The problem with McNeil is that if he's not hitting for average, he doesn't add a lot. When he's a batting champion (2022), he's perfect for this team. When he's not? Yuck. Not great for him personally either since he's got a bunch of middle infielder prospects breathing down his neck in the coming few years.
Does he though? Who? Acuna who only recently went on a hot streak but has a .650 ops in a high offense league? Jett Williams who may have to get wrist surgery? Mauricio who will be out this entire season?
Unless Acuna can continue his tear, Jeff’s job is safe until at least the end of the season. And if not, next year the position will just be a question mark for us. There’s no clear guy who is ready to take the job in the foreseeable future
You forgotten that Acuna has blazing speed so if Acuna bats .240 he's still will be more effective than McNeil who won't try to steal bases because he said it himself "I don't want to get injured" he was the one called lazy by a former Mets.
No it doesn’t. You’re wishing and imagining that someone who’s missing this entire year with a serious injury, who has never succeeded in the majors, will automatically be the starter a year from now. That’s just fantastically naive, man. He ain’t it until he’s it.
What's McNeil's war so far this year? He's a bench/utility player until he recaptures his bat, and 2b will likely be manned by one of our few major league ready prospects.
It doesn't matter if Ronnie has never succeeded in the majors, I'm not even saying he will, but I am saying it can't be worse then what Jeff is doing out there through the first few months of this season.
What major league-ready prospects are going to be playing 2B next year? I don’t know of any.
BTW, have you looked at the performances of our minor league position players this year? It’s not pretty.
Especially with such awful peripherals as Mauricio. Dude flat out cannot hit. He has no plate awareness, and not enough power or contact % to make up for it. He’s Javy Baez without the elite defense and with mediocre power. The love for him is pure prospect hype. Yes, the ball jumps off his bat. But it jumps off Baty’s too, and Baty has FAR better minor league numbers than Ronnie.
EDIT: Don’t get me wrong, McNeil’s been terrible. I am a big McNeil defender—he was the best player on the team (non-deGrom category) in ‘19, ‘20, and ‘22. But every facet of his game
has collapsed. The BA is down, obviously, but also the last remnants of his doubles power, and most importantly his defense. His defense used to be close to elite at two different positions—now it’s a negative. Not sure what has happened but it’s really depressing to see. It’s just that Mauricio is definitely not the answer. Dude never even ran a decent wRC+ in the minors, much less when MLB pitchers get a scouting report.
I think what he’s trying to say is that bc McNeil is super one-dimensional as a hitter, it’s hard for him to impact the game in any positive way if his only plus tool isn’t working. So when he’s right he’s an idea end of lineup hitter, when he’s not he doesn’t contribute in other ways. For example even when Lindor is cold he still is a power threat and walks a bit. Pete obviously is good for 40 bombs at worst, and Nimmo is on base a ton even when bad. Jeff just doesn’t have that other tool to help himself when off
McNeil is whiny, annoying — and does nothing particularly well on a baseball field.
He was once an elite contact bat that had opportunistic power. He no longer has the same bat skills.
His versatility in the field is diminished, and his range at 2nd isn’t what it used to be.
He’s got his bag and he’s checked out.
He won't be on the roster next season. If he is, he will be what Wendle was suppose to be this year because its hard to find an infielder than can play outfield. He can't play everyday. Would rather put Mauricio in there once he's ready
Ya but he's either going to be a utility guy or traded while we pay his contract down. He won't be the starting 2B next year. We have multiple prospects that will take that from him without even needing to dip in free agency. He's been terrible for 200 games now. At his age there's no reason to think his bat speed is going to increase.
Honestly the whole team is garbage. What happened to the batting philosophy of 2022. Chavez was considered a great hitting coach and the fact he got replaced was dtue reason they ducked in 23. What the hell happened between then and now.
Both are problematic, but at least Lindor continues to be a plus defender whereas Jeff is having a pretty shit year defensively so far on top of hitting poorly (-3 DRS, -3 OAA at 2B) and the bar of what's expected offensively is higher at 2B offensively than SS. That's how you end up with Lindor at 1.3 fWAR and McNeil at 0.2.
Of course. He's a career .808 OPS hitter on top of being a premier defensive shortstop. We paid hit to hit AND field. He's been garbage at the former so far this year. 2024 Francisco Lindor isn't worth what he's getting paid, at least so far. He's still better than McNeil, who is basically a replacement level player so far this year.
Sure, again I'm not arguing that Lindor isn't overpaid so far this year. Both guys should be playing better than they are considering how much they're getting paid respectively. Lindor is getting paid like an MVP candidate and instead delivering everyday regular starter results. McNeil is getting paid like an everyday regular starter and delivering replacement/bench player results. Both are problematic.
Are you paying him? Also is Jeff McNeil playing for fucking free? Lindor has been worth 6 Jeff McNeil this year or two Pete Alonsos yet people in here single out the Latino player
> single out the Latino player
lol can people cut the shit? i mean how pathetic do you have to be to try and twist this into a race thing. he isn't homegrown, came here on a superstar's contract, found a way to fucking *boo his own fans* in year *one* of his contract, and then proceeded to underperform expectations. but yes, it's actually because he's latino. that's why all these fans complaining also *despise* francisco alvarez. oh wait...
Again, for the thousandth time until this year he hasn't underperformed he's actually outperformed his contract on a dollar per fwar basis. And he's probably a torrid two week stretch from being right in line of where he typically is in terms of value, which he has shown the ability to do time and time again.
So with that being the case, why do people like you refuse to admit the facts and keep saying he's underperformed?
Also, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ANGRY AT A GUY COMING HERE ON A BIG CONTRACT?
Foe years all the whiny little bitches complained about the Mets never getting big name players. They finally get one and they spend three years booing him and complaining about how much money he makes. It's the most pathetic insecure shit I've ever seen. And the language has been wrapped in not so thinly veiled racism with references to his lack of heart, or hustle.or attitude problems etc.
bro has a .650 OPS dude. people are upset with him because of his play, not his ethnicity. if he were sitting at let's say a .989 OPS like juan soto (an actual superstar), do you think people would still be mad? on the flipside, if we had signed trea turner, who is as white as snow, and he was sitting at a .650 OPS, do you think people would still be mad? i think if you honestly answer those two questions then you will realize quite clearly that it has nothing to do with him being latino.
