According to Mike Puma of the New York Post, the New York Mets plan for Jay Bruce to get a start at first base at some point during the Mets upcoming homestand.
Bruce, 30, has insinuated in the past that he’s not all that eager to play a position he’s played all of fifteen major-league games at, but is willing to do whatever the team needs him to do.
However, a tone shift is apparent, with Bruce beginning to clearly understand the reasoning behind this idea as detailed by Puma in this article as well.
“I don’t make those decisions, but looking at it on a piece of paper, it makes sense. It’s a way to keep all of our bats in the lineup, but we’ll see. They have a lot of stuff they have to do as far as decisions they have to make.”
However, he does not see this as a permanent solution by any means, at least this season.
“If I was going to make the full-time switch there at some point it would be an offseason thing. All offseason and spring training working toward it, just to feel like I knew the ins and outs, but when I do go over there I just try to feel real natural.”
He does not, though, feel uncomfortable playing the position and does not want to overthink the position change too much if it were to happen.
“I feel pretty comfortable when I am out there, so unless he sees something that is not going to work and I cannot play the position doing that I just want to ‘sandlot’ it and just play. But everything has been good as far as my hands and stuff and if it was a more permanent situation I would focus much more on footwork, but it feels okay. I don’t think there is any craziness.”
Adrian Gonzalez, 35, is currently hitting .203 with a .322 OPS, playing in 19 of the team’s 24 games, with Wilmer Flores also seeing time at the position, mostly against left-handed pitching.
Bruce had been mired in a slump of his own up until recently. His slash line on April 19 was .190/.288/.328. Since April 20, he’s gone 8-for-22 with a double, a triple, a home run and two runs batted in.
Brandon Nimmo (.296/.500/.593, four extra-base hits in 27 at-bats), would take over in right field in this scenario.
Nimmo would likely become the leadoff hitter which would allow the Mets to move Michael Conforto to the middle of the order.
That lineup, on paper, looks much better than the one the team is currently using on a nightly basis, with Bruce likely moving to the fifth spot in the lineup and one of Asdrubal Cabrera and Todd Frazier hitting in the sixth spot.
The offense is, apparently, the number one priority for Sandy Alderson with this decision, even if only on a part-time basis.
“We have to give our starting pitchers a chance.”
