Why Brett Baty is convincing the NY Mets there could be brighter days ahead

Check out Brett Baty’s stats and it’ll make your inner OCD tingle. He is at 130 games, the same as he played last year. His plate appearances are almost exact, going from 432 in 2025 to 435 in 2026. He has the same amount of RBI (50) and is pretty close in multiple other places. He ended 2025 on a bang with the New York Mets. While he has played well lately, the overall feelings around Baty for most fans hasn’t been incredible.

The biggest story comes from his slash line. From a .254/.313/.435 hitter last year to the current .229/.300/.366 guy he has been in 2026, the fall off feels major. Is it though? In practically the same number of plate appearances and at-bats, he has only 11 fewer hits (100 vs. 89). He hit for more home run power in 2025, 18 home runs versus the current 10. It looks as if many of those home runs have turned into doubles with 21 thus far against the 13 in all of last year.

So close and yet so far, cutting his ground ball rate from 50.7% to 40.2% this year continues to suggest the power is on the way. His expected stats are better than the reality with his xSLG is .035 higher than where it’s actually at. He ranks 29th in MLB as far as difference goes. Some might call this unlucky.

Expected stats tell us Brett Baty isn’t as far off from last year’s performance as it feels

An expected slugging percentage of .401 instead of his actual .366 isn’t incredibly impressive, but it’s not nothing. It would put him between Cam Smith and Jo Adell on the MLB-leaderboard. Each of them have topped 20 home runs this year. That seems like a fair enough ask of Baty who was always expected to hit for more pop than he has at the major league level.

For Baty, his issue in 2026 has been dealing with breaking pitches. He’s hitting .273 against fastballs and only .163 against breaking pitches. Just .203 on offspeed pitches as well, there is plenty of verifiable data on how to beat him. The sweeper has given him the most trouble this year and last. He batted .111 against it in 2025. He’s at an improved yet still atrocious .167 in 2026.

September has been a really good month for Baty. In only 22 plate appearances, he is 1 home run away from tying his monthly high for the season, 2 RBI behind, and has already doubled 4 times to tie his monthly high for the season. He has only walked twice but has maybe more importantly only struck out a pair of times, too. His second-half slugging percentage is appropriately at .520, reminding the Mets how important it is to continue to invest in the kids even when times are tough.

Baty is no longer a “kid” in a baseball sense. In his fifth year at the MLB level but only his second of topping 400 trips to the plate, he turns 27 in November and has yet to prove a point. 

Just 11 more balls poking through the infield or landing out of reach of an outfielder puts Baty closer in line with the best season of his career from 2025. It still only makes him a .251 hitter, but when it comes to batting average, Baty clearly won’t ever be a guy who strokes on a regular basis. Only 1 fewer extra base hit than he had all of last season thanks to a pair of triples rather than only 1 in 2026, it’s the drop in home run power which has his stats looking far weaker than some of the projections.

Baty had a ridiculous xSLG of .457 in 2025. For context Mets fans can understand, that’s the exact slugging percentage Lucas Duda had for his career in New York. Can he ever become anywhere near that level of slugger in the majors?

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