Mets Player Performance Meter: Position players, May 29-June 4

Avert your eyes, citizens of Amazin’ Avenue. This week’s position player meter is ugly business. I think this is the most poop emojis I’ve ever put on a single meter? That can’t be a good indicator of the team’s performance. Indeed, the Mets swept the Phillies this week and then decided to squander all of those good vibes by turning around and getting swept by the Blue Jays over the weekend—much like .500 teams often do—scoring just one run combined in Friday and Saturday’s games. The best I can say about the position players this week is that Mark Canha finally turned it on in a big way this week. The problem is that no one else really showed up.

We’ll start with Mark Canha since he’s basically one of the only silver linings this week. After having a very rough start to the season, this week was Canha’s best week yet in 2023. Canha seems to be a Phillies killer and maybe it took playing Philadelphia for the first time this year to get his season going. In Wednesday’s victory, Canha went 2-for-3 and drove in all four Mets runs and he followed that up with another strong performance the following day, in which he hit a two-run homer to help the Mets secure the series sweep. Overall, Canha posted a blistering 238 wRC+ in 17 plate appearances for the week. His six RBIs by far lead the team; no one else has more than two, which is an indicator of where the rest of this meter is going.

Tommy Pham is the only Met besides Canha with multiple RBIs this week. Both of his RBIs came in yesterday’s game, in which he hit two solo home runs and saved his grade for the week. He also walked twice in seven plate appearances this week and earns the fireball along with Canha for his 412 wRC+ and for simply showing some life with the bat.

The team hits leader this week is Starling Marte with six. Marte is the only player besides Canha and Pham to earn a positive grade this week. In addition to the six hits, Marte stole three bases, scored four runs, and drove in a run on a game-tying solo homer in yesterday’s game. Much like Pham, Marte’s performance yesterday helped seal a positive grade for him. Overall, he posted a 145 wRC+ in 21 plate appearances for the week.

It starts to get really unseemly from here, folks. Eduardo Escobar eked out a side arrow for notching two hits—both singles—and an RBI in seven plate appearances. Other than that, everyone else is slumping. There are six poop emojis here and I could have handed out even more if I wanted to.

Pete Alonso avoids the dreaded poop because he reached a major milestone yesterday by breaking the Citi Field home run record with a solo shot that brought the Mets within a run. The Mets hit four homers in yesterday’s game, but the issue is that no one was on base to make them hurt; they were all solo shots. Alonso’s record-breaking homer was one of just three hits for him this week; the other two were singles. He also walked once and stole a base. He put up a decidedly awful 17 wRC+ for the week in 24 plate appearances.

Speaking of solo shots, Francisco Lindor’s solo home run that snapped a scoreless tie in the fourth inning of Tuesday’s shutout victory was his only production of note this week. Otherwise, he collected just one additional hit and walked twice in 24 plate appearances this week—good for a putrid 12 wRC+. Lindor also struck out in some key spots this week and for that, he earns the poop emoji.

But Lindor is far from the only one. This has probably been Brandon Nimmo’s worst week with the bat in 2023 so far, as he put up an unsightly -1 wRC+ in 21 plate appearances this week. He collected just three hits all week—all singles—walked once, and scored a run. With the Mets heavily reliant on their leadoff hitter to be the sparkplug, Nimmo having such a poor week was always likely to be a disaster for the offense.

Unfortunately, after all of the excitement the Baby Mets have generated over the past couple of weeks, they all had a terrible week. Francisco Álvarez especially went straight from fireball to poop emoji at breakneck speed. Álvarez failed to reach base in 14 plate appearances this week, so it’s impossible for his grade to be anything but a poop. This deep slump for Álvarez came at exactly the wrong time with Omar Narváez’s return from injury imminent, but as I was composing this meter, we learned that the Mets plan to DFA Tomás Nido and go with Álvarez and Narváez as the catching tandem. It will be interesting to see how their respective shares of the playing time shake out. In the meantime, it’s not like Nido distinguished himself in his first full week back from the injured list enough to save his roster spot, though it looked like his defense may be back to normal at least. But with the bat, he was the same Tomás Nido. In six plate appearances, Nido had just one hit this week in what appears to be his final week as a Met.

Alongside his fellow Baby Met, Brett Baty is now in week two of his slump and it’s gotten even worse this week. Baty reached base just three times in 16 plate appearances this week via a hit and two walks—good for a 3 wRC+ and a poop emoji. Baty did score two runs this week, but did not drive in any runs.

Mark Vientos continues to struggle in the big leagues, but unlike Baty and Álvarez, he has not gotten as much consistent playing time. That said, it’s not exactly like he has earned it. He collected just two hits and an RBI in ten plate appearances across four games this week. Similarly, Daniel Vogelbach continues to struggle and the Mets are once again not getting sufficient production out of their DH spot. Vogelbach’s most notable contribution this week was an RBI double in the second inning of Saturday’s game that gave the Mets a 1-0 lead that held until the sixth inning. The Mets ultimately went on to lose 2-1. That was Vogelbach’s only hit for the week, but he also walked twice in ten plate appearances—good for a 69 wRC+ for the week. That double helped him narrowly avoid a second straight poop emoji, but Vientos was not as lucky.

Much like almost everybody else, Jeff McNeil didn’t have a good week with the bat either—though it wasn’t quite poop emoji bad. In 23 plate appearances this week, McNeil put up a 32 wRC+, which is pretty bad, but at least it’s not a single digit, which is more than some other Mets can say. McNeil collected four hits this week—one of them for extra bases. He did not score any runs, but he drove in a run in Thursday’s victory that cut the Phillies’ early 2-0 lead in half.