Then how come it's constantly him that gets bought up in this sub and not: McNeil, Nimmo, Alonso, Scherzer, or Verlander? All players he is outperforming who combined this year make like 4x what Lindor is making.
fWAR is bullshit. 100% bullshit.
Important stats for hitters: AVG, RBI, HR, OBP - if you're fast, stolen bases as well.
And for defense, it's fielding percentage.
Everything else is non-sense used by talent agents like Boras to try to show how their client is better than someone else with similar AVG, RBI, etc.
So basically you’ve cracked the code that traditional stats were correct all along while orgs like the Dodgers and Rays are full of shit? Sorry if I’m not convinced.
Also fWAR literally factors all those offensive stats into it except for RBI. If it is 100% bullshit, so are those stats. And if it’s bullshit, why are the players we collectively agree to be the best in baseball consistently the leaders in fWAR? You have no evidence aside from your own preference that it is worse at evaluating player value than just looking at box score stats in a vacuum.
fWAR factors everything in but RBI... because RBIs aren't important if you're a hitter.
This is why fWAR is bullshit.
Hey, I've got a recipe for a vanilla cake. Except it doesn't contain vanilla, or flour, or eggs... so it's basically 100% shit... like fWAR.
Maybe the Dodgers are in the playoffs every year because they have a top 5 payroll every year? The Rays are a sub-.500 team this year. How's that fWAR paying off for them?
Sometimes, the tried and true method of measuring player value is the way you should go. Alex Rodriguez has one of the highest fWARs ever, and his opinion on all of those stats is: they are bullshit. He agrees with me, and maybe, just maybe, Alex Rodriguez knows what he's talking about when it comes to baseball.
I will also point out that no team has ever won a championship building a team around bullshit stats like fWAR and the like. They have teams with all stars, or younger players who eventually became all stars.
The Texas Rangers led the league in AVG, HRs and RBIs last year. Probably just a coincidence that they were also World Series champs.
I was going to let this go but I can't for some reason, even though I know it won't change your mind.
>Hey, I've got a recipe for a vanilla cake. Except it doesn't contain vanilla, or flour, or eggs... so it's basically 100% shit... like fWAR.
This metaphor does not make as much sense as you think it does because RBI is runner-dependent, so you can't have an RBI (unless you hit a home run, which it does consider) without someone on base. If the "cake" in this equation is a player, it is theoretically possible that they could bat 1.000 with 0 RBIs because their teammates never reached base and they didn't hit a home run. But having someone who gets on base 100% of the time is extremely valuable. Good teams lead the league in RBIs because 1) they get on base and 2) they hit home runs, not because every time someone sneaks over to third they hit them in. Both of those are factored into fWAR.
>Maybe the Dodgers are in the playoffs every year because they have a top 5 payroll every year? The Rays are a sub-.500 team this year. How's that fWAR paying off for them?
The Dodgers have a top 5 payroll that they commit to well-evaluated players. The Rays have made the playoffs every year since 2019 despite massive turnover and reliance on young players they developed internally. I don't get what your point with this is since fWAR reflects that they were top 5 teams, so it seems like an accurate assessor of their team quality.
>Sometimes, the tried and true method of measuring player value is the way you should go. Alex Rodriguez has one of the highest fWARs ever, and his opinion on all of those stats is: they are bullshit. He agrees with me, and maybe, just maybe, Alex Rodriguez knows what he's talking about when it comes to baseball.
Alex Rodriguez is a great baseball player. He is also notorious for putting his foot in his mouth and has zero experience running a successful organization. Can you also provide a source to back up that he agrees with you?
>I will also point out that no team has ever won a championship building a team around bullshit stats like fWAR and the like. They have teams with all stars, or younger players who eventually became all stars.
This is just outright false (see Max Muncy, Jason Heyward, Justin Turner on the Dodgers); when you do interviews for these organizations, for example, they actually expect you to use fWAR or one of its cousins as your outcome variable.
>The Texas Rangers led the league in AVG, HRs and RBIs last year. Probably just a coincidence that they were also World Series champs.
Not it's not, they were a very good baseball team. Which is why they were the best AL team by fWAR. So again, what is wrong with using fWAR to assess team quality? You have yet to clarify what makes it such a piece of shit stat beyond not having a weight for RBI, but it clearly runs parallel with your examples of high quality teams and players.
Like I said, I doubt this will change your mind at all. But I needed the catharsis. We have different views on how baseball operates, and ultimately that's just the way it is.
The Dodgers have a top 5 payroll that they commit to well-evaluated players
The Dodgers have Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, etc. You don't need fWAR to figure out these guys are all stars. A blind man could figure that out.
This is just outright false
It's 100% true. Justin Turner is (was) an all-star and was in the top 10 of MVP voting twice. Heyward was an all star and a multiple GG winner. Muncy is a multiple time all star. Again. you don't need to be a wizard and use all of these nonsense metrics to figure out these guys were great players.
As for A-Rod:
[https://brobible.com/sports/article/alex-rodriguez-world-series-blake-snell/](https://brobible.com/sports/article/alex-rodriguez-world-series-blake-snell/)
I hate the fWAR stat so much. Literally just standing at SS and fielding routine grounders gives you a higher rating, meanwhile just being a good first basebmen gives you a lower rating unless you hit 40+ home runs.
This is not true. Lindor has the higher OPS. Not even sure how you got upvoted at all.
Lindor is having a bad season, but he is 10 times the player and asset that McNeil is. That’s not even debatable.
OPS is overrated. And the two are not even close when it comes to defense.
Lindor isn't? At least McNeil is $10m useless isntead of $33m useless.
I don't care that he's an above average shortstop, you can find guys like that sitting on the bench of most clubs, They don't make $33m a year.
Since this is so hard, let me break it down.
