PHILADELPHIA — With an offense that has not hit for the majority of the still-early season, the Mets are leaning on their past and believing it will eventually become their present.
Francisco Lindor entered play with a .200 average and .651 OPS.
Pete Alonso’s on-base percentage had sunk to .306. Jeff McNeil, the 2022 NL batting champion, held a .236 average with one home run in his first 42 games.
The Mets’ offense has been the largest cause of a slow start and arguably has been the largest surprise of their first seven weeks of the season.
David Stearns looked over the bats on Thursday and said he trusts the years of performance rather than the seven weeks of mostly non-performance.
“We have players with track records who have performed over the course of their careers,” the president of baseball operations said before the Mets finished a series with the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.
The Mets entered play with a collective .233 batting average and having scored just 4.21 runs per game, the 13th worst in the majors.
Stearns did not see a commonality among the various slow-starting hitters, though he did mention that the Mets’ schedule has been “pretty tough” thus far.
The struggles led to the call-up of Mark Vientos, who is platooning with Brett Baty (who has not hit) at third base.
The Mets decided to sacrifice some defensive ability and versatility for a bat they deemed they needed.
In other seasons, perhaps the Mets could have allowed Baty to continue to get the majority of reps at third and learn through his struggles.
Because of the offense’s collective funk, that wasn’t an option this season.
Lindor has been a notable underperformer, though the shortstop’s advanced metrics are encouraging.
He is still hitting the ball hard.
He entered with a .273 expected batting average, hinting at an inordinate amount of bad luck.
“I think similar to our team, there have been flashes that have been really, really solid and then times where he probably would expect himself to perform a little bit better,” Stearns said of Lindor. “But I fully expect … he’s going to have a Francisco Lindor type of year.
“He’s a really good player. I think especially over the last few weeks, month, he’s taken very consistent at-bats. Sometimes he’s found the holes and sometimes he hasn’t.”
Stearns spoke similarly of Alonso, whose bat has gotten going.
He acknowledged, though, that McNeil — who struggled for much of last season, too, when he finished with a .270 average and .711 OPS — has not shown as much.
“Jeff’s a good hitter who hasn’t hit yet,” Stearns said. “We really believe he’s a good hitter. He’s working his tail off to get back to where he wants to be. And certainly we’re going to give him every opportunity we possibly can to get going.”
If the Mets’ offense does not get going, they likely would approach the same crossroads that Billy Eppler faced last year, when the then-GM held a fire sale at the trade deadline.
Owner Steve Cohen acknowledged that the Mets will have decisions to make at the deadline in a tweet he later deleted Thursday.
Whatever the Mets’ strategy will be in a few months will be decided in a few months.
“We’re not anywhere close to even having discussions like that. We’re in mid-May,” Stearns said. “We’re focused every single day on trying to win baseball games. From a trade-deadline strategy discussion, that’s something that we’ve got months to figure out.”
