One Interesting Data Point for Each Mets Hitter This Spring

Every spring training, players try new things like swing changes, trying to pull the ball more, improving bat speed and power output, and working on breaking balls, etc. Now that every ballpark has Statcast data, we can take a deeper look at each player and focus on one data point to see whether it’s a trend line for the season or just an aberration from a small sample size in spring training.

Francisco Lindor – Average Exit Velocity

The big story with Francisco Lindor was that he began spring training with a hamate fracture. Lindor has never had elite exit velocities in his career, sitting above average. While Lindor did not hit a ball over 104.5 miles per hour this spring in his limited playing time, his average exit velocity was 91.7 miles per hour. His one ball in play as a right-handed hitter was 96.3 miles per hour, which could be a good sign since, as a switch hitter, that is when his surgically repaired hand is on the bottom.

Juan Soto – Swing%

Juan Soto is one of the most disciplined and patient hitters in the game. In 2025, he was in the 1st percentile in swing% at 35.5%. This spring, he has been more aggressive with a 41% swing rate (19th percentile). It will be interesting to see if this is just a case of wanting to make more contact in spring training or if he is looking to be more aggressive at the plate in the regular season, too.

Bo Bichette – Swing%

Bo Bichette is largely the opposite of Juan Soto when it comes to swinging, as he is one of the most aggressive hitters in the game. His 53.1% swing rate was in the 83rd percentile. This spring, he showed a more patient approach, swinging 41% of the time, exactly the same as Juan Soto. It will be interesting to see if he is looking to be a bit more patient, or if the swing rate ticks back up in the regular season.

Jorge Polanco – K%

Jorge Polanco has a reputation as a tough at bat. When the 2023 Mariners struggled as a team with strikeouts, they acquired Polanco to fix that issue. He went on to post a career-worst 29.2% strikeout rate. That was after putting up a 25.7% rate the year before. When he returned to Seattle in 2025, he cut that all the way down to 15.6%. In spring training with the Mets, Polanco struck out only 12.8% of the time, and so far, it seems his improvements from 2025 might hold.

Luis Robert Jr. – Chase Rate

Luis Robert Jr. is coming off two seasons where he struggled offensively. They were also two of the seasons he saw the least amount of pitches in the zone. Whether it was because he was just trying to make stuff happen or not, his 32.6% chase rate was in the 20th percentile. In his very limited spring training appearances, he only chased 21.3% of the time. 23 plate appearances are hardly enough to make any concrete analysis, but it is good very early returns from a player who targeted plate discipline as an improvement area for 2026. Per his agent Scott Boras, he worked with Juan Soto in the offseason to improve in this area.

Francisco Alvarez – Pulled Fly Ball Rate

Heading into the 2025 season, Francisco Alvarez worked with JD Martinez and the coaches he recommended at Maven. Per his interview in The Athletic he wanted to become a complete hitter, no longer prioritizing power and putting the ball in the air to the opposite field more often. While that approach works for JD Martinez, it did not work for Alvarez and he was demoted to Triple-A to revert his swing back. In 2025, he only pulled the ball in the air 5.8% of the time. In spring training, he has pulled the ball in the air at a 23.8% rate, which is in the 89th percentile.

Brett Baty – Zone Contact Rate

In 2025, Brett Baty moved back in the box, taking the ball deeper while also focusing on harder contact. All of his exit velocity measurements skyrocketed from 2024, but his zone contact rate fell from 84% to 79.8%. In essence, he traded contact for power. In spring training so far, Baty has put up a 90% zone contact rate while still showing his power gains from 2025. You expect that contact rate to dip a bit when facing only major league pitching, but this could be an early indication that Baty is taking another step forward offensively.

Carson Benge – Max Exit Velocity

We have discussed in detail here about Carson Benge‘s plus contact rates, so let’s take a quick look at his power. Carson Benge’s hardest hit ball of the spring came in at 110.8 miles per hour. That is harder than any ball hit by Spencer Torkelson, Max Muncy, Mark Vientos, Cody Bellinger, and Trent Grisham in the 2025 season, to name a few. Benge will continue to develop in the majors and could even top this max exit velocity at some point during the season.

Marcus Semien – Hard Hit Rate

Marcus Semien came into camp looking to drive the ball with more power and while his high-end exit velocities did not show up, he made much more consistent hard contact. His 52.9% hard hit rate was in the 75th percentile and was significantly higher than his 36.6% hard hit rate in 2025. With plus contact skills, Semien may look to trade some contact for power and increase his home run rate, similar to what the Mets did with Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo in recent years. A “hard hit ball” is classified by Statcast as a ball hit 95 MPH or higher.

Mark Vientos – Barrel Rate

The results for Mark Vientos this spring were terrible to say the least, but under the hood, he looked very similar to what we expect from him: lots of hard contact, poor contact rates, lots of swing and miss, and not many walks. Mark Vientos’s success will largely rest on how often he is barreling up the ball. In 2024, he ran a 14.1% barrel rate, but in 2025 that fell to 11.5%. Still above average in the 72nd percentile, but not elite like it was in 2024. So far this spring, Mark has run a 14.6% barrel rate. If he can continue to do that, his poor batted ball luck should turn around.

Luis Torrens – Pull Rate

Luis Torrens showed good but not great power metrics and good but not great contact skills in 2025, resulting in an underwhelming slash line and a wOBA that severely underperformed his xwOBA. But xwOBA does not take direction into account – if you hit 30 balls 375 feet down the line, that is 30 home runs, if you hit them to center field, that is 30 fly outs. Torrens’ pulled fly ball rate was only 9.7% last year, which was in the bottom 12%. In spring training, he has pulled the ball even less at only 5.3% (5th percentile). But his overall pull rate of 47.1% is significantly higher than his 32% in 2025. His issue is that he has hit the ball on the ground 49.5% of the time. If he can lift the ball more while pulling it, in theory, his offensive output should improve close to his xwOBA.

Tyrone Taylor – Barrel Rate

In 2022, Tyrone Taylor hit 17 home runs in only 120 games for the Milwaukee Brewers. In two years and 243 games with the Mets, he has only hit nine total. In 2022, Taylor barreled up the ball 9.9% of the time (68th percentile). In 2025, he only put up a 3.8% barrel rate (12th percentile). Similar to Semien, he seems to be trading some of his above-average contact skills to get to more power, consistently hitting the ball harder in spring and putting up a 10% barrel rate.

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