Breaking Down New Met Luis Robert Jr.
The New York Mets accumulated 0.7 fWAR from the center field position in 2025, which ranked 26th in the majors. Luis Robert Jr., for all his faults and struggles last year, was worth 1.3 fWAR by himself in just 110 games. He is a clear upgrade for the Mets at a position where it was desperately needed.
But it goes far beyond WAR. Robert is a perfect fit for the 2026 Mets roster as it currently stands.
How Robert Fits in the Lineup
Here’s what a potential 2026 lineup could look like:
SS Francisco Lindor
RF Juan Soto
3B Bo Bichette
1B Jorge Polanco
2B Marcus Semien
DH Brett Baty
CF Luis Robert Jr.
LF Carson Benge
C Francisco Alvarez
On paper, that is a great lineup. One through nine could all hit 20 home runs, and some are expected to hit many more than that. Of course, everyone won’t do that, but they all have the potential to do so if they play a full season. Even Marcus Semien is just one year removed from a 23-homer season and is now moving to a ballpark that is better suited for his power.
There is also a ton of flexibility. Baty is slotted in as the DH right now, but he can play third base and second base, and is expected to learn first base and left field during spring training. Baty could be a “DH” who plays the field five days a week. He could play first base while Polanco is the DH on Monday, third base while Bichette is the DH, and left field while Robert Jr. is the DH and Benge shifts to center field. With Robert’s lengthy injury history, some of those half-days off might be a good idea.
He’s a terrific defender in center field, and now the Mets’ defense up the middle of Alvarez, Lindor, Semien, and Robert Jr. is among the best in baseball. Tyrone Taylor is also a strong defender in center field, but his bat doesn’t offer nearly as much upside. Now, Taylor can slot right into that clear fourth outfielder role where he is best suited.
Some pressure is taken off of Benge as well. While there is still plenty of room for him to be on the Opening Day roster, it’s not a need anymore. Baty and Taylor can handle left field if the Mets want to get Benge a little more seasoning in Triple-A first, and even if he is up, he doesn’t have any pressure to be some great offensive force. He can hit at the bottom of the lineup and find his footing, a great situation for a young player to be in.
Robert also joins Bichette, Semien and Polanco as right-handed (or switch-hitting) additions to a lineup that seriously struggled against left-handed pitching in 2025. Semien was a little better vs righties but generally struggled overall offensively in 2025. Bichette and Polanco were better vs lefties, but hit both sides well.
In 2025, Robert Jr. hit .211/.272/.329/.601 vs. righties and .258/.369/.473/.842 vs lefties. Even in a season where his overall offensive numbers were decently below league average, he still crushed southpaws.
As a team in 2025, the Mets had a .696 OPS vs. left-handed pitching, the No. 17 mark in baseball. Just three teams — San Diego, Cincinnati and Cleveland — made the playoffs with a lower OPS vs. lefties. Those three teams combined to win two playoff games.
A Change of Scenery
This isn’t a super bold take, but Robert is a very clear candidate for someone who can benefit from a change of scenery.
Three years ago, he was an All-Star. In 2023, Robert Jr. hit .264/.315/.542/.857 with 38 home runs and stellar center field defense. Over the last two years, he hasn’t come close to replicating that, hitting .223/.288/.372/.660 from 2024-2025, consistently about 15-16% below league average at the plate.
Moving from the White Sox to the Mets, Robert Jr. enters a lineup that is leaps and bounds better than any lineup he has been a part of in his MLB career. Last season, Robert Jr. hit everywhere from first to seventh in the White Sox lineup, usually with one of Andrew Benintendi, Colson Montgomery, Josh Rojas or Edgar Quero hitting behind him. It wasn’t a potent lineup, and pitchers often had no incentive to pitch to him.
Among 215 hitters with at least 400 plate appearances in 2025, Robert saw the 22nd-lowest percentage of pitches in the strike zone. Of course, some of this is his doing. Robert Jr. chases a lot of pitches out of the zone, so naturally, pitchers are going to try to take advantage of that flaw in his game. His company on this leaderboard includes big chasers like Javier Baez, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Nick Castellanos, but also some stars like Bryce Harper, Cal Raleigh and Fernando Tatis Jr.
Robert sits at a very interesting place on the list, between Shohei Ohtani (No. 20), Aaron Judge (No. 21), and Kyle Schwarber (No. 23). All three of those superstars have a much better than league-average chase rate, but are simply pitched around. In the Mets’ lineup, Robert won’t be the threat teams are pitching around, and how much can they afford to if he’s hitting at the bottom of the lineup with Lindor and Soto looming?
