Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports

Jeff McNeil just hasn’t gotten it going.

McNeil is a great story and an easy guy to root for. He’s in the vein of a T.J. Rivera — an under-the-radar prospect who hit at every level yet was overlooked and considered by scouts to have no major league future. But of course, McNeil burst onto the scene and has done pretty much nothing but hit with the Mets, turning himself into not just an adequate major league player but a bonafide star.

In his first three major league seasons, he posted a .319/.383/.501 batting line, good for a 139 wRC+ and 8.4 fWAR in 248 games. But he simply hasn’t provided that same level of production this year, seeing his line fall to a pedestrian .246/.322/.357. As the Mets have fallen from grace, McNeil’s struggles have only been more amplified — a team simply needs more production than that out of its everyday two-hitter.

The question now, as the Mets look to make a run to get back in the division race, is whether McNeil is due for some positive regression, or if this is really who he is now. It would be hard to believe that his first 1024 plate appearances were just a fluke.

The good news is that it could at least partially be due to bad luck. His BABIP this year is just .273, compared to .342 through his first three seasons. That immediately raises the question: Is McNeil making hard contact less often than in the past?

McNeil has never been a high exit velocity guy, even when he’s at his best. In 2019 — his best full season to date — his average exit velocity was in just the 41st percentile while his hard-hit percentage was in the 35th percentile, according to his Baseball Savant page. He found his success by being a guy who sprayed the ball around the field, not by hitting scorching liners.

Those numbers have slightly worsened in 2021. His average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage are in the 25th and 28th percentile this year, respectively. While he’s obviously not a player who relies on hitting the ball hard, the fact that he’s hitting the ball even softer this season certainly isn’t helping matters.

And this has led to a marginal downtick in power, with his ISO falling from .182 his first three years to .111 this year. While that is an issue to take note of, the biggest difference has clearly been his massive decrease in batting average, with it falling all the way from .319 from 2018-2020 to .246 in 2021.

The low BABIP suggests some improvement is in store, but it’s not that cut and dry. McNeil’s expecting batting average (xBA) is in just the 43rd percentile, compared to a massive 84th percentile in 2019. He’s hitting the ball softer while also hitting more ground balls and fewer line drives. This has affected both his average and power numbers, and he’s simply going to have to make better contact more of the time to find any real substantial improvement.

He’s also seeing fewer pitches per plate appearance, with 3.5 this year compared to 4.55 his first three years. He’s never been a Brandon Nimmo-type player in that he’s always been fairly aggressive, but he’s being perhaps a little too aggressive this year to the point that it’s negatively affected his quality of contact. He doesn’t need to change his style completely or become a Nimmo-lite, but it would benefit him to take a few more pitches and wait for his pitch to do damage.

His frustration mounted on Friday, as he went 0-for-4 and exploded into a fiery rage after his strikeout in the eighth inning. The anger was justified, seeing as the ball was off the plate, but it seemed a lot like the culmination of everything that’s been going wrong for both McNeil personally and the Mets as a team.

The Mets have been in the midst of an ugly slide, falling from first place to two games below .500. With McNeil slotted into the two-hole every day, they’re simply going to need better than league average production there. McNeil’s going to have to dial back his aggressiveness a tad and get back to hitting solid line drives more consistently, otherwise his season as well as the Mets’ championship hopes may be a lost cause.