5 Mets players who may not be on the roster by the end of the 2023 season

The New York Mets roster is almost ready to kick off the 2023 season. Billy Eppler and the rest of the front office did a tremendous job maintaining a competitive roster, despite so many notable players leaving the team in the offseason.

The Mets have plenty of depth on their roster to cover in-season injuries or underperforming substitutions. Within all the options, there are players within the squad who probably, due to performance or health, will not end up playing in 2023 with the team.

1) Mets designated hitter Darin Ruf

Let's start with the most obvious case of all. There has been much discussion about Ruf's poor performance during his time with the Mets, being for many a candidate to be cut from the roster before the start of the year.

Even now, with Tommy Pham on the roster, the need to have Darin Ruf on the team is almost nonsense. However, Eppler recently stressed that he believes in Ruf's abilities as a hitter, "He's got a long track record of hitting left-handed pitching." It's hard to have faith in a player who posted a terrible SLG of just .197 with the Mets.

It's likely that Eppler either believes Ruf's terrible performance was an outlier last year and is a prime candidate for a bounce-back year or is too proud to admit he made a bad trade. Anyway, the current value of Ruf is too low to be traded.

That leaves the question of what will happen to Darin Ruf this year. If Ruf continues his non-producing trend he could be designated for assignment very soon this year. The Mets are not in a position to take a hole in the lineup, especially with the competition they have in the division.