Which Mets Hitters Disappointed the Most in 2021?

And, just like that, another MLB regular season is in the books, with the New York Mets watching the playoffs on the couch like the rest of us.

There were plenty of times when the 2021 campaign was fun and exhilarating to watch (i.e. the first half), and other times when we wanted to poke our eyes out to end the pain (i.e. the second half). But still, Mets baseball hasn’t even been officially gone for 24 hours yet and I already miss it. I know, I have a problem. I’ll take a more optimistic approach later this week, but for today, I can’t help but look at New York’s biggest and most consistent downfall.

Looking back on a just-concluded season isn’t a ton of fun when the team you’re reviewing finished with a 77-85 record. That’s especially the case for anyone laying their eyes on the Mets’ offensive numbers. This was a squad many expected to be toward the top of baseball — you know, at least within the top 10 — and that didn’t happen.

New York’s team wRC+ of 96 ranked 16th in the league, while the squad’s 636 runs scored was 27th in baseball, with only Texas, Miami, and Pittsburgh finishing with fewer. Outside of Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, and Jonathan Villar, plenty of players fell short of preseason projections, whether it was due to injury, lack of playing time, underperformance, or a mixture of those three.

Instead of looking at everyone, I had to narrow this down a bit. There were 10 different Mets hitters with at least 200 plate appearances and four who finished with a wRC+ below 100. Since I wasn’t surprised about Kevin Pillar‘s 90 wRC+, I immediately threw him out of the conversation, leaving Jeff McNeil (91 wRC+), James McCann (80), and Dominic Smith (86). To figure out the appropriate level of disappointment for these performances, I compared their preseason Steamer projections with what they just produced.

Jeff McNeil

Among the three that are the topic of today’s conversation, McNeil’s frustrating season certainly has the largest discrepancy between projected fWAR and actual fWAR. In fact, that 3.3 mark ranked second among Mets position players heading into the season. Only Francisco Lindor‘s production was expected to be higher (5.1 projected fWAR).

This season got off to yet another slow start for McNeil, but for the second year in a row, it looked like he’d find a way to get his season-long numbers to where we’d expect them to be. Until he wasn’t able to do that.

McNeil finished April with an 83 wRC+ but bounced back in May with a 128 mark through 49 plate appearances before landing on the injured list. He was slow out of the gate upon returning in June, posting a 43 wRC+ through 37 plate appearances. But once July rolled around, it looked like he was getting back to his normal self, with some extra plate discipline to boot.

His best month of the year included a .351/.419/.494 line in 86 trips to the plate, which sussed out to a 155 wRC+. He, unfortunately, couldn’t build on that momentum over his final 187 plate appearances, slashing .214/.267/.318 with a 65 wRC+. After posting a career-high .214 ISO in 2019, that number has now gone down each of the following two seasons (.142 in ’20, .109 in ’21).

James McCann 

I remember looking at McCann’s Steamer projections prior to Opening Day and noticing they were much lower than his recent production, but man, talk about pretty much nailing it, right?

The biggest thing that jumps out about the veteran catcher’s season is he only got in a groove in short spurts. His monthly wRC+ progression is as follows: 63, 72, 129, 103, 13, and 57. And when taking a harder look at those two above-average months, June was the only time he produced an OPS higher than .700 (it was .841). That isn’t going to get the job done.

Something that didn’t help was his inability to get the ball off the ground. McCann’s 51.5% ground-ball rate was easily the worst of his career, while his 28.6% fly-ball rate was his worst since 2015 (27.0%). In fact, that ground-ball rate was one of the 20 worst in baseball among players with 400 plate appearances.

Dominic Smith

While the difference between Smith’s projections and actual performance isn’t as stark as McNeil, it was equally as puzzling after the kind of 2020 he put together, if not more so.

This tweet — although it’s slightly outdated now — tells most of the story:

Last season, Dominic Smith had 32 extra-base hits in just 199 plate appearances.

This year, he has 29 extra-base hits in 483 PA.

Dom's regression was one of the biggest surprises of the 2021 season.

— Ryan Finkelstein (@FinkelsteinRyan) September 29, 2021

(He finished with 31 extra-base hits in 493 plate appearances.)

Similar to McNeil, the best month of Smith’s season came in July when he posted a 126 wRC+ in 100 plate appearances. It also included a slow build-up to that point, as his monthly wRC+ numbers went from 61 in April to 99 in May, and then 106 in June. But then the bottom fell out so much that it seems like he’ll go from being one of the league’s most effective hitters in 2020 to fighting for an everyday job again in 2022.

This was obviously a learning experience for him, and let’s also not forget that this past season was the first time he compiled more than 200 MLB plate appearances in one year. He more than doubled that number in 2021.

Looking Ahead to 2022

We can hope that after a promising season came crashing back down to reality, the Mets will be making some significant roster changes and decisions in order to compete next year. While it all depends on how certain scenarios unfold throughout the winter, there’s a decent chance all three of these dudes are back in Flushing for the 2022 campaign.

What we do know, though, is that they work hard and will likely do everything possible to try and make what ended up becoming a nightmare season for each of them a distant memory. However, the eventual moves of New York’s front office from the people who will occupy important decision-making roles will ultimately determine what kind of opportunity these guys will have to bounce back.

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