Carson Benge kept adding to his case in the Subway Series, and by the time the Mets were done with the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, he had turned two games into a full-on reminder of why his name belongs in the National League Rookie of the Year conversation.
The right fielder’s weekend started with a throw. In Friday’s opener, Benge cut down Yankees first baseman Luis Garcia Jr. when he tried to stretch a single into a double from the right-field corner.
That was Benge’s 10th outfield assist of the season, a total topped by only one other qualified right fielder in baseball. After that, the Yankees stopped challenging him.
He also flashed a different kind of skill later that night, working a 10-pitch walk against lefty reliever Brent Headrick during the Mets’ eighth-inning rally. The at-bat featured four two-strike fouls and three close takes, the kind of grind-it-out plate appearance that shows up in a box score but also says plenty about how he handles a tough spot.
Saturday was even louder. Benge blasted a towering home run off Gerrit Cole, his 17th of the season and the second-most among NL rookies, then sent Cole packing two innings later with a sharp RBI single.
He wasn’t done there. In the eighth inning, with the Mets already ahead by nine, he made a diving catch in right-center to steal extra bases from Aaron Judge and cap off a highlight reel sequence in the field.
“He doesn’t impress me anymore,” Juan Soto said in the Mets’ clubhouse after Saturday’s blowout win. “I think he’s a superstar.
He’s doing he’s doing things that superstars do every day. Every day he’ll find a way how to make us smile with the swing, with the running, the throws.
I mean, it’s just incredible.”
Andy Green said the defensive plays have become routine enough that they barely draw a reaction anymore.
“The diving catches are turning into something that you now expect, which tells you something about the type of defender he is,” Mets interim manager Andy Green said. “When it goes in the gap and you see him running, he’s going to lay out and catch this.
He just does it again and again and again, so a couple of us said we weren’t giving him a high five because it’s just becoming casual. It just happens all the time.”
Through 142 games, Benge is hitting .273/.337/.414 with 22 stolen bases, 76 runs, 57 RBI and 17 homers. If he stays hot over the final two weeks, he has an outside chance to catch Reds slugger Sal Stewart in the NL Rookie of the Year race.
That said, the path is steep. Stewart leads all of baseball with 107 RBI and ranks sixth with 31 home runs.
Cardinals shortstop JJ Wetherholt is also in the mix for first-place votes, helped by the fact that he leads the NL in Wins Above Replacement and has played so well defensively. Mets right-hander Nolan McLean is part of the discussion too, carrying a 3.24 ERA over 29 starts with 184 strikeouts, though Friday’s rough outing against the Yankees did him no favors.
For Benge, the early-season numbers may end up being the thing that keeps him from the award. Before he played on May 2, he was batting .179 with a .498 OPS, a slow start as he adjusted to big-league pitching. Since then, he has hit .293 with an .805 OPS and 15 home runs in 112 games.
Benge smiled when he heard Soto call him a superstar.
“It’s pretty cool,” he said, “pretty special to be able to catch someone’s eye like that. So that’s really cool, and I’ll just keep on doing my thing and working hard every day.”
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