Mets: Players in their “last chance” season in hope of a turnaround

These three members of the New York Mets organization may only have one more year to prove themselves.

Every year a new season starts and every year there is a new list of players made that are in make-or-break seasons. The 2020 New Yor Mets season brings exactly that and this year there are three main players on the list.

Whether it is their last chance to keep their spot on the major league roster or just a spot in the Mets system, it is an important year for three players in particular.

Each of these three players is on this list for very different reasons and have to do very different things to try and remain a member of the New York Mets organization. Only they can decide their fate and for each of them, I hope that they step up to the plate and prove the doubters wrong.

Steven Matz

There is always something with the Long Island product. Whether it is the injuries, or the bad stretches, or the temper on the mound there is always something that prevents Steven Matz from reaching his full potential.

Matz was such a highly regarded prospect, both out of high school and in the Mets minor leagues. He impressed right out of the gate in his MLB debut and then he re-caught the injury bug that plagued him so much in the minor leagues.

He only made 22 starts in 2016 and then 13 in 2017.

He finally stayed healthy each of the last two seasons making 30 starts in both 2018 and 2019 but the results were just lackluster. Matz posted a 3.97 ERA over 154 innings in 2018 and a 4.21 ERA over 160.1 innings in 2019.

The inflated ERA’s is partly due to the number of home runs he gives up and the composure he lacks on the mound when he gets into trouble. Matz is notorious for getting in his own way after struggling. This prevents him from having a short-term memory and shaking off a bad pitch or sequence of pitches.

If Matz could just keep him cool on the mound and try to pitch to groundballs more he would most likely have a much higher rate of success and it may even save his Mets career.

Hopefully, in 2020 he can put everything together and make the Mets rotation even more dominant than it is already perceived to be.

Tim Tebow

The ageless wonder that is Tim Tebow may have his sun setting on his Mets career. Tim Tebow was signed by Sandy Alderson back in 2016 mainly as a publicity stunt to try and sell more tickets at their lesser attended minor league games and now the time is running out. Unfortunately, Tebow has not done very much in the three minor league seasons he has played in.

He has a career slash line of .223/.299/.338/.638 and if his name was not Tim Tebow he probably would have been cut already. At 33 years old he is going into his fourth season in the Mets minors and he must show some sign of life offensively to warrant being kept around.

This is no shot at Tebow but if his numbers are put in a vacuum, he has not had a successful minor league career despite not playing baseball for 15 years.

If he has another season like the first three, he may be seeing his Mets career come to a close. It was a nice story in the beginning, but the Mets may be forced to move on if he does not take advantage of this last chance opportunity.

He is Rule 5 eligible at the end of the 2020 season and the Mets will have a decision to make if they want to add him to their 40-man roster.

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At this point, I cannot see an avenue that they would find a spot for him unless he takes advantage of the last chance season and prove that all his hard work has come together and can now produce respectable numbers.