Is Mets History Repeating Itself at First Base?

At some point in the next three to five years, Major League Baseball will no longer have pitchers batting. The reasons are obvious as baseball has been moving towards the age of specialization for some time now.

Now there are kids growing up that consider themselves pitchers and won’t spend any time or energy worrying about their swing because developing that 95 mph fastball is their ticket to the show. They then eventually make it to the majors and debut in the National League, where they are suddenly asked to hit for the first time since they were a teenager.

This is why the game is moving away from pitchers hitting because frankly, they suck at it.

Yet because of a labor dispute that is surely about to come to a head following the 2021 season, we are left with one (at least) more season without the universal DH.

The Elephant in the Room

What is that old adage? The one about how you can never have too much talent.

While it’s surely true in principle, that does not mean that an abundance of talent comes without it’s headaches. For the Mets, the problem staring them in the face now is the same one they had from 2010 through 2014.

They have two talented young first baseman.

It is hard to believe we are more than a decade removed from when Ike Davis and Lucas Duda both made their debuts in 2010. Davis had a remarkable rookie year, hitting 19 home runs with 71 RBI and a .791 OPS. He played in 147 games, flipped over the dugout railing a few times on spectacular catches and received votes to be the Rookie of the Year.

People felt like Davis had the chance to become the Mets next star and a great complement to the guy they had starting at the other corner, David Wright.

Meanwhile Duda was rapidly rising through the Mets farm system, producing a .914 OPS in 45 games with the Binghamton Mets before being promoted to Triple-A. In 70 games with the Buffalo Bisons, Duda hit 17 home runs, 23 doubles and two triples, slugging .610 on his way to a .999 OPS.

Duda earned his September call-up that year, as he was named the Sterling Organizational Player of the Year in 2010. Problem for the Mets is they had no place to play him.

Here is where we embarked on the adventure that was Lucas Duda out in left field, as New York tried to squeeze two first baseman (three if you count Daniel Murphy ie. J.D. Davis) into the starting lineup.

Duda played 111 games in left field and during that span he only made two errors. Although now we know that errors do not tell the full story of a player’s defensive impact. From 2010 through 2014, Duda was worth -15 DRS and -23.1 UZR/150 across just 893 2/3 innings out in left field.

Dominic Smith has been worth -7 DRS in 470 1/3 innings playing left field. His -25 UZR/150 is slightly worse than Duda.

Across the five-year span that Duda and Davis were teammates at the big-league level, the constant debate every Spring was who should be the Mets first baseman?

Davis’ strong rookie year was paired with a really promising 36-game sample (153 wRC+) in his sophomore season. Unfortunately, a collision with David Wright and subsequent set of injuries cost Davis most of his second year and he never returned to that previous form.

Meanwhile Duda earned the position and would be the starting first baseman for a World Series team in 2015. Eventually the choice between Duda and Davis made itself evident, a trade was made with Pittsburgh and the rest was history.

Now years later, Sandy Alderson finds himself in a similar pickle, only of greater proportions.

Alderson drafted Smith with the 11^th overall pick back in 2013 and saw him graduate to the majors in 2017. In his final two years with organization, Alderson watched Smith produce some underwhelming results.

Now he returns to see his former first round pick coming off a career-year, where his 164 wRC+ was the sixth-best mark in all of baseball in 2020.

On the other hand, Alonso (Alderson’s second-round pick in 2016) produced one of the best offensive seasons in franchise history back in 2019, setting an MLB rookie record with 53 home runs to go along with his league-leading 120 RBI.

An unprecedented 60-game season gave us all a glimmer of hope that Alonso and Smith could share a lineup without forcing one of them to play out of position. Alderson spent an offseason dreaming of a lineup that included both of his standout first baseman, with an improved defense out in the outfield.

Now he has to table that prospect for the time being.

All of which leads us to another season where the Mets are talking themselves into an outfield that consists of Brandon Nimmo in center field and a first baseman playing beside him in left.

Offensively there is an argument to be made that Smith, Nimmo and Conforto are the best trio of outfielders in the game. But the Mets could also be staring down another season with a defense that ranks in the bottom half of the league.

At some point in the next three to five years, the designated hitter will become a uniform rule held across Major League Baseball. Unfortunately, until then, teams like the Mets will have to continue to confront the same problems they have been facing for years.

What do you do when you develop two great players at the same position?

You hope one of them can learn a new position, or you pick the one you like the most and trade the other. The Duda/Davis dilemma of old has been reincarnated into the superior Alonso/Smith model of the future.

If Alderson was hesitant to move on from one of the two first baseman he didn’t even draft back in the 2010s, the chances of him cutting ties with one of the budding stars he helped discover is rather unlikely.

Instead fans can expect a healthy dose of Smith out in left field, with the hopes of a rule change solving this problem for Alderson in the near-future.