Mark Vientos got a big thrill playing on Opening Day for the first time in his big league career, but the first two weeks of the Mets’ season haven’t been kind to him at the plate.
The young third baseman had just three hits in his first 31 at-bats with two walks in his first eight games. But there are some good signs as he walked three times on Monday before getting an opposite-field single in the eighth of Tuesday’s 10-5 win over the Marlins.
“It was good to see him getting a knock there,” manager Carlos Mendoza said, adding that Vientos also “smoked” a ball to center (105.5 mph off the bat) for a hard-luck lineout earlier in the game. (Statcast gave it a .720 expected batting average.)
“I think there’s some good signs there,” Mendoza said, adding that as long as Vientos “continues to control the strike zone, he’s gonna continue to be in a good place.”
“I like the takes, I like the fact that he’s executing his game plan,” the manager said.
Going the other way could be a way home for the third baseman, he entered the day with just 7.4 percent of batted balls going that direction. Down from 20.8 percent last year. But Vientos could do with a few more hard-hit balls (down from 46.6 percent last year to 29.6) and his barel percentage is down as well, from 14.1 percent to 7.4
Despite the struggles at the plate – slashing .125/.239/.175 so far – the skipper doesn’t see it getting to the 25-year-old.
“He goes out there, he prepares, he’s playing good defense, he’s engaged,” Mendoza said. “Yeah, you want to see some results as a competitor, but it was good for him to get [single].
“After hitting a bullet in center field and not getting results, it gets to a point where you might get frustrated, but I haven’t seen anything from him.”
Brett Baty fighting through it
Baty grabbed a single in three times up on Tuesday but couldn’t kick his early season struggles.
“He’s going through it right now, and he’s gonna have to continue to fight through it,” Mendoza said. “There’s time where I feel like he’s getting behind, they’re attacking him early in counts, they’re getting ahead. And he’s missing his pitches. It’s tough to hit 0-1, 0-2 a lot.”
Baty has fallen behind 0-1 in 18 of his first 24 at-bats on the young season. Nine of those at-bats have seen him down in the count 0-2. As a result, he’s gone struck out nine times already.
Against the Marlins on Tuesday, the second baseman had better fortune with the counts, falling behind 0-1 in just one of those at-bats, but the results stayed mostly the same as he finished 1-for-3 with a strikeout on a half swing at a ball up in the zone.
He got to 2-0 in his first at-bat, then grounded out weekly on a sweeper over the plate. In his final time up, Mendoza noted he got to 3-1 before knocking an infield single (100.9 mph off the bat, but with just a .140 expected average, per Statcast).
“There were a couple of at-bats [Tuesday] where he was in hitter’s counts,” the manager said. “And I think if he starts doing that [by] not chasing or not missing pitches when they’re attacking him, he’s gonna be fine.
“He’s gotta continue to grind through it, and he will.”
Read the full article here
