Luisangel Acuna is spending his winter in his home country of Venezuela doing a good job at convincing the New York Mets he can hit. After not hitting a single home run in over 300 plate appearances last year in Triple-A or MLB, Acuna has been hammering baseballs this offseason.
Through 174 trips to the plate, just 19 fewer than he had with the Mets in the regular season, Acuna has 8 home runs to go along with his .282/.397.542 slash line.
It’s nice to see. Acuna hit a light .234/.293/.274 in the majors last year. Just because it’s nice doesn’t mean we should buy much into this. Acuna has done this before.
Luisangel Acuna had a huge Winter League performance last offseason, too
Batting .337/.419/.495 with 3 home runs in 122 plate appearances, it looked like Acuna had figured out how to hit again. He was beastly for the Mets down the stretch in 2024. It wasn’t such a complicated decision to award him an Opening Day roster spot in 2025.
His 2025 season began with an April NL Rookie of the Month honor only for Acuna to lose playing time to Jeff McNeil and see his season totals drop. Although he hit .288 in March/April, it came with just a .698 OPS. He failed to hit the ball hard all year. Proving himself valuable for defense and base running, it was his bat that never quite matched the hype.
Last spring, Acuna received some criticism from Francisco Lindor who pointed out how the young infielder seems to be a guy who plays “bored” and wakes up under the spotlight. This helps explain some of the malaise in which Acuna performed in 2024 in Triple-A, but does little to help his case for a major league roster spot. Acuna is out of minor league options which means the Mets will have to keep him on their 26-man roster unless he’s traded first. Not quite ready to cut him just yet, this season is going to be crucial for Acuna.
For the time being, Acuna looks penciled in as the team's backup infielder who can play up the middle and maybe even see some time in center field with a rare appearance at third base, too. Ideally a trade candidate at this point, he might need to rebuild some stock first before the Mets get anything of value back.
