:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48793557/usa-today-8810036.0.jpg)
It might be early February, but we were looking through some things here at Amazin' Avenue and realized that we still had a few players to go in our series reviewing the 2015 season. In an attempt to be completists, we figured we'd get through the remaining players. Given the frigid temperatures in New York City right now, it seems like as good a time as any to remember the warmer days of Mets baseball fondly, too.
Juan Uribe made his major league debut long before joining the Mets shortly before the trade deadline last year. He did so with the Rockies in 2001, and he spent the next decade-plus playing for them, the White Sox, the Giants, and the Dodgers. He started the 2015 season with the Dodgers, too, but he wound up playing on almost as many different teams in one season as he had over the course of his major league career.
Los Angeles dealt Uribe to the Braves fairly early in the season, and when the Mets started making moves to make their playoff push in late July, they acquired Uribe and Kelly Johnson from Atlanta. Though both players had been roughly league-average hitters in the recent past, they were considerable upgrades for the Mets at the time. David Wright still hadn't returned from his long absence from the field because of spinal stenosis, and those two gave the Mets some insurance in the infield—whether Wright came back or not.
From late July through the end of the regular season, Uribe made 143 plate appearances in 44 games for the Mets. He hit .219/.301/.430 with six home runs over that span. The on-base percentage wasn't pretty, but the power was real, and the Mets had lacked power from much of their hitters to that point of the season.
Unfortunately, the lovable 36-year-old suffered an injury late in the regular season and wasn't able to join the Mets for the NLDS or NLCS. Uribe made it back for the World Series but made just one plate appearance: a pinch-hit, run-scoring single in the Mets' Game 3 victory over the Royals, their only win of the series.
Given the Mets' acquisitions of Neil Walker and Asdrubal Cabrera and the continued presence of Wilmer Flores and Ruben Tejada on their roster, Uribe—who is still a free agent—will almost definitely land elsewhere for the 2016 season. But it was a treat to have Uribe on the team for the last few months of a great season. Wherever he lands, here's hoping he doesn't stop with "Vivir Mi Vida."