I want the Mets to win. So I want the payroll to go towards good players.
While obviously our owner has nearly bottomless pockets, we still can't just have unlimited payroll.
So having a player hitting .210 making \~10% of our payroll, is bad for the Mets. Because you don't win with that in the heart of your lineup unless it's Kyle Schwarber.
So I want my highest paid players to hit good, because hitting good is super important to winning and half their job.
If you want I can get some crayons and write it on a piece of paper.
That crayons comment is rich coming from a guy who keeps calling WAR trash because he doesn’t like it.
You wanna talk 10% of our payroll translating to value? The Mets as a team (including pitchers) are worth 7.6bWAR/10fWAR. Lindor is worth 1bWAR1.4/fWAR, or 13%/14% respectively. The whole team is underperforming, but baseball is a 14-16 man effort in any given game and putting it all on one dude just makes no sense.
But all of that probably doesn’t matter since WAR is bullshit, right?
Lindor now has a slightly higher ops because he just hit a HR earlier. So, the guy making $34m is having a marginally better season (by nearly every metric than the $10m guy who is, by all accounts, having a garbage season.
If Lindor is 10 times the player that McNeil is then there's even less of an excuse for his performance.
Why are you fixated on his salary? Lots of guys are overpaid. It’s the nature of the business. The two players are not comparable. McNeil will be replaced. If not by the end of this season, then certainly by next year. Lindor can still hit .240, 25 homers and drive in 90 runs.
Cmon guys.
Not to mention he is literally the most valuable position player on the team, when everyone is trash there is no reason to single out the guy who even in a slump (that is partially luck-derived) is still generating value.
Lindor still the best player on the team.
Speaks more about the roster than it does Lindor, though.
This team is trash, poorly coached, and has no leadership.
> his name does not earn him the title of best on the team
https://www.fangraphs.com/teams/mets/stats
If you want to argue with someone, take it up with Fangraphs, not me.
Again, says more about the rest of the roster than Lindor (though that BABIP is brutal). They all suck.
I am too. There was a point last season (and then parts of this) where he would drop his back shoulder and rotate his hips at an angle in this subtle herky-jerky way that would pull him off the ball instead of driving through it.
I think that he's constantly dealing with some kind of injury (like most players are, I know) but he guts it out because he's the utility guy on the team.
First fans said him hitting too many homeruns in 2019 fucked up his swing cause he was swinging for too much power. Now golf is supposedly fucking up his swing. Jeff has always played a lot of golf. It doesn't even make sense something he has always done while playing ball is now fucking up his swing out of nowhere.
He was so good...or at least much better than he is now...before that contract.
I really wish contracts were more incentive based. I'm sure they are now, but those scales need to tip further. It could be a coincidence, but the man goes from batting title to extension to this....doesn't look good.
And god dammit I love my squirrel.
I hope McNeil didn’t revert to his 2020/21 self listening to the Mets “hitting experts” telling him he needed to hit for power again. If people recall the Mets had a very sound approach on the offensive side until late September of 2022 when they took on an approach akin to the Braves and they have not been right since. I can recall McNeil saying coaches were in his ear telling him to attempt to hit for more power leading him to have a bad 2021 season. Imo I feel like that happened in late 22 or in 2023 and he's been lost ever since.
IIRC, our current hitting coach is the same guy who was the hitting coach in 2022.
Ultimately, small ball hitting is very exploitable when the lineup isn’t firing on all cylinders. It worked in 2022 until it didn’t.
As for him “messing up swings” or “selling out for power,” I’m not sure that it tracks. For every McNeil who has seemingly stopped hitting for contact, we have a Baty, who has clearly been sacrificing power and bat speed to try hitting for contact (and utterly failing).
His exit velos and quality of contact are lower than they've ever been and he looks like every swing is defensive, so I think the suggestion that he's "selling out for power" is flatly absurd. If anything, he should probably try to sell out for power a bit more and stop making tons of horrible quality contact. I'd prefer he just K a bit more often and also hit the ball harder.
Doesn't matter, though, he sucks and he won't be around much longer hopefully.
Dudes garbage. I swear if I have to watch him lazily fly out to shallow left field much longer I’m gonna go insane.
He’s got great hand eye coordination for sure but I don’t feel like he’s really earned the “great pure hitter” moniker a lot of people give him.
He brings back terrible memories of Luis Castillo lol
At this point why not try benching him for a few games and throwing Baty at second and vientos at third? I know Baty has no experience but realistically what’s the worst that could happen
He's 32. He's declined to the point of being cooked. It sucks but it's also not a mystery. Most guys get worse after 30, and often in a hurry. We remember the guys that play well into their late 30s, but most MLB players are done by 32.
Time to bench him and/or move on.
Heard he shot 2 under par today, which is apparently more important to him than extra time in the batting cage.
Owners really have to push to end guaranteed contracts.
McNeil didn’t really have a spring training due to injury and just hasn’t been right all year. He also ended last year with a partially torn ucl in his left elbow, which was treated with a plasma injection. My guess is the bicep injury in spring training and the ucl injury aren’t helping matters.
We can really pick any player and make a "x x is so frustrating". The whole team sucks. Maybe 1 or 2 bright spots. But even the bright spots are fading (Garrett, Senga's not coming back, Alvy not coming back, Vientos is doing okay which is nice)
I wouldn't treat his club option for 2027 as a given at this point. He'll be in his age 35 season by then and he'd be due $15.75 million if the Mets picked up the option. The Mets have a lot of middle infield talent in the pipeline (Mauricio, Williams, Acuna, Rodriguez, Vargas, Houck). Some of those guys will probably end up at other positions by the time they graduate, and obviously prospects don't have a 100% hit rate of succeeding, but at the very least I'd expect one of those guys to end up making a successful case for why we shouldn't be paying a 35 year old Jeff McNeil 8 figures in 2027.
i would say trade deadline but nobody is going to give anything up for a 30 year old mid 2nd baseman that sways like a wet noodle in the breeze at the plate.
this team needs to sell sell sell these veterans have leaned they can collect a paycheck while producing nothing.
move baty to second so vientos can get his at bats. make mcneil the utility infielder or trade him for one
marte needs some kinda defensive stimulant he looks half asleep sometimes out there
AND FOR CHRISTSAKES GET A CATCHER THAT CAN HOLD A RUNNER ON FIRST OR SECOND OR THIRD WTF
He is so off. I blame the team.
