2 NY Mets trade chips they'll regret holding onto, 1 they’ll be thankful they did

The Mets will regret keeping Brett Baty on the roster

Earlier in the offseason it was reported that the Mets were receiving calls from teams interested in trading for Brett Baty. The former top prospect has struggled at the big-league level, yet could still be an attractive piece as part of a package for several teams.

Just a couple of years ago, Baty had the prospect cache to be the centerpiece in a trade that brought a star back to Queens. The Mets held on to him believing he'd become a star in his own right. So far, that has seemed to be the wrong decision.

In the minors, Baty wowed scouts with his left-handed power and showed the promise of being an impact bat in the Majors. However, over parts of the past three seasons, he's played 169 games and accumulated 602 plate appearances. During that sample, which is roughly a full season's worth of work the results have been extremely ugly.

Baty, now 25, owns a career Major League line of .215/.282/.325 with 15 home runs and a powerless .110 ISO. Those numbers are good for a wRC+ of 72, indicating that he's been 28% worse than a league-average hitter over that span.

The root of his struggles is a bit puzzling. For his career, he has an acceptable walk rate of 7.8% and while his strikeout rate of 26.4% is elevated, it hasn't reached the point where it's become egregious. He simply seems to struggle to hit the ball with any sort of authority and loft as his middling 27.1% hard contact rate and 51.4% ground ball rate indicate.

With all that said, he's still been a very productive hitter in AAA. Last season, in 269 AAA plate appearances he belted 16 homers, posted a tantalizing .252 ISO, and tallied a .252/.349/.504 slash line which was good for a 119 wRC+.

That performance is good enough for some teams to believe they can fix him, and in Queens, he's mostly been squeezed out of the team's future plans. Mark Vientos has usurped him as the third baseman of the future, and even though he's added the ability to play second base to his resume, youngsters like Luisangel Acuna, the exciting Jett Williams, and even the aforementioned Ronny Mauricio have leapfrogged him.

The longer he struggles to establish a foothold in the bigs the further his trade value evaporates. The Mets will certainly regret holding on to him in 2025 if teams are truly interested because although he's not worth what he was at his peak, it's very clear that he has no place on the team moving forward.