He chases a lot; that’s just part of who he is. Teams will still likely pitch him out of the zone more than the league average, but teams will also likely be forced to come after him and throw him strikes more than ever before in his career. For all of his chase, he’ll take a free pass, walking at a 9.3% clip last year, which was in the 62nd percentile. Hitting seventh with Benge and Alvarez behind him is already better protection than he would have gotten in Chicago. The Mets could get bold and hit him ninth, use him as a “second leadoff,” and protect him with Lindor and Soto. No pitcher is trying to put Robert and his 90th percentile sprint speed on for free in front of those two.
Following the trade, Sam Ehrlich of Driveline Baseball posted on X, “Luis has elite bat speed, but struggles to catch the ball out in front. We wrote about him in our swing path optimization project as someone who would benefit through biomech assessments and specialized drills.”
The Mets’ hitting lab, which was reported on last year by The Athletic and others, could be a huge asset for him. What Ehrlich said Robert Jr. would benefit from is exactly what the Mets can provide. Maybe the White Sox provided it, too; there’s no way to know. But with the recent report from The Athletic about the league aiming to even the playing field when it comes to developmental technology, it’s fair to think that Robert Jr. is about to gain access to levels of tech he has never had before.
Yes, he’s struggled mightily offensively the last two seasons, but some of those offensive woes are lessened when you look under the hood. Robert’s xwOBA last year was .321, which ranked in the 44th percentile. It was still below average, but it was actually the exact same mark as Brandon Nimmo. The difference is Nimmo outperformed his xwOBA by .008, while Robert underperformed his by .032 (the 16th-worst mark in baseball among 251 Statcast qualifiers). Some better luck, and some swing optimization to get the most out of his power, as noted above, and Robert’s offensive output could take a massive upswing.
It’s easy to say that moving to a better team will provide better results, but it’s not just about being “reinvigorated” mentally. There are reasons to think that Robert, still just 28 years old, can recapture what made him one of the most exciting players in baseball not that long ago. Even if he recaptures just some of it, he’ll still be a massive improvement for the Mets in center field.
Long-Term Outlook
For all the positives that were just heaped on Robert, there is a very real scenario where this move just doesn’t work out. He’s been a below-average hitter for the last two seasons, and he has dealt with injuries in almost every season of his career. Maybe he never returns to the hitter that he once was, and maybe he picks up a long-term injury at some point. Robert is a high ceiling, low floor, low risk addition.
It’s rare that you can acquire a player via trade who has this type of ceiling for the package the Mets sent the White Sox. Of course, a lot of that is also because the floor is very, very low. Robert Jr. is a volatile player. He has big-time power, defense, and speed, but throughout his career has always struggled making contact.
The range of outcomes for those types of players has always been vast. Both of last year’s MVPs had dreadful whiff rates, with Ohtani finishing in the bottom fourth percentile and Judge in the bottom second percentile. You can be inner-circle Hall of Fame-level great with those whiff rates. Or you can be one of the worst hitters in baseball. The bottom ten hitters in whiff rate last season include Ohtani, Judge and Nick Kurtz, but also include Gabriel Arias, Ryan McMahon and Jordan Walker.
The offensive production the Mets will get from Robert Jr. next year is as big a mystery as any. The good thing is, if he doesn’t work out, the Mets ultimately don’t lose much. Luisangel Acuña and Truman Pauley are not needle movers, even if they each have something interesting about their games. You still have to give to get, and really, the Mets didn’t give much.
If Robert works, then the Mets gained a productive center fielder for 2026 and maybe 2027 if they pick up his club option. If he doesn’t, then the Mets have a contingency plan for both this year and the future. Benge is a capable center fielder, and can shift over from a corner while Baty, Ryan Clifford, or even someone currently outside the organization plays left in 2026. They could also keep Benge in left and go with some internal glove-first center field options like Taylor or Nick Morabito.
Then, going forward, the Mets have a very interesting center field prospect in A.J. Ewing, who is expected to play MLB innings in 2027. He is the perfect fit because, in theory, he helps the Mets win in the short term while also not blocking the top-end prospect the Mets have in the pipeline, who just isn’t ready quite yet. Robert is the perfect bridge to Ewing, and there’s always a chance that he’s good enough that he plays himself into sticking around in 2027 and beyond.
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