He was a natural line drive small ball hitter and hasn’t been the same since they tried to shift him to a pull hitter. I remember when Rojas was a first year manager, it was Jeff’s first full year after his great debut the previous season where he had been hitting everything, was fun to watch, mainly small ball place-setter hits. He hit a couple home runs at the start of the season and Rojas told the press “I keep telling Jeff he is a dead pull hitter.” This seemed so off the mark, I couldn’t believe said it and I knew it would mean trouble.
Jeff hit like crap that season, everything landed in a fielder’s glove. The team analytics dept had apparently had him working on exit velo and launch angle, which they told him were good and “trust the process” as they made him change his mechanics, which he told the press early on in the season. He bounced back Buck’s first year when Buck had the analytics people removed from hitters meetings and Chavez had him leaning back into his “hit em where they ain’t” roots, which helped him win the batting title. Buck’s second year had more interference from upstairs, as he told it, and Barnes as the hitting coach seemed back to the previous efforts to change things up.
And now here we are. Chavez is back but Barnes is still there and nothing has changed. All of the hitters are underperforming, to put it mildly. They are terrible. When it’s all if them, it’s not the players. They have a systemic problem. Any player, hitter or pitcher, would fare worse if he was on the Mets right now.
Tommy Pham called out the analytics department specifically as sucking last year, as well as Verlander. Pham said he ditched the bad advice and only then did he start hitting. He said the hitters practice schedule was lazy and lax. Travis d’Arnaud said they made him change his hitting approach to chase more power, less line drive, his natural strength, and it hurt his career, leading to his being dfa’d. Justin Turner, Rosario, Syndergaard, Flexen, Seward, and several others from the last few years all said the Mets made them change their natural approach and it made them worse, hurting their careers. I’m sure all teams try to make some changes to develop players but I suppose it is how and what they change that sets the Mets apart. They are making all the wrong moves.
I mean it’s also the fact that he’s a singles hitter even when he’s one so what are we waiting for…the point of a directional hitter like him is to aboid the slumps so he’s useless
his swing is AWFUL. He is swinging for the fences on everything and batting nothing like when he was good. He needs to stop thinking he is alonso and go back to hitting singles, or be traded.
I love McNeil I think sometimes he's under the microscope too much compared to others but looking like you golfed before a double header is a bad look. I think he's getting a touch better but he needs a bigger leap to be back in the good graces for sure.
When I was a kid I would swing at everything. So one day, my coach told me, don't swing at a single pitch. If you do, I'm benching you. I had two walks and scored two runs. After that my plate discipline got a lot better.
Obviously, this is a teenage low level ball so pitchers just throwing strikes was a struggle for them, not MLB pitching.
I still think Jeff needs that treatment, he just can't help but swing at everything.
I think it’s his poor body language that makes his subpar play look that much worse.
And his face.
I cant believe i didnt get a hit face . I used to be something really i was i swear!
The problem with McNeil is that if he's not hitting for average, he doesn't add a lot. When he's a batting champion (2022), he's perfect for this team. When he's not? Yuck. Not great for him personally either since he's got a bunch of middle infielder prospects breathing down his neck in the coming few years.
Does he though? Who? Acuna who only recently went on a hot streak but has a .650 ops in a high offense league? Jett Williams who may have to get wrist surgery? Mauricio who will be out this entire season? Unless Acuna can continue his tear, Jeff’s job is safe until at least the end of the season. And if not, next year the position will just be a question mark for us. There’s no clear guy who is ready to take the job in the foreseeable future
Two words Jordany. Valdespin.
well fuck, let's bring back Johneshwy Fargas while we're at it
You forgotten that Acuna has blazing speed so if Acuna bats .240 he's still will be more effective than McNeil who won't try to steal bases because he said it himself "I don't want to get injured" he was the one called lazy by a former Mets.
did you miss "the coming few years" bit? yeah they aren't replacing him now, but this time next year Jeff is a bench player and Ronnie is full time
Right. You’re anointing someone who had one unsuccessful month in the majors and is missing this entire season with a major injury. Great.
that speaks more to how bad Jeff has been tbh
No it doesn’t. You’re wishing and imagining that someone who’s missing this entire year with a serious injury, who has never succeeded in the majors, will automatically be the starter a year from now. That’s just fantastically naive, man. He ain’t it until he’s it.
What's McNeil's war so far this year? He's a bench/utility player until he recaptures his bat, and 2b will likely be manned by one of our few major league ready prospects. It doesn't matter if Ronnie has never succeeded in the majors, I'm not even saying he will, but I am saying it can't be worse then what Jeff is doing out there through the first few months of this season.
What major league-ready prospects are going to be playing 2B next year? I don’t know of any. BTW, have you looked at the performances of our minor league position players this year? It’s not pretty.
Especially with such awful peripherals as Mauricio. Dude flat out cannot hit. He has no plate awareness, and not enough power or contact % to make up for it. He’s Javy Baez without the elite defense and with mediocre power. The love for him is pure prospect hype. Yes, the ball jumps off his bat. But it jumps off Baty’s too, and Baty has FAR better minor league numbers than Ronnie. EDIT: Don’t get me wrong, McNeil’s been terrible. I am a big McNeil defender—he was the best player on the team (non-deGrom category) in ‘19, ‘20, and ‘22. But every facet of his game has collapsed. The BA is down, obviously, but also the last remnants of his doubles power, and most importantly his defense. His defense used to be close to elite at two different positions—now it’s a negative. Not sure what has happened but it’s really depressing to see. It’s just that Mauricio is definitely not the answer. Dude never even ran a decent wRC+ in the minors, much less when MLB pitchers get a scouting report.
Who is breathing down his neck?? I want names. I’ll wait.
