Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

It feels like we’ve been waiting for New York Mets infielder/outfielder Jeff McNeil to get hot and bring his season-long offensive statistics up to career norms. While there’s still time left to finish strong, it’s likely too late to erase the struggles he’s experienced for most of 2021.

One of the highlights of the Mets’ blowout win against the New York Yankees on Friday night at Citi Field was how McNeil surprised everyone by dragging a bunt with the bases loaded.

It was a great play that served its purpose. Upon thinking about it more, though, I realized it’s a symbol of how this year has gone for McNeil. If he was feeling like himself, there’s absolutely no way he’s bunting with the bases loaded. After finishing his first three MLB seasons with a wRC+ of at least 130, he’s currently sitting at 91 with three weeks left in the regular season. He’s also paired that with a .251/.321/.353 line, six home runs, and 33 RBI through 380 plate appearances.

The Stuff in Plain Sight

Outside of the above statistics, there are other ways to easily see where McNeil has struggled by simply looking at his FanGraphs page. For starters, he entered Monday’s series-opening game against the St. Louis Cardinals with a .280 BABIP. Between 2018 and 2021, that number settled in at .359, .337, and .335, respectively.

So, that’s definitely a huge change and makes us look elsewhere to see how the heck it happened. Although he’s technically hitting line drives and ground-balls at career-worst clips, they’re still pretty close to his career norms (22.1% line-drive rate for career, 21.3% in 2021, 43.2% ground-ball rate for career, 45.7% in 2021). What’s changed since his 2019 power outburst is his quality of contact. Check out how those numbers have progressed over the past three seasons.

That leads us to his plate-discipline numbers. Although McNeil continues decreasing his chase rate (41.7% in ’19, 38.5% in ’20, 34.1% in ’21) and he remains aggressive within the strike zone, there hasn’t been a huge shift in his contact for either situation.

Pulling Behind the Curtain A Bit

During McNeil’s 2019 campaign in which he hit a career-high 23 home runs, an area where he excelled was against four-seam fastballs. He clubbed seven homers against that offering, the most of any pitch he faced that season, and it led to an impressive .315/.381/.514 line with a 144 wRC+. It stuck out in comparison to his abbreviated rookie year that I wrote about it that following offseason.

The left-handed hitter put together good results against that offering in 2020 — he slashed .317/.377/.467 with a 135 wRC+ against it — but it’s been drastically different in 2021. It’s technically not the pitch McNeil is struggling with the most, but it’s the one he’s seen most. Entering Monday, McNeil was hitting .246/.319/.349 with a 92 wRC+ against four-seamers, which is easily on track to be the worst performance of his young career.

His batted-ball profile against four-seamers has also taken quite a nosedive when looking at the last three seasons.

With the general lack of power he’s experienced throughout 2021, one can imagine it’s taken a toll on his fly-ball numbers, too, and that’s not wrong. Check out how his OPS, wRC+, and quality-of-contact numbers have progressively worsened since 2019:

As those numbers have fallen off a cliff, it’d be crucial for McNeil’s numbers on other batted-ball events to either increase or at the very least, be maintained to measure up to prior seasons. While his line-drive rate has decreased, his performance has been in the same ballpark as the recent past (296 wRC+ in ’21). What has changed a lot is his performance on ground balls — he posted a 114 wRC+ on that batted-ball event in 2020, but it’s down at 42 so far this year.

Looking Ahead

What’s going to be next for McNeil, especially as he heads into this offseason with his value at its lowest point since he made his debut in 2018? It’ll be interesting to see how the Mets’ front office plans on addressing the offense, which was supposed to be one of the league’s better units before waking up so far in September following a season-long slumber.

We know how much pressure McNeil puts on himself with each plate appearance, which is evidenced by the cursing that happens whenever he’s not successful. He, like teammate Dominic Smith, is in a situation where they just need the season to end so they can turn the page and start working to make what’s currently happening a distant memory. It was obviously on a much smaller scale, but I’ve been there a couple of times when I played, too. Getting a clean slate and not being weighed down by one’s rough season on a daily basis does make a difference for a player’s mindset.

McNeil has produced enough prior to 2021 for us to look at his struggles this year and think it’s a bump in the road. The challenge now, though, will be figuring out how to get back to his roots and be the hitting machine we all fell in love with. It seemed like he was getting back to that earlier this summer, but it went away again.

It’s in there somewhere. He hopefully just needs some time to clear his mind and find it again.