Brett Baty’s season has been one of those stat lines that looks familiar at first glance, then starts to tell a more complicated story the longer you stare at it.
He’s at 130 games, which matches what he played last year. His plate appearances are almost identical too, jumping from 432 in 2025 to 435 in 2026.
The RBI total is the same at 50. Even in the smaller details, the numbers keep circling back on themselves.
And while Baty finished 2025 strong with the New York Mets, the overall vibe around him for most fans hasn’t exactly been glowing.
The slash line is where the eye test starts to sting. Last year, Baty hit .254/.313/.435.
This season, he’s sitting at .229/.300/.366. That drop looks steep, but the gap is narrower than it first appears.
In nearly the same number of plate appearances and at-bats, he has only 11 fewer hits, going from 100 to 89. The biggest change is in the kind of damage he’s doing: 18 home runs in 2025, only 10 so far in 2026.
A lot of that power, though, seems to have shifted into doubles. He already has 21 this year, compared with 13 all of last season.
There are also signs that the bat speed and contact quality haven’t disappeared. Baty has cut his ground ball rate from 50.7% to 40.2%, which keeps pointing toward more power showing up eventually.
His expected stats are better than the actual production, and his xSLG is .035 higher than where he’s landed. That difference ranks 29th in MLB, which is the kind of number that makes people wonder whether he’s been a little unlucky.
The expected slugging percentage paints a slightly friendlier picture. A .401 xSLG still wouldn’t turn heads, but it’s a lot sturdier than .366.
That would slot him between Cam Smith and Jo Adell on the MLB leaderboard, and both of those players have topped 20 home runs this year. For a hitter who was always supposed to bring more pop than he has at the major league level, that feels like a reasonable target.
The real problem has been pitch type. Baty is hitting .273 against fastballs, but only .163 against breaking pitches.
He’s at .203 against offspeed pitches too, which leaves plenty of evidence for opposing pitchers to work with. The sweeper has been especially nasty on him.
He hit just .111 against it in 2025, and even with improvement this year, he’s still only at .167.
September has given the Mets something to hang onto. In just 22 plate appearances, Baty is one home run away from tying his monthly high for the season, two RBI shy of matching that mark, and he’s already doubled four times to tie his monthly high.
He’s only walked twice, but he’s also struck out just twice, which matters just as much for a player trying to stabilize his profile. His second-half slugging percentage sits at .520, a reminder of why the Mets keep investing in young players even when the overall results are uneven.
Baty is no longer really a kid in baseball terms. He’s in his fifth year at the MLB level, though this is only his second season with more than 400 plate appearances. He turns 27 in November, and he still hasn’t fully made the case.
Even so, the gap between this version of Baty and his 2025 peak may not be as wide as it looks. Just 11 more balls finding grass or slipping past an outfielder would pull him closer to last year’s best work.
That would still leave him at only .251, and batting average has probably never been the part of his game that’s going to carry him. But the bigger issue is clear enough: the home run drop has made the rest of the line look much worse than the projections suggest it should.
In Other News...
Mets May Have A Zac Thornton Problem They Cant Ignore
Zac Thornton has given the Mets enough steady innings to keep the conversation from being about raw performance alone, but his run prevention has been noticeably better when Luis Torrens is behind the plate. In 13 starts, Thornton carries a 3.44 ERA overall, and the split with Torrens is even more encouraging: a 2.53 ERA across 11 games together. For a Mets staff that has leaned on Torrens frequently, that kind of pattern is hard to ignore, especially when a pitchers comfort can shape the way a game unfolds.
Francisco Alvarez and Hayden Senger have each handled Thornton less often, and the results have not been nearly as clean. That does not automatically make this a simple catcher-pitcher pairing issue, but it does put a spotlight on the way defense and game-calling can influence a starters line from night to night. If the Mets are trying to maximize Thorntons value, the decision behind the plate may end up mattering almost as much as the one on the mound. [Read more 🡒]
Bo Bichette Just Put The Mets In An Awkward Spot
Bo Bichettes arrival gives the Mets a marquee addition, but it also comes with a layer of uncertainty that could linger beyond the honeymoon. The three-year, $126 million deal was built with options after each of the first two seasons, a structure that gives both sides flexibility while putting a premium on performance and timing.
The awkward part for New York is what comes next if Bichette rebounds and raises his value again. The Mets would love to see him stay tied to the $42 million option in 2027, but his struggles this season, the backdrop of labor talks, and the possibility of a fresh run at free agency all leave the long-term picture unsettled. [Read more 🡒]
Mets Top Prospect Is Suddenly Forcing His Way Into The Infield Picture
Jefferson Rojas is moving quickly enough that the Mets can no longer treat him like a far-off name in the farm system. After a strong offensive run at Double-A Binghamton, the club promoted its top prospect to Triple-A Syracuse, a step that reflects both the progress he has made at the plate and the organizations growing curiosity about where he fits long term. Acquired from the Cubs in a trade, Rojas has drawn attention this season for showing more power and a better overall approach with the bat.
What makes him especially intriguing for the Mets is that the bat is not the only part of the profile developing. Rojas has defensive versatility, and that gives the team options as it keeps mapping out the infield beyond the present tense. A prospect who is starting to force the issue at Triple-A tends to change conversations quickly, and for the Mets, Rojas is suddenly becoming part of a future infield picture that could arrive sooner than expected. [Read more 🡒]