Mark Vientos, Brett Baty and Francisco Alvarez: whither the “Baby Mets?”

Mets cap

Your intrepid columnist did a podcast this week with Brian Joura, the Grand Poobah of this site. A feature of these Mets360 ‘casts queries what Brian and his guests would consider an outlandish prediction for an upcoming event: the remainder of the season, the trade deadline, an individual player’s stats, etc. Brian’s involved young catcher Francisco Alvarez – banished to the bushy wilds of Syracuse for a change of scenery a couple of weeks ago – and his possibly-immanent return to the majors. Brian predicted a huge power surge for him based off his early MiLB performance. Mine involved third baseman/DH Mark Vientos and his ability to turn his own dismal season around. We each came to the conclusion that the other was crazy. We are Mets fans: of course we’re crazy, but I found it telling that both of our “crazy” predictions involved recoveries by players upon whom we all pinned our hopes very recently.

If we were to time-transport back three seasons, to those heady days of 2022 -- let’s say the same time of year as now, right around the All-Star break – we’d see a Mets team riding a high. They had just taken three-of-four from the Chicago Cubs to run their record to 58-35 and while a 23 games-above-.500 record is impressive on its surface, cracks in the foundation were beginning to show, as evidenced by a lead over the Atlanta Braves that had shrunk from ten-and-a-half games on June 1 to two-and-a-half by July 17. They added some reinforcements at the trade deadline -- including the infamous Daniel Vogelbach and the egregious Darin Ruf – but it was clear that if the Mets were to keep the train a-chuggin’, they would need some young strength to shovel the coal. That was the cue for the call-up of Brett Baty, who arrived in spectacular fashion, homering in his first MLB at-bat in Atlanta off the veteran Jake Odorizzi in a 9-7 Mets win. We all raved. Nothing but bright days ahead for this kid. And there were 11 of them before he was felled by a torn thumb ligament that scuttled the rest of his year. The team flailed a bit for two weeks in his absence before they called up their next wunderkind, Vientos, who made his debut in a 9-3 blowout of the Miami Marlins. The 2022 version of Vientos wasn’t going make anyone forget Brett Baty, as he started oh-for-his-first-ten Big League at bats. As the lead got more and more fragile down the stretch, the front office made a desperation move, bringing up Alvarez on September 30 and starting him at DH in a must-win in Atlanta. The kid was not up to it as he took an oh-for-four with a couple of crucial strikeouts. Were the expectations unfair for a 20-year-old in the cauldron of a collapsing pennant race? Probably, but those Billy Eppler-Buck Showalter Mets were famously unprepared for adversity.

The following year, a recovered Baty was handed the third base job and famously botched it, not able to boost his batting average above .212 and posting a 63 OPS+. Vientos battled his own injuries and rode the Syracuse shuttle the whole year. Alvarez had a much sunnier 2023, bashing 25 homers as the starting catcher in the Mets’ dismal transition year. As the Mets’ jettisoned bloated contracts and restocked the farm system down the stretch, the question remained as to whether these kids, these “Baby Mets,” as they became affectionately known would ever perform up to their press clippings and minor league analytics. In 2024, Vientos emerged as the new hot 3B, with 27 round-trippers of his own and a sparkling 136 OPS+ on a team that rode a wave of good feeling all the way to an NLCS game 6. Alvarez and Baty, however, didn’t have it as good. Alvarez regressed on both sides of the ball and Baty was the one who yo-yoed between Syracuse and Queens.

As for 2025, it has not been kind, overall, to any of the three. Alvarez, as mentioned finds himself at the point that he’s back in AAA. Baty struggled early, generating a lot of spilled ink over his lack of production, only able to reclaim a spot in the infield mix after another trip upstate. He has acquitted himself fairly well since his return, but it has been inconsistent, at best. Vientos has continued to fail in big-spot-after-big-spot, one of the leading culprits in the Mets’ frustrating propensity to leave runners in scoring position. On July 11, though, he had a night of redemption, belting a clutch eighth-inning double to right center to give the Mets an unlikely lead in Kansas City, in a game that became a blowout. The hope is this will ignite his season and he can be a key contributor down the stretch, as they find themselves in another dogfight in the National League East.

That hope applies to the other guys as well.