Maybe the NY Mets did successfully replace Jeff McNeil, just a little too closely

Forget Pete Alonso for a moment, maybe longer. Jeff McNeil is the former New York Mets player the team actually had a plan to replace. They may have done it too well.

No tears were shed when the Mets dumped him onto the Athletics. It was time. Some fans might have thought the Mets could get more and maybe they could have. A teenage prospect who has barely played professionally was the return. In what amounted to a salary dump with the A’s picking up most of the tab, New York moved on from a declining utility player whose days of hitting .300 were long over.

The plan to replace him was to use Brett Baty in the super utility role. It has worked, somewhat, if you consider the 2024-2025 version of McNeil as the standard. McNeil has a .718 OPS across those two seasons. On the 2026 Mets, this wouldn’t be so bad. It trumps the .662 OPS Baty has for himself in 2026 in what the Mets are likely to describe as a step forward for the lefty who was once a top prospect in the sport.

Brett Baty is the appropriate Jeff McNeil replacement if you consider the cost

Baty isn’t matching McNeil’s production even at its lowest. However, with faded power, not a whole lot of stolen bases, and a position or two he does well and others not so much, we can see the similarities.

Even at the end of his Mets tenure, McNeil was putting the bat on the ball. Baty has struck out 26.7% of the time this year. McNeil’s 14.4% in 2024 was the worst of any season in the big leagues.

The salaries are nowhere near the same. McNeil is earning $15.75 million this year. Baty is filing his taxes at $750,000 before agent fees. How much is a difference of 80 points in OPS? It’s apparently about $15 million.

Baty hasn’t managed to do anything sensationally this year. He has traded home runs for doubles. It took him forever to draw a walk and the strikeouts are up. He’s a fine 10th man for a major league roster. As an everyday utility player, there’s a severe lack of results spanning multiple seasons.

There’s no debate about whether or not it was the right idea to trade McNeil in the offseason. Sitting with a .270/.317/.373 slash line with the A’s while playing half of the time in a hitter’s paradise, the home and road splits are practically identical with a .694 OPS in Sacramento and .687 OPS away.

The main difference between Baty and McNeil is we saw the latter play at an All-Star level. The last few years have been an attempt to recapture what made him a core piece of the roster. With Baty, we continue to wait.

When the Mets switched from McNeil to Baty for their utility role, it was lower than lateral with financial savings and the hope this would finally be the year when the former first-round pick would figure it all out. Instead, the Mets are left with the reality that Baty’s best might be close to McNeil’s worst.

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