2 NY Mets players poised for a breakout year in 2025, 1 we should give up on

Brett Baty's ceiling is a lot lower now

Once a top prospect, Brett Baty, 25, has failed to impress in parts of three seasons for the NY Mets. Over his career he's now logged a full season's worth of playing time – 169 games and 602 plate appearances – in which he has slashed .215/.282/.325 with 15 home runs. That performance has been good for just a 72 wRC+ and -0.1 fWAR.

Isolating just last season, the lefty swinger posted a disappointing 83 wRC+ and .098 ISO while striking out 24.6% of the time over 171 big-league plate appearances. Per StatCast, his average exit velocity was just 86.6 MPH, indicating he rarely made hard contact despite an elevated strikeout rate.

Unfortunately, striking out more often than the average hitter while failing to generate hard contact and hitting a lot of ground balls, 53.6 GB% last season and 51.4% GB for his career, is a recipe for a lot of unproductive at-bats.

Baty has tapped into his power in the minors. Last year he clubbed 16 home runs and posted an ISO of .252 in AAA over the span of 269 plate appearances. However, with such a large sample in the majors of below-average offensive production at his age, he looks like the typical quad-A type player.

With the younger Mark Vientos supplanting him as the Mets' top young power-hitting corner infielder, and the Mets eyeing first base options ranging from a reunion with Pete Alonso to more temporary fixes, Baty's path to playing time is getting murkier. For New York, that's a good thing, as he's likely never going to produce enough with the bat to justify getting regular at-bats.