Mets 2025 projections: Jeff McNeil

No player on the Mets is more polarizing/misunderstood than Jeff McNeil. Some want him to revert to a 19^th Century slap hitter, some want him to continue to focus on hitting the ball hard while others want him traded to open up a spot for Luisangel Acuna. No player should be exempt from trade discussions. But if the Mets were to trade McNeil now, they’d be selling at a low point, which seems less than ideal. Still the Acuna fan boys look at it as addition by subtraction, which might be a reasonable take if the guy they wanted to play wasn’t coming off a .654 OPS at Syracuse.

The maddening thing about McNeil is that he’s shown extended periods of doing what needs to be done – hitting the ball with authority – only to revert back to weak pops and grounders. What he did in the second half of 2024 was very encouraging. Still, we can’t help but wonder if this time it’ll stick. Let’s check in on the non-biased computer models, which don’t worry about things like this:

ATC – 490 PA, .256/.319/.375, 9 HR
Marcel – 501 PA, .266/.329/.392, 10 HR
OOPSY – 539 PA, .252/.316/.355, 7 HR
Steamer – 497 PA, .271/.331/.395, 9 HR
THE BAT – 520 PA, .252/.313/.365, 9 HR
ZiPS – 505 PA, .261/.323/.379, 9 HR

Before we dig into the computer forecasts, let’s take a second to recall what McNeil did in the second half last season. In 149 PA, he posted a .289/.376/.547 line, with a .316 BABIP. Lifetime, in 3,159 PA, McNeil has a .312 BABIP. It’s just 149 PA – still, over 3.5X as many as Acuna last year in the majors – but that’s a .258 ISO, which is outstanding for a player who’s never hit 25 HR in the majors.

The highest ISO of our six projection models above is the .126 mark by Marcel. It certainly makes sense that none of them are close to the .258 mark. Still, it’s a touch surprising that no system had McNeil closer to the .146 ISO he had in 2024.

McNeil had a dismal .256 BABIP last year, which helped explain the bad start he experienced. But he wasn’t hitting the ball particularly hard the first three months of the season. McNeil started making much harder contact at the beginning of July but the results didn’t show. And then he took off after the break. All of the computer models have McNeil with at least a 20-point increase from the BABIP he produced in 2024, with Steamer’s .295 being the highest.

In addition to McNeil’s streaky history with driving the ball, we also have to consider his age. This will be his age-33 season and it’s certainly possible that he’ll never sniff a 4-WAR season again, much less the 5.6 fWAR he posted in 2022. Steamer and ZiPS have him as essentially a league-average player, with both having him finish with a 2.1 mark. The other three non-Marcel models all see him at 1.4 fWAR or worse.

There seems little doubt to me that if McNeil is performing at a below-average rate, he won’t top 500 PA. Shoot, he might not top 400. David Stearns has talked about giving young guys a shot, with that shot not necessarily coming at the start of the season. Mark Vientos finished with 454 PA last year, despite starting the year in the minors. Acuna, Brett Baty, Ronny Mauricio and Jett Williams are all candidates to replace a struggling McNeil, even if they’re unlikely to get Vientos’ playing time.

So, it’s incumbent upon McNeil to get off to a better start than he did a year ago. We saw with what he did in the second half last year that he’s capable of still performing at an elite level. Yet we’ve seen this movie before with McNeil. It would be great if my confidence level was higher that he’ll continue to emphasize making hard contact. But that confidence is just really not surging at the moment.

This seems kind of wishy-washy on my part but my McNeil projection is going to offer two lines. My opinion is that there’s not going to be much of a middle ground from McNeil. He’s either going to be an asset in the lineup or he’s going to stink and be replaced. Here are my bull and bear projections for McNeil:

Bull – 575 PA, .285/.350/.470, 19 HR
Bear – 217 PA, .224/.296/.321 3 HR

You’ll have more credibility if you weigh in now with what you think McNeil will do this year. All predictions for him are welcome, although the ones that use the same five categories as the article make me smile.