It’s been an encouraging West Coast swing for New York Mets catcher Kevin Plawecki who has seen his batting average climb 50 points over the last four games in San Diego and Los Angeles, and the timing couldn’t be better for the former first rounder.
Plawecki is batting .357 (5-for-14) with three doubles and home run in his last four contests while posting a 1.186 OPS. His homer came against Scott Kazmir in Monday night’s 4-2 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“I’m just going up there trying to get good pitches to hit and putting my ‘A’ swing on them,” Plawecki told reporters after the game. “I definitely feel comfortable in the box. I’m just going to keep swinging it, keep putting good at-bats together, and just keep trying to hit the ball hard.” (ESPN NY)
Plawecki, 25, got a text from the team’s regular catcher Travis d’Arnaud, who is sidelined indefinitely with a strained right rotator cuff.
“I had a text from him after the game,” Plawecki said of d’Arnaud. “I don’t think he’s the type of person to really get down. Obviously anybody in his situation just wants to get healthy and get back. Hopefully that helps.”
With d’Arnaud’s immediate future in doubt. Mets manager Terry Collins pointed out the opportunity before Plawecki who had expressed some frustration and admitted to pressing at the plate last Friday.
“This is a great opportunity for Kevin to show he can be an everyday catcher,” Collins said. “Certainly I don’t mean to put a lot of pressure on him, but he’s got to start getting some hits, because that’s one of the things we all said he could do. We all thought he was going to be a good offensive player.”
Plawecki batted .290 with a .364 on-base percentage over four minor league seasons with the Mets after being selected out of Purdue with the 35th overall pick in the 2012 draft. At the time he was considered one of the top college bats in the draft. The former Boilermaker was named the 2012 Big Ten Conference Player of the Year.
He’ll need to string together a lot more games like last night before he can stake a claim to the starting catcher job when d’Arnaud returns. But lately, the young backstop has shown some flashes of the potential many scouts said he had offensively.
