back to be his normal .950 OPS self and the Mets pull out of this spin and make the playoffs, he’s got to win the MVP, right?
Cal hit 60 homeruns and lost to Judge. It all comes down to the writers and who they vote for
Countdown to winning streak and return of “Mets are coming for the Dodgers!” Talk around May 15. Spoiler: it will be as delusional then as it was in March but NY sports fans not known for their nuance or moderation.
Benge to AAA?
Benge wasn’t good in AAA last year. If they promoted him predictably too early b/c some impatient whiners would cry “service time manipulation”, shame on them.
Leave Benge in the everyday lineup. I’d rather watch him trying to work his way out of it than look at Vientos, Baty (ugh), and Taylor (double ugh). I’d like to see those three disappear, as well as Senga Peterson Manaea.
Achilles Last Stand
So tired of this false narrative that low BABiP is always and only a result of bad luck. Sometimes it is a result of bad hitting. And that is the case with Benge: a 57.9% ground ball rate is always going to produce a low BABiP. The kid is simply not ready for the big leagues. Send him down and let him complete his AAA apprenticeship.
While I agree with you and that context matters, Benge only has 70 PA and his BABIP is isn’t a true indicator in such a small sample size.
geofft
“Sometimes it is a result of bad hitting. And that is the case with Benge: ”
And sometimes it is bad luck. Let’s see if we can look a little deeper
Benge has 11 line drives and 27.3% of those have been hits
Benge has 26 ground balls and 19.2% of those have been hits
Benge has 11 fly balls and 9.1% of those have been hits
This season
64.9% of line drives have been hits
24.1% of ground balls have been hits
19.8% of fly balls have been hits
Benge is getting fewer hits on each batted ball type than the league average hitter.
Per statcast, his expected batting average is .202. His actual batting average is .136
baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/carson-benge-…
It looks like bad luck is a factor in Benge’s poor numbers this season.
Okay. Now foolow through and see what those numbers actually mean: that .202 BA would give him 4 more hits on the year. If we assume that one opf those hits is a double, his slash line would read smething like .202/.288/.288/.576. Still not adequate.
Let’s look at some more statcast numbers:
He’s topped 43.8% of his balls compared with 32.4% for the league. Barrel rate: 4.2% compared ith 7.2 for the league.
Percentile rankings: Barrel rate 22nd percentile; Hard hit 44th; Bat speed 32nd; squared up 43rd;
None of that screams major league starter.
Very few position players succeed in the majors on their first call-up. The number who can do it after only 54 games above single-A. Miniscule.
Sure
I wasn’t discussing that
If the clubhouse issues are real, who goes? Lindor or Soto?
Neither one of them is going anytime soon. And the Mets can’t trade either of them if if they wanted to. Lindor is now a 10-and-5 guy, and Soto has a full no-trade clause in his contract.
The manager would be my uneducated guess.
Soto gonna walk off tonight 465ft Nuke to right center
The way Soto goes, so go the Mets go
Juan Soto needs to talk to Bugs Bunny about how he can learn to play the whole field by himself.
Why is Pham still on this team?
He’ll be gone soon I assume