The Mets' balancing act in adding hitters

The Mets finished seventh in MLB last year with an average of 4.74 runs per game. Given how Citi Field was playing as an extreme pitcher’s park the early part of last season, that’s pretty good. From June 1 to the end of the year, the Mets’ offense posted an average of 5.03 rpg. That was what the Yankees’ offense produced in 2024 and they had the third-best mark in the category. And since the season ended, the Mets took Juan Soto away from the Yankees. While the offseason isn’t over, it’s not an unreasonable thing to believe that the Mets have improved offensively, possibly enough to vault into the top five in rpg.

Let’s look at the 2024 club, focusing on the 11 guys with the most PA. Number 11 was Jose Iglesias, who had 291 PA. Number 12 was DJ Stewart, who had 194 PA, a significant gap, which makes this a fairly obvious place to draw the line. Here they are in descending order of OPS+, with their PA in parentheses:

138 – Francisco Lindor (689)
137 – Iglesias (291)
135 – Mark Vientos (454)
123 – Pete Alonso (695)
107 – Brandon Nimmo (663)
106 – J.D. Martinez (495)
104 – Starling Marte (370)
101 – Francisco Alvarez (342)
99 – Tyrone Taylor (345)
97 – Jeff McNeil (472)
86 – Harrison Bader (437).

A cursory glance at these numbers and you can be forgiven if you’re surprised that the Mets finished seventh in the majors in rpg. But there were a couple of factors we have to consider. First, these season-long numbers don’t show any obvious sink holes in the lineup. It’s nice not to have anyone like Doug Flynn in the lineup getting 580 PA and posting a 62 OPS+. Second, even the ones bringing up the rear had extended stretches where they were very productive.

Taylor’s final 229 PA saw him with a .763 OPS, which would have put him between Alonso and Nimmo.
McNeil’s final 153 PA saw a .929 OPS, which was 85 points better than Lindor’s top mark on the team.
Bader had a stretch of 99 PA where he notched an .893 OPS.

And while it’s easy to forget with how he finished the year, Nimmo had a 266-PA stretch from the end of April until the All-Star break where he had an .886 OPS.

Switching our focus to 2025, we know the Mets have four guys from last year’s team missing, including Iglesias and Alonso, the players with the second and fourth-best OPS+ marks, respectively. But they’ve added Soto, who should be the team’s top offensive player in the upcoming season. Last year, Soto had a 178 OPS+ in 713 PA. Lifetime, he has a 160 OPS+.

Soto’s a massive improvement over Alonso, while Jose Siri should be able to do a reasonable Bader imitation, hopefully in fewer PAs. Which leaves two or three offensive additions to come, depending on how you feel about Brett Baty. Maybe Baty replaces the 495 PA of Martinez or the 291 of Iglesias. It’s my opinion that he places in the top 11 of players on the 2025 Mets in PA – just a question of how many.

One of the things I like best about David Stearns is that he believes in giving young guys a shot. We saw Vientos get 454 PA last year and it seems very reasonable that some young player who didn’t get 200 PA in 2024 will get a Vientos-sized shot in 2025, whether that’s Baty or Luisangel Acuña or Ronny Mauricio. While it’s not reasonable to expect this year’s young player – whoever it might be – to match Vientos’ 135 OPS+, hopefully he will put up a triple-digit mark and be a productive member of the offense.

My hope is that the Mets add at least one more bat who can give 500 or more PA at an OPS+ of 120 or better. But Stearns needs to think both short-term and long-term with whatever additions he makes to the club before the start of Spring Training. The whole idea since Steve Cohen took over was to build a team that always competes. And the ideal way to do that is to have proven stars – likely with huge contracts like Soto and Lindor – supplemented with productive youngsters on much-cheaper deals.

The last thing the Mets need to do is chase guys whose name value exceeds their current production. No one wants to be the late-80s, early-90s Yankees, filled with guys with name recognition, like Jesse Barfield, Mel Hall, Ken Phelps and Steve Sax, but whose best days were all behind them. The Yankees turned things around when they cleaned out those guys and gave playing time to the prospects bubbling up in the farm system, the ones who led them to four World Series victories in five years.

Maybe the Mets don’t have two Hall of Famers and two Hall of Very Good players in their farm system like the Yankees did all those years ago. But with Lindor and Soto, they have the future Hall of Famers already on the team. Can a handful of recent and future prospects, like Acuna, Alvarez, Baty, Carson Benge, Ryan Clifford, Drew Gilbert, Mauricio, Vientos and Jett Williams give the team a strong supporting cast?

If we think Alvarez and Vientos will fill two of those spots, who will fill the other two? And how much is it worth to be better in 2025 but to block one of these guys from ever having a shot? Is it worth it to sign a declining Alonso to a multi-year deal to block Clifford? Does it make sense to re-up with a declining McNeil to block Acuna and/or Williams? Do you sign a declining Alex Bregman and block Baty and/or Mauricio?

It’s a balancing act and to correctly navigate it, you need to have one eye on the present and one eye on the future. With what’s on the team right now, the Mets have a good enough offense. So, Stearns’ challenge is to make this year’s offense better while not putting in road blocks with multi-year deals for guys past their prime. It’s why a one-year deal for Paul Goldschmidt made so much sense to me.

Stearns hit a home run in his (essentially) one-year deals to Sean Manaea and Luis Severino last season. And then he re-signed the good one and let the lucky one leave. With a little over a month to go before the start of Spring Training, can Stearns pull off the same feat of filling spots with short-term deals, only this time for the offense, rather than the pitching?

Thru nearly three months of the offseason, Stearns has stuck to his guns. The majority of the fans are getting antsy yet it doesn’t make any sense to show patience at first, only to cave at the last minute. The Soto signing gives the Mets a lot of room to maneuver. They don’t have to improve the offense at any one position because they’ve already massively improved a hole that needed to be filled.

We can argue about the relative size of the holes still remaining. But we also need to acknowledge what’s on the team already. We start with Soto and a 160 OPS+ and then add Lindor, McNeil, Nimmo and Vientos – who should all be above 110 if they’re healthy and play 140 games. They have CF locked up with two guys who should be around league average – and on short-term deals, to boot – and the hope is that Alvarez stays healthy and makes a jump offensively.

That’s seven guys who should comprise a very good offense, leaving two spots to fill. And Stearns can do virtually nothing here and play Marte and one of the young guys and be okay. Knowing that, there’s absolutely no reason to go five or more years on anyone remaining in free agency. And here’s hoping that Stearns does not sign anyone beyond the two years he offered Teoscar Hernández earlier in the offseason.