1 NY Mets player who has been even more unlucky than Juan Soto

It’s pretty clear that New York Mets right fielder, Juan Soto, is getting pretty unlucky. He began to turn the heat up in May, starting the new month off with a five-game hitting streak with two home runs, four walks, and only three K’s, but Soto still has some very large discrepancies between his bottom line and expected stats. But while many focus on how unlucky he’s been, there’s another batter who has run into even more bad luck than Soto. That’s catcher Luis Torrens.

On the surface, Torrens’ numbers don’t look any different from a platoon/second-string backstop. He is only slashing .235/.297/.382. He has a respectable 8.1% walk rate and 23.9% K% but has only hit a single home run with a .137 isolated slugging percentage. This all comes to a .680 OPS, .302 wOBA, and 93 wRC+. But a look under the hood shows some very impressive numbers.

Torrens has a .399 xwOBA. That’s even higher than Cal Raleigh, who leads the league in home runs and ranks sixth among qualified hitters in wRC+. Torrens also has an outstanding .324 xBA, a massive 89-point difference. His xBA is the 13th highest among all players, with at least 50 plate appearances. Another expected number Torrens is elite in his xSLG%, sitting at .552, higher than the likes of Teoscar Hernandez, Austin Riley, an Alex Bregman.

A 98-point difference in xwOBA is massive and the second-largest gap in baseball among players with 50+ plate appearances. Only Kansas City Royals’ veteran Salvador Perez has a larger gap. Torrens also has the fourth largest gap in slugging percentage to xSLG% and the largest difference between his batting average and expected batting average.

Sure, Soto is also getting unlucky, but he doesn’t have nearly as large of a gap between his bottom line and expected numbers as compared to Torrens. Soto has about half the difference between his xBA (.302) and his BA (.258). There is only a 137-point difference between his SLG% at .439 and his expected SLG% at .552. His xwOBA sits at .422, and his wOBA comes in at .362, a 60-point difference.

This Mets hitter is getting even more unlucky than Juan Soto.

It’s not as if Torrens has bad plate discipline, swinging out of his shoes, chasing everything that comes his way, and causing him to struggle to catch up to his expected numbers. His whiff rate is only 24.3%. Meanwhile, Torrens’ chase rate sits at 26.1%. Both are better than average. Along with above-average plate discipline, Torrens is having no trouble making good contact at a high rate.

Torrens’ 56.9% hard-hit rate leads all catchers with 70+ plate appearances and is tied with Aaron Judge of all batters. Overall, his average exit velocity sits at 91.9 MPH, which is also very good. But his 17.6% barrel rate is the most impressive of all his hard-hit numbers. That’s less than 1% behind Shohei Ohtani at 18.9% and above the likes of Corbin Carroll (17%) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (16.7%).

Torrens isn’t doing anything wrong at the plate. He’s not swinging outside the zone a ton, he’s not swinging and missing a lot, and he’s not making weak contact. He’s slightly above average in most plate discipline numbers and has elite batted ball data. The Mets have a prime opportunity to see if Torrens can start playing like the engine under the hood suggests. With Jesse Winker out for 6-8 weeks with an oblique injury, Starling Marte off to a poor start with underwhelming underlying stats, and Brett Baty also not showing much improvement, the Mets should slot Torrens into the DH role for now.