Thursday Thought: What the Mets should've done with the DH spot

The New York Mets have had a hole at the DH spot all season long. It hasn’t mattered who they’ve put there, they just have not hit at all. Then, at the trade deadline, they acquired two guys with the plan of switching to a DH platoon. Daniel Vogelbach would get most of the starts against righties, and Darin Ruf would play against lefties.

The problem is, other than a hot week or so from Vogey, they’ve both sucked. It was bad enough that the Mets grossly overpaid for Ruf, but it’s worse now since he couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat. The Vogelbach trade stung too, since they had to give up a promising young arm in Colin Holderman to get him. Neither move has worked out.

So what should the Mets have done with the DH spot?

The answer was very obvious to me from the beginning: they should’ve called up Mark Vientos. He’s crushed the ball all year in AAA. He hit .280/.358/.519/.877 with 24 homers, 16 doubles, and 72 RBI’s. He is especially strong against lefties, hitting .319/.396/.707/1.103 with 13 of his homers coming against southpaws.

Now, he’s not as strong against righties. His .219/.324/.445/.769 is less than inspiring, but he is still showing power with 11 homers. This is serviceable, considering that the cost of calling him up is exactly nothing. Even if they wanted to have a lefty to use against right-handed pitching, they could’ve just used Tyler Naquin, who’s been solid overall. 

The bottom line is, the Darin Ruf trade was a completely unnecessary overpay. He’s done nothing for us. If he doesn’t turn it around in the next couple of weeks of regular season play, he won’t even make the postseason roster. 

Now that Vientos is finally getting his long-overdue chance, I hope he runs with it. He could be the answer at DH for the foreseeable future.