Reese Kaplan -- You Don't Throw Away .300 Hitters

I used a phrase in debating the future of Jeff McNeil with friends last week.  I said he is kind of a Tony Gwynn/Rod Carew lite version.  People ridiculed what I said, so I felt I needed to check on how accurate or inaccurate this assessment really was.

For folks who remember Tony Gwynn, you are well aware he was the type of hitter you just hated seeing come into the batter's box.  He just seemed to have bat control that many of us hadn't seen on a consistent basis during our many years of watching the game of baseball being played.  He finished his 20-year career with an unheard of batting average for the entire span of .338.  When was the last time you saw a single batter hit .338, let alone do it for the course of an entire baseball lifetime?

Gwynn started off his career as an outfielder and throughout his two decades in the game for the San Diego Padres he rotated from left to center to right.  In those positions you generally look for run producing power, stellar defense or spectacular base running speed.  

Gwynn started off with great defense and speed, but both fell by the wayside as he aged and grew a bit bulky in his physique.  His high water mark in home runs came at 17 when he was age 37.  It was also the year he not coincidentally produced 119 RBIs while hitting (not a misprint) .372 for the season.  For all that effort he finished a mere 6th in the MVP voting.

During his first few years Gwynn didn't run much, but for a period from ages 24 through 29 he really did steal quite a few basis with a high watermark of 56 during the 1987 season when he was 27 years old.  He hit .370 that year and only finished 8th in the MVP voting.

To give you a perspective, Gwynn led the league in batting not once, not twice, but eight times (including a year ending average of .394 at age 34 in 1994.  For that effort he received only 7th place consideration for the MVP.

Now Rod Carew was a bit earlier in the game than Gwynn, but he was a similar frustrating experience for opposing teams in that he finished his career with an average of .328.  He was almost an equal split of playing 1st base and 2nd base during his career.  Even less of a power hitter than Tony Gwynn, topping out at just 14 in his best two seasons.  In the middle of his career he added speed to his game, ranging in stolen bases per season from 23 to 49 during his ages 27 through 32, but prior to then and afterwards it was no longer a productive tool for him.  

All he could do from beginning to end was hit.  It earned him 18 straight All Star appearances in a 19-year career.  He even earned an MVP.  You can't make that stuff up.  

Jeff McNeil is nowhere in these guys' class, but if you throw away his out of character .251 average from last season, he was a career .319 hitter from 2018 through 2020.  In 2019 he hit 23 Home Runs and was named to the All Star team.  In the COVID-shortened 2020 he didn't hit with much power but still batted .311.  

Now at best he's an adequate fielder and is a competent but not particularly threatening base runner.  However, like stated earlier about both Gwynn and Carew, you don't toss aside guys who regularly hit those kinds of averages. 

Everyone acknowledges that the Mets need pitching.  Their starting rotation is both a health risk and unimpressive after the departures of Noah Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman.  Let's also not forget about the relatively strong effort from late season acquisition Rich Hill.   

Now to hear folks talk about McNeil, they cite his disappointing 2021 as evidence that the league has figured him out and he's worth perhaps a middle reliever or a questionable 5th starter.  It would seem to me that you are involved in a classic selling low exercise where you will not get proper value for what he's done the three prior years.

The club has created a traffic jam on the infield with the return of Robinson Cano, Jeff McNeil, Eduardo Escobar, J.D. Davis and others.  The outfield is crowded with an opening day alignment likely including Brandon Nimmo, Starling Marte and Mark Canha.  Consequently there is a need to parlay some of your pieces in trades to fulfill needs.  

It's not necessarily clear that McNeil makes the most sense to go.  Cano is done in 2 years (or sooner if there's a recurrence of a PED violation), Davis can't field, and Escobar is being paid too much to sit on the bench. Some would advocate a combination of McNeil at 2B and Escobar at 3B with Cano serving as a DH.  That would make J.D. Davis and Dom Smith possible trade prospects.  

As it is, any machinations of the roster construction are just mental masturbation as no one is sure if and when a 2022 season will begin.  However, I wouldn't necessarily be in a big haste to give away McNeil due to a disagreement with Francisco Lindor or a bad year with the bat.  He's shown too much already to let him flourish elsewhere.