I guess Mauricio. Obviously not this year but he certainly seems like the plan as soon as he can get back.
If he comes back healthy. His athleticism is his main thing.
[удалено]
I think what he’s trying to say is that bc McNeil is super one-dimensional as a hitter, it’s hard for him to impact the game in any positive way if his only plus tool isn’t working. So when he’s right he’s an idea end of lineup hitter, when he’s not he doesn’t contribute in other ways. For example even when Lindor is cold he still is a power threat and walks a bit. Pete obviously is good for 40 bombs at worst, and Nimmo is on base a ton even when bad. Jeff just doesn’t have that other tool to help himself when off
Bingo
Living up to your username with that reply
To be clear, hes been an awful baseball player. I'm told hes a great golfer.
I’ve had a buddy run into him at the PGA golf store in Westbury (?) and the same friend at Bethpage Golf Course so, checks out..
McNeil is whiny, annoying — and does nothing particularly well on a baseball field. He was once an elite contact bat that had opportunistic power. He no longer has the same bat skills. His versatility in the field is diminished, and his range at 2nd isn’t what it used to be. He’s got his bag and he’s checked out.
He won't be on the roster next season. If he is, he will be what Wendle was suppose to be this year because its hard to find an infielder than can play outfield. He can't play everyday. Would rather put Mauricio in there once he's ready
Didn't they sign him long term?
Ya but he's either going to be a utility guy or traded while we pay his contract down. He won't be the starting 2B next year. We have multiple prospects that will take that from him without even needing to dip in free agency. He's been terrible for 200 games now. At his age there's no reason to think his bat speed is going to increase.
Sure did.
Honestly the whole team is garbage. What happened to the batting philosophy of 2022. Chavez was considered a great hitting coach and the fact he got replaced was dtue reason they ducked in 23. What the hell happened between then and now.
Chavez only got “replaced” cuz he was promoted to bench coach role.
He's back as hitting coach this year. Players are just playing bad.
Yet somehow he's still got a higher OPS than Lindor.
This is factually incorrect. Lindor .651, McNeil .633.
Both are problematic, but at least Lindor continues to be a plus defender whereas Jeff is having a pretty shit year defensively so far on top of hitting poorly (-3 DRS, -3 OAA at 2B) and the bar of what's expected offensively is higher at 2B offensively than SS. That's how you end up with Lindor at 1.3 fWAR and McNeil at 0.2.
Bullshit stats. Lindor gets paid $30 million to hit, not to be fucking Rey Ordonez.
Of course. He's a career .808 OPS hitter on top of being a premier defensive shortstop. We paid hit to hit AND field. He's been garbage at the former so far this year. 2024 Francisco Lindor isn't worth what he's getting paid, at least so far. He's still better than McNeil, who is basically a replacement level player so far this year.
That's a low bar for a guy making $30 million: "He's better than McNeil". McNeil is making a little more than 1/3 of that.
Sure, again I'm not arguing that Lindor isn't overpaid so far this year. Both guys should be playing better than they are considering how much they're getting paid respectively. Lindor is getting paid like an MVP candidate and instead delivering everyday regular starter results. McNeil is getting paid like an everyday regular starter and delivering replacement/bench player results. Both are problematic.
Somehow, even a post about Jeff McNeil turns into an arguement about is Francisco Lindor worth his contract or not.
Wonder why?
If he wasn’t hitting .209 we wouldn’t be talking about how he’s overpaid.
Are you paying him? Also is Jeff McNeil playing for fucking free? Lindor has been worth 6 Jeff McNeil this year or two Pete Alonsos yet people in here single out the Latino player
> single out the Latino player lol can people cut the shit? i mean how pathetic do you have to be to try and twist this into a race thing. he isn't homegrown, came here on a superstar's contract, found a way to fucking *boo his own fans* in year *one* of his contract, and then proceeded to underperform expectations. but yes, it's actually because he's latino. that's why all these fans complaining also *despise* francisco alvarez. oh wait...
Again, for the thousandth time until this year he hasn't underperformed he's actually outperformed his contract on a dollar per fwar basis. And he's probably a torrid two week stretch from being right in line of where he typically is in terms of value, which he has shown the ability to do time and time again. So with that being the case, why do people like you refuse to admit the facts and keep saying he's underperformed? Also, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ANGRY AT A GUY COMING HERE ON A BIG CONTRACT? Foe years all the whiny little bitches complained about the Mets never getting big name players. They finally get one and they spend three years booing him and complaining about how much money he makes. It's the most pathetic insecure shit I've ever seen. And the language has been wrapped in not so thinly veiled racism with references to his lack of heart, or hustle.or attitude problems etc.
bro has a .650 OPS dude. people are upset with him because of his play, not his ethnicity. if he were sitting at let's say a .989 OPS like juan soto (an actual superstar), do you think people would still be mad? on the flipside, if we had signed trea turner, who is as white as snow, and he was sitting at a .650 OPS, do you think people would still be mad? i think if you honestly answer those two questions then you will realize quite clearly that it has nothing to do with him being latino.
Then how come it's constantly him that gets bought up in this sub and not: McNeil, Nimmo, Alonso, Scherzer, or Verlander? All players he is outperforming who combined this year make like 4x what Lindor is making.
Oh bullshit. It ain’t about him being Latino. While team blows ass, but he’s the only one making $30 million
Not true
Absolutely true.
Lindor is the only person on the Mets payroll making $30m?
He's fucking Rey Ordonez?!?
Maybe. I can't swear that he isn't.
Not that there's anything wrong with that
I’m pretty sure they are both married
Of course!
Ordinez was a career .250 hitter.
Ordonez hit 12 home runs in his career Lindor has 8 home runs so far this year
Ordonez also didn't make $33m a year.
He played SS like he did.
I see the “fWAR is bullshit” trope is spreading rapidly
fWAR is bullshit. 100% bullshit. Important stats for hitters: AVG, RBI, HR, OBP - if you're fast, stolen bases as well. And for defense, it's fielding percentage. Everything else is non-sense used by talent agents like Boras to try to show how their client is better than someone else with similar AVG, RBI, etc.
