Jeff McNeil

Player Info: Age: 28, L/R

Player Stats: 52 G, 183 AB, .311 AVG, .383 OBP, .454 SLG, .836 OPS, 4 HR, 23 RBI, 19 R, 0 SB, 57 H, 20 BB

Advanced Stats: 1.3 bWAR, 1.2 fWAR, 131 OPS+, 130 WRC+, 9.5 BB%, 11.5 K%

2020 Salary: $617,676

Grade: B+

2020 Review

Let’s get this out of the way first: Jeff McNeil wasn’t as good this year as he was in his breakout 2019 season. But at the same time: Jeff McNeil was still really good in 2020! Both are true.

McNeil finished the year with a 131 OPS+, which is tied for 18th best in the National League and higher than Pete Alonso, Trevor Story, and future Rookie of the Year Jake Cronenworth. His four home runs came in four straight games in September (remember the monkey you saw jump off his back once he hit the first one?) and he, once again, finished in the top 10 in the National League with his .311 batting average.

I know, batting average isn’t the be-all and end-all of statistics. For someone like McNeil, though, his game is focused on contact to all parts of the field first, and once that is in line, the power comes as gravy. He is as a pure of a representation of putting the ball in play and seeing what happens as there is in baseball, evident by his 11.5 strikeout percentage this year, which ranked ninth lowest in the majors (top 2 percent!) among qualified hitters, according to Baseball Savant.

His walk rate was under 10 percent, too. That means around 80 percent of his at-bats ended with the ball in play! This season, 33.9 percent of McNeil’s plate appearances ended in grounders, 24.9 percent were fly balls, and 18.7 percent liners. And where did he hit them? Well, 30.1 percent of his plate appearances ended with him pulling the ball, 27.8 percent of them ended with the ball up the middle, and 19.7 percent to the opposite field.

Despite being in the bottom five percent in the league in hard hit percentage and in just the 16th percentile in average exit velocity this year, McNeil still produced because he can simply hit them where they ain’t. (He hit .321 with no shift, .346 with the shift, according to FanGraphs.)

But something still seemed…off with McNeil’s season. During McNeil’s toughest stretch at the plate this year, he went 3-31 with three walks. It’s important to note this stretch lasted from August 11 all the way until August 28, though, and a critical event in McNeil’s season happened during this time: he had a full-frontal crash into the Northwell Health advertisement on the left field wall at Citi Field when chasing down a fly ball.

After this crash, he had two days off, then had one pinch hit on August 16, played August 17 and 18, and then had a week off. (The Mets not putting a player on the IL when a “day-to-day” injury is actually something that may take a week or so to heal? Color me shocked.) He came back for the Mets’ double-header against the Miami on August 25 – 12 days after the injury occurred.

His batting average hit its lowest during game one of the series against the Yankees starting August 28, sitting at .253. During his down period, there were a handful of theories of what was causing the slump: the injury had something to do with it, Keith Hernandez believed he was “pulling out of the box a little early,” Luis Rojas theorized McNeil was standing up a little too tall in the box, and Ron Darling mentioned during a game against the Marlins that McNeil called “time” as he was entering the box for the first time, noting that was odd because “McNeil is always ready” – and this time he needed a couple extra seconds to get his mind right.

Whatever it was, exactly, he fixed it. Once McNeil’s “slump” was over, he promptly had a .998 OPS and 171 WRC+ for the final month of the season. He also had a stretch where he raised his batting average 73 points in 15 days. That’s more like it.

The problem for McNeil, though, and why it felt like he struggled in excess this year is because 17 days to work through an injury and a slump – no matter how short – was 30 percent of the 2020 season. In a typical year, if McNeil was injured and slumping for two months, his overall season would be more understandable to critique. It also felt like he struggled because, well, he’s Jeff McNeil! He has hovered around the top-10 of the National League in hitting ever since he came up to the majors in 2018, so any form of a down streak stands out. Thankfully for Mets fans, an extended down streak is not something McNeil has endured.

In addition to what he did at the plate, McNeil was all over the field in 2020, splitting most of his time in left field (215 innings/1.1 UZR/2 DRS), third base (75 innings/-0.4 UZR/0 DRS), and second base (68.2 innings/-0.1 UZR/-2 DRS). For a Mets team that was desperate for non-negative defenders, McNeil was about average or just above it wherever he played this year. McNeil also played 30 innings in right field once Michael Conforto ended the season on the IL and somehow amassed 1.5 UZR and 2 DRS in that time. But we can chalk that up to a couple nice jumps on balls like this one and this one. His versatility – and ability to not be a deficit (i.e. J.D. Davis or Dom Smith in left field) – has value.

Lastly, we can’t pass over McNeil’s, uh, let’s call it “entertainment” factor. One of the pleasures of his 2020 season was getting to hear him play in a stadium without fans. Do squirrels get this mad when they drop a nut? We knew from McNeil’s first two years in the league he is his own harshest critic. McNeil told The New York Times back in August, “I’m a perfectionist, and I want to do everything perfect and, if I don’t, I get a little upset.” There’s him striking out here. And there’s him grounding out in a game-winning situation in the second game of the year here. Never change, Jeff.

My girlfriend would’ve given McNeil an A+ this year off the strength of Willow McNeil and her cardboard cutout alone (damn you, Adam Duvall), but a B+ seems fair here. You can’t just disregard the three weeks McNeil was working through some things when the season barely lasted nine weeks. McNeil still put together a really good season despite the “struggles,” and that’s a sign of a player who can stick around for years to come.

2021 Outlook

McNeil will be on the roster in 2021, pending a bizarre turn of events. (Remember: McNeil was a discussed for a time in the Cano/Diaz trade, but you’ve got to feel his stance on the team is solidified moving forward even with new ownership.) The Mets could look at extending McNeil this offseason, too. McNeil is entering his age-29 season in 2021 and has four more years of team control (one pre-arbitration year and all three arbitration years). The Mets will have a slice of leverage being able to offer McNeil guaranteed money in his age 34 and 35 season by buying out a year or two of free agency with a five or six-year extension at a fair price.

When it comes to McNeil’s playing time in 2021, it’s not a matter of if Jeff McNeil will play but a matter of where he’ll play on the field. With a logjam up the middle (Andrés Giménez and Robinson Canó need playing time at second, specifically, without a DH), McNeil will see most of his time at left field and third base as the roster is currently constructed. We will have to wait until spring training to see what the roster looks like, though, to see where McNeil ultimately ends up positioned. What we know for certain, though, is Jeff will be swinging at the first pitch and screaming in his helmet from time to time. At least this time around, we’ll have an idea of what he’s saying to the helmet.