You probably cringe when Jose Reyes‘ .094 batting average is shown on SNY every time he steps up to the plate. It’s no secret that Reyes has been abysmal this season, and his slash line of .094/.186/.132 is proof positive of that. Reyes is off to the worst start of his big-league career, and that career may be in serious jeopardy if he doesn’t start hitting soon.
Even as bad as that slash line is, it doesn’t even tell the whole story of how bad he’s been. The advanced analytics on him are downright awful 14 games into the season– some of the worst ever put up.
Reyes’ OPS+ is -9. Not 9, -9. That means he is 109 percent worse than a league-average hitter. His -7.3 offensive fWAR is the second-worst in all of baseball, his .157 wOBA is fourth-worst and his .040 isolated power is 14th-worst. No surprise here considering how bad he’s been at the plate this year.
As far as overall WAR goes, his -0.6 fWAR is the fifth-worst in all of baseball. So not only is Reyes the worst position player on the Mets, but he’s among the worst position players in all of baseball. If you round up, that means he’s cost the Mets one game based on his fWAR alone– and he did cost the Mets a win Tuesday night when he pulled off a fantastic Luis Castillo impression.
On the defensive side of things, Reyes fares a little bit better. He has a 0.2 dWAR, which makes him an average fielder. This would be okay if he was hitting well, but he’s not. Even the light-hitting, slick-fielding Rey Ordonez was an exponentially better hitter than Reyes is right now.
The Mets honestly may be best suited at this point in dumping Reyes. He is owed nothing more than his league-minimum salary this season, and he frankly would not be a Met had he not been hit with domestic violence charges in 2015.
He played reasonably well last season, so the Mets should give him a little bit of leeway in terms of saving his roster spot in the immediate future. But if this level of play continues for another week or so, the team shouldn’t hesitate to show him the door.