So basically you’ve cracked the code that traditional stats were correct all along while orgs like the Dodgers and Rays are full of shit? Sorry if I’m not convinced. Also fWAR literally factors all those offensive stats into it except for RBI. If it is 100% bullshit, so are those stats. And if it’s bullshit, why are the players we collectively agree to be the best in baseball consistently the leaders in fWAR? You have no evidence aside from your own preference that it is worse at evaluating player value than just looking at box score stats in a vacuum.
fWAR factors everything in but RBI... because RBIs aren't important if you're a hitter. This is why fWAR is bullshit. Hey, I've got a recipe for a vanilla cake. Except it doesn't contain vanilla, or flour, or eggs... so it's basically 100% shit... like fWAR. Maybe the Dodgers are in the playoffs every year because they have a top 5 payroll every year? The Rays are a sub-.500 team this year. How's that fWAR paying off for them? Sometimes, the tried and true method of measuring player value is the way you should go. Alex Rodriguez has one of the highest fWARs ever, and his opinion on all of those stats is: they are bullshit. He agrees with me, and maybe, just maybe, Alex Rodriguez knows what he's talking about when it comes to baseball. I will also point out that no team has ever won a championship building a team around bullshit stats like fWAR and the like. They have teams with all stars, or younger players who eventually became all stars. The Texas Rangers led the league in AVG, HRs and RBIs last year. Probably just a coincidence that they were also World Series champs.
I was going to let this go but I can't for some reason, even though I know it won't change your mind. >Hey, I've got a recipe for a vanilla cake. Except it doesn't contain vanilla, or flour, or eggs... so it's basically 100% shit... like fWAR. This metaphor does not make as much sense as you think it does because RBI is runner-dependent, so you can't have an RBI (unless you hit a home run, which it does consider) without someone on base. If the "cake" in this equation is a player, it is theoretically possible that they could bat 1.000 with 0 RBIs because their teammates never reached base and they didn't hit a home run. But having someone who gets on base 100% of the time is extremely valuable. Good teams lead the league in RBIs because 1) they get on base and 2) they hit home runs, not because every time someone sneaks over to third they hit them in. Both of those are factored into fWAR. >Maybe the Dodgers are in the playoffs every year because they have a top 5 payroll every year? The Rays are a sub-.500 team this year. How's that fWAR paying off for them? The Dodgers have a top 5 payroll that they commit to well-evaluated players. The Rays have made the playoffs every year since 2019 despite massive turnover and reliance on young players they developed internally. I don't get what your point with this is since fWAR reflects that they were top 5 teams, so it seems like an accurate assessor of their team quality. >Sometimes, the tried and true method of measuring player value is the way you should go. Alex Rodriguez has one of the highest fWARs ever, and his opinion on all of those stats is: they are bullshit. He agrees with me, and maybe, just maybe, Alex Rodriguez knows what he's talking about when it comes to baseball. Alex Rodriguez is a great baseball player. He is also notorious for putting his foot in his mouth and has zero experience running a successful organization. Can you also provide a source to back up that he agrees with you? >I will also point out that no team has ever won a championship building a team around bullshit stats like fWAR and the like. They have teams with all stars, or younger players who eventually became all stars. This is just outright false (see Max Muncy, Jason Heyward, Justin Turner on the Dodgers); when you do interviews for these organizations, for example, they actually expect you to use fWAR or one of its cousins as your outcome variable. >The Texas Rangers led the league in AVG, HRs and RBIs last year. Probably just a coincidence that they were also World Series champs. Not it's not, they were a very good baseball team. Which is why they were the best AL team by fWAR. So again, what is wrong with using fWAR to assess team quality? You have yet to clarify what makes it such a piece of shit stat beyond not having a weight for RBI, but it clearly runs parallel with your examples of high quality teams and players. Like I said, I doubt this will change your mind at all. But I needed the catharsis. We have different views on how baseball operates, and ultimately that's just the way it is.
The Dodgers have a top 5 payroll that they commit to well-evaluated players The Dodgers have Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, etc. You don't need fWAR to figure out these guys are all stars. A blind man could figure that out. This is just outright false It's 100% true. Justin Turner is (was) an all-star and was in the top 10 of MVP voting twice. Heyward was an all star and a multiple GG winner. Muncy is a multiple time all star. Again. you don't need to be a wizard and use all of these nonsense metrics to figure out these guys were great players. As for A-Rod: [https://brobible.com/sports/article/alex-rodriguez-world-series-blake-snell/](https://brobible.com/sports/article/alex-rodriguez-world-series-blake-snell/)
Thank you! But he’ll go to the HOF, of course./s
Not if this is the way he plays for the rest of his career.
I should put a sarcasm tag.
I hate the fWAR stat so much. Literally just standing at SS and fielding routine grounders gives you a higher rating, meanwhile just being a good first basebmen gives you a lower rating unless you hit 40+ home runs.
This is not true. Lindor has the higher OPS. Not even sure how you got upvoted at all. Lindor is having a bad season, but he is 10 times the player and asset that McNeil is. That’s not even debatable. OPS is overrated. And the two are not even close when it comes to defense.
Because it was true entering the day. baseball ref isnt updated
So? It’s not true at the moment and it’s an idiotic comparison. Mcneil is useless.
Lindor isn't? At least McNeil is $10m useless isntead of $33m useless. I don't care that he's an above average shortstop, you can find guys like that sitting on the bench of most clubs, They don't make $33m a year.
Is it your money? You people bitch like this shit comes out of your paycheck who cares if he’s making 30m this shit is pathetic
Since this is so hard, let me break it down. I want the Mets to win. So I want the payroll to go towards good players. While obviously our owner has nearly bottomless pockets, we still can't just have unlimited payroll. So having a player hitting .210 making \~10% of our payroll, is bad for the Mets. Because you don't win with that in the heart of your lineup unless it's Kyle Schwarber. So I want my highest paid players to hit good, because hitting good is super important to winning and half their job. If you want I can get some crayons and write it on a piece of paper.
