With one half of baseball in the books, there has certainly been more to be disappointed and frustrated about than anything else when it pertains to the New York Mets. That’ll happen when the general manager proclaims them as the team to beat in the National League East before the season despite only being a handful of games better than the Miami Marlins as we approach the All-Star break.
Now that the calendar has flipped to July, the conversation has turned to the trade deadline, and unfortunately, the Mets don’t appear to be buyers. Instead of mostly standing pat with their most attractive assets (like they did last summer), Brodie Van Wagenen should be more active. After all, what’s been going on here clearly isn’t working, and something needs to change.
A current Mets player that typically would be a decent target for bench depth on contending teams is outfielder Juan Lagares. He’s no offensive juggernaut, but has historically been solid defensively, doesn’t cost too much financially, won’t cost much in the way of prospects, and has a $9.5 million club option available for 2020.
But any value he did have has absolutely gone down the drain over the last three-plus months. As mentioned before, Lagares has never been considered an offensive asset, but historically, he’s hit enough to justify plugging him into the lineup thanks to his defense. Well, he’s been worth -5 Defensive Runs Saved so far in 2019 and has struggled incredibly to a .179/.247/.257 line through 155 plate appearances.
When looking at hitters with at least 150 plate appearances this year, his 36 wRC+ and -1.1 fWAR are both among the 10 worst in baseball.
Was it a Surprise, Though?
Ahead of the 2018 season, Lagares spent some of the winter in southern California revamping his swing. On the surface, it looked like he had made major improvements prior to his year getting cut short due to injury. His performance only included 64 plate appearances, but a .339/.375/.390 line with a 112 wRC+ was still encouraging to see (lack of power notwithstanding).
There were plenty of red flags in this very small sample size, though.
Lagares had posted just two extra-base hits (one double and one triple) during this time and also boasted a .392 BABIP despite a 56.0% ground-ball rate and a soft-hit rate (25.5%) that was higher than his hard-hit rate (23.5%). When looking at how the outfielder has performed in these categories so far in 2019, they’re not all that different. His ground-ball rate has increased (58.2%), and while his soft-hit rate has improved (18.9%), his hard-hit rate has continued a downward trend (20.0%).
It’s also been accompanied by a huge decrease in line-drive rate (22.0% to 13.2%), making his current .250 BABIP not a shock in the slightest. There may be some occasional bad luck mixed in there, but Lagares has certainly “earned” these numbers. It just looks drastic when compared to the year before because he enjoyed a fair amount of good fortune along the way.
No Forward Progress in Approach
The good news is that Lagares’ 7.1% walk rate is on track to be a new single-season career high. The bad news? It’s been paired with a 30.3% strikeout rate, which is nearly eight percentage points higher than his current single-season career-worst mark. It’s tough to compare what he’s done so far this year to what he did last year because the sample sizes are very different. So with that in mind, I decided to compare it to what he did in 2017, when he posted a 5.1% walk rate, 20.6% strikeout rate, and a 78 wRC+ in 272 plate appearances.
As one can imagine, what’s going on both inside and outside the strike zone isn’t all that encouraging.
| Year | O-Swing% | O-Contact% | Z-Swing% | Z-Contact% | Contact% | SwStr% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 33.6% | 68.4% | 61.5% | 85.5% | 79.0% | 9.7% |
| 2019 | 36.7% | 58.3% | 65.1% | 87.2% | 74.6% | 12.3% |
An increase of swings inside the strike zone (Z-Swing%) is good, but not when the corresponding contact rate only improves by a fraction of that increase. So, Lagares is swinging more often, making less contact, and for the contact he does make, the quality has continually gone down.
That’s not exactly an ideal trifecta.
Sliders Have Been Tough
With these monumental struggles, I was interested to see if there were any pitches in particular giving Lagares fits in 2019. Turns out there are two: sliders and changeups. His performance against changeups has been especially horrible (60.0% strikeout rate, -47 wRC+), but it’s a pitch he doesn’t see nearly as often as the slider.
Sliders are actually the second-most used offering against Lagares right now, and the results are almost as eye-opening: he owns a 39.3% strikeout rate, .254 OPS, and -24 wRC+ when facing that pitch. And while his ground-ball rate is basically up across the board, none of them are as high as the 75.0% mark he’s posted against sliders (which just so happens to coincide with a 6.3% line-drive rate, the lowest of any offering this year).
This year has been a worst-case scenario come true for Lagares. The Mets should investigate selling off as many available assets as possible this month. It seems as if their former Gold Glove center fielder has played himself out of having any chance of getting on a contender, or having that club option get exercised once the winter rolls around unless something huge changes over the next few months.