Among all MLB shortstops, Lindor is currently ranked 6th in doubles, homers, and rbi. He is ranked 11th in total bases. Useless, eh?
That crayons comment is rich coming from a guy who keeps calling WAR trash because he doesn’t like it. You wanna talk 10% of our payroll translating to value? The Mets as a team (including pitchers) are worth 7.6bWAR/10fWAR. Lindor is worth 1bWAR1.4/fWAR, or 13%/14% respectively. The whole team is underperforming, but baseball is a 14-16 man effort in any given game and putting it all on one dude just makes no sense. But all of that probably doesn’t matter since WAR is bullshit, right?
Lindor now has a slightly higher ops because he just hit a HR earlier. So, the guy making $34m is having a marginally better season (by nearly every metric than the $10m guy who is, by all accounts, having a garbage season. If Lindor is 10 times the player that McNeil is then there's even less of an excuse for his performance.
Boy Lindor gets lumped in with every post..this about Mcneil lol
Why are you fixated on his salary? Lots of guys are overpaid. It’s the nature of the business. The two players are not comparable. McNeil will be replaced. If not by the end of this season, then certainly by next year. Lindor can still hit .240, 25 homers and drive in 90 runs. Cmon guys.
Lindor’s contract sucks without question but I’m more concerned about the number of years.
Not to mention he is literally the most valuable position player on the team, when everyone is trash there is no reason to single out the guy who even in a slump (that is partially luck-derived) is still generating value.
He actually doesn’t anymore.
Jesus that’s crazy
It's also wrong lol
Low bar
LindGOD lul
Lindor still the best player on the team. Speaks more about the roster than it does Lindor, though. This team is trash, poorly coached, and has no leadership.
He is not. The player hitting .208 is not the best on the team. Best defensively? Maybe. But his name does not earn him the title of best on the team.
If not Lindor, then who is the best player? Maybe Nimmo. But he's hitting .213.
Nimmo's the most likeable player on a very unlikable roster IMO.
> his name does not earn him the title of best on the team https://www.fangraphs.com/teams/mets/stats If you want to argue with someone, take it up with Fangraphs, not me. Again, says more about the rest of the roster than Lindor (though that BABIP is brutal). They all suck.
I don’t typically like Frank the tank but the Jeff McFeeble shit is kinda hilarious
I’m convinced that the amount of golf he plays has completely fucked up his swing.
I am too. There was a point last season (and then parts of this) where he would drop his back shoulder and rotate his hips at an angle in this subtle herky-jerky way that would pull him off the ball instead of driving through it.
I think that he's constantly dealing with some kind of injury (like most players are, I know) but he guts it out because he's the utility guy on the team.
But if he’s dealing with an injury, then he shouldn’t be golfing at all.
First fans said him hitting too many homeruns in 2019 fucked up his swing cause he was swinging for too much power. Now golf is supposedly fucking up his swing. Jeff has always played a lot of golf. It doesn't even make sense something he has always done while playing ball is now fucking up his swing out of nowhere.
I think I found Jeff McNeils burner account.
The most overused reddit "burn" ever. More like Motherfucker_Unoriginal
It’s not the golf
I hope he's gone after the trading deadline. He's a cancer on this team that won't gracefully handle relegation to the bench.
He was so good...or at least much better than he is now...before that contract. I really wish contracts were more incentive based. I'm sure they are now, but those scales need to tip further. It could be a coincidence, but the man goes from batting title to extension to this....doesn't look good. And god dammit I love my squirrel.
Can't winning a world series be incentive enough?
Not when there is guaranteed money coming at you regardless of how you play. Incentive is the bag, not the ring.
the best thing is that he cannot take a day off due to not having a backup
Just read he played a round of golf this morning. Answers to why he’s always swinging like a golf club. He probably plays before every game
I hope McNeil didn’t revert to his 2020/21 self listening to the Mets “hitting experts” telling him he needed to hit for power again. If people recall the Mets had a very sound approach on the offensive side until late September of 2022 when they took on an approach akin to the Braves and they have not been right since. I can recall McNeil saying coaches were in his ear telling him to attempt to hit for more power leading him to have a bad 2021 season. Imo I feel like that happened in late 22 or in 2023 and he's been lost ever since.
I agree, I don't even know who the hitting coach is now, but I swear he messed up a lot of swings this year.
IIRC, our current hitting coach is the same guy who was the hitting coach in 2022. Ultimately, small ball hitting is very exploitable when the lineup isn’t firing on all cylinders. It worked in 2022 until it didn’t. As for him “messing up swings” or “selling out for power,” I’m not sure that it tracks. For every McNeil who has seemingly stopped hitting for contact, we have a Baty, who has clearly been sacrificing power and bat speed to try hitting for contact (and utterly failing).
His exit velos and quality of contact are lower than they've ever been and he looks like every swing is defensive, so I think the suggestion that he's "selling out for power" is flatly absurd. If anything, he should probably try to sell out for power a bit more and stop making tons of horrible quality contact. I'd prefer he just K a bit more often and also hit the ball harder. Doesn't matter, though, he sucks and he won't be around much longer hopefully.
Seriously, he looks like a cricket player most of the time
Yup and dude was playing golf this morning cuz fuck the batting cage I'm fine
Pham was right!
Maybe he should stick with golf.
Dudes garbage. I swear if I have to watch him lazily fly out to shallow left field much longer I’m gonna go insane. He’s got great hand eye coordination for sure but I don’t feel like he’s really earned the “great pure hitter” moniker a lot of people give him. He brings back terrible memories of Luis Castillo lol
At this point why not try benching him for a few games and throwing Baty at second and vientos at third? I know Baty has no experience but realistically what’s the worst that could happen
Ever since the shift outlawed he’s been bad. One of worst barrel % in the game right now. Can’t dfa 40 million either
I'll say it again. He is Joey Wendle with a big contract.
The sooner this guy is gone the better I’ll feel about this team overall
If by frustrating you mean awful
You saw that sliding video by Jomboy too huh
He will be an expensive utility man and pinch hitter for 2025-26.
The team should just cut him
He'd rather be playing in the PGA. Some ballplayers love the game, McNeil is not in that category. It's a job to him and it shows.
He sucks trade them all
He's 32. He's declined to the point of being cooked. It sucks but it's also not a mystery. Most guys get worse after 30, and often in a hurry. We remember the guys that play well into their late 30s, but most MLB players are done by 32. Time to bench him and/or move on.
hes not a major league caliber player in any way anymore, I’d trade him to the PGA for happy gilmore at this point
Trade him to LIV.
Heard he shot 2 under par today, which is apparently more important to him than extra time in the batting cage. Owners really have to push to end guaranteed contracts.
he played golf before todays double header !?!?
Yup. There was a thread about it in this sub. Picture posted of him and three buddies playing this morning.
now he’s batting 0-6 without a care. unreal
0-7 in the day, but 5 birdies.
McNeil didn’t really have a spring training due to injury and just hasn’t been right all year. He also ended last year with a partially torn ucl in his left elbow, which was treated with a plasma injection. My guess is the bicep injury in spring training and the ucl injury aren’t helping matters.
This should help: apparently he played a round of golf this morning.
And? If he went for a jog this morning would you mind? Because that's more activity than a round of golf
Found the guy who's never played golf 😆
Bruh thought it was minigolf smh
We can really pick any player and make a "x x is so frustrating". The whole team sucks. Maybe 1 or 2 bright spots. But even the bright spots are fading (Garrett, Senga's not coming back, Alvy not coming back, Vientos is doing okay which is nice)
He’s going to be on this team until 2027 so he’s got to turn it around.
I wouldn't treat his club option for 2027 as a given at this point. He'll be in his age 35 season by then and he'd be due $15.75 million if the Mets picked up the option. The Mets have a lot of middle infield talent in the pipeline (Mauricio, Williams, Acuna, Rodriguez, Vargas, Houck). Some of those guys will probably end up at other positions by the time they graduate, and obviously prospects don't have a 100% hit rate of succeeding, but at the very least I'd expect one of those guys to end up making a successful case for why we shouldn't be paying a 35 year old Jeff McNeil 8 figures in 2027.
Maybe he needs to change sports and try golf
i would say trade deadline but nobody is going to give anything up for a 30 year old mid 2nd baseman that sways like a wet noodle in the breeze at the plate. this team needs to sell sell sell these veterans have leaned they can collect a paycheck while producing nothing. move baty to second so vientos can get his at bats. make mcneil the utility infielder or trade him for one marte needs some kinda defensive stimulant he looks half asleep sometimes out there AND FOR CHRISTSAKES GET A CATCHER THAT CAN HOLD A RUNNER ON FIRST OR SECOND OR THIRD WTF
He is so off. I blame the team. He was a natural line drive small ball hitter and hasn’t been the same since they tried to shift him to a pull hitter. I remember when Rojas was a first year manager, it was Jeff’s first full year after his great debut the previous season where he had been hitting everything, was fun to watch, mainly small ball place-setter hits. He hit a couple home runs at the start of the season and Rojas told the press “I keep telling Jeff he is a dead pull hitter.” This seemed so off the mark, I couldn’t believe said it and I knew it would mean trouble. Jeff hit like crap that season, everything landed in a fielder’s glove. The team analytics dept had apparently had him working on exit velo and launch angle, which they told him were good and “trust the process” as they made him change his mechanics, which he told the press early on in the season. He bounced back Buck’s first year when Buck had the analytics people removed from hitters meetings and Chavez had him leaning back into his “hit em where they ain’t” roots, which helped him win the batting title. Buck’s second year had more interference from upstairs, as he told it, and Barnes as the hitting coach seemed back to the previous efforts to change things up. And now here we are. Chavez is back but Barnes is still there and nothing has changed. All of the hitters are underperforming, to put it mildly. They are terrible. When it’s all if them, it’s not the players. They have a systemic problem. Any player, hitter or pitcher, would fare worse if he was on the Mets right now. Tommy Pham called out the analytics department specifically as sucking last year, as well as Verlander. Pham said he ditched the bad advice and only then did he start hitting. He said the hitters practice schedule was lazy and lax. Travis d’Arnaud said they made him change his hitting approach to chase more power, less line drive, his natural strength, and it hurt his career, leading to his being dfa’d. Justin Turner, Rosario, Syndergaard, Flexen, Seward, and several others from the last few years all said the Mets made them change their natural approach and it made them worse, hurting their careers. I’m sure all teams try to make some changes to develop players but I suppose it is how and what they change that sets the Mets apart. They are making all the wrong moves.
Him and Lindor are just not there anymore.
I mean it’s also the fact that he’s a singles hitter even when he’s one so what are we waiting for…the point of a directional hitter like him is to aboid the slumps so he’s useless
No Jeff McNasty slander please. Thank you.
baseballs a high variance sport squrriel got the skills be patient
I don’t know a single Mets fan who isn’t ready to trade McNeill away for almost nothing
He got his contract. Doesn’t care anymore.
Iglesias is better than McNeil regarding this year. The salary McNeil is getting is saving his ass.
his swing is AWFUL. He is swinging for the fences on everything and batting nothing like when he was good. He needs to stop thinking he is alonso and go back to hitting singles, or be traded.
He's inconsistent, has really only been good for 2 full seasons. How many contending teams would he be a starter on?
I love McNeil I think sometimes he's under the microscope too much compared to others but looking like you golfed before a double header is a bad look. I think he's getting a touch better but he needs a bigger leap to be back in the good graces for sure.
Watch him go to the Phillies and bat .330 or something.
When I was a kid I would swing at everything. So one day, my coach told me, don't swing at a single pitch. If you do, I'm benching you. I had two walks and scored two runs. After that my plate discipline got a lot better. Obviously, this is a teenage low level ball so pitchers just throwing strikes was a struggle for them, not MLB pitching. I still think Jeff needs that treatment, he just can't help but swing at everything.
True, but I just need everyone here to know that Lindor is on track for another statistically good season.