The Mets are in a mood where the usual logic doesn’t seem to matter much, and that’s how Christopher Morel ends up back in the conversation.
Morel’s case starts with the one thing that has always made him impossible to ignore: power. He has already put together two major league seasons with more than 20 homers, and that gives him a real calling card even with everything else attached to his profile.
The rest of the offensive package is a messier story. His .220 batting average and worsening strikeout rate helped push him out of the majors after the Miami Marlins released him, and the swing-and-miss has been brutal enough to make regular at-bats feel risky.
He struck out 38.4% of the time with the Marlins and owns a 30.7% strikeout rate for his career, which is the kind of number that can bury a hitter fast.
And yet here he is.
At 27, Morel was promoted after hammering 12 home runs in just 123 plate appearances for Syracuse. He hit .309 there and, with 28 strikeouts, at least showed some progress in his plate discipline. That was enough for David Stearns to land on the same simple explanation: “why not?”
The bigger question is what comes next if the Mets actually get something out of him. Morel can handle multiple positions, even if none of them are exactly gold-standard work.
He spent most of this season at first base, which at least gives him a path onto the roster. In that sense, he’s not all that different from Mark Vientos, except Morel brings a little more positional flexibility.
Vientos, after all, still hasn’t really proven he can handle first base well.
Morel is under team control through 2028 if the Mets choose to keep him around, but there’s a wrinkle: he can’t just be sent back to the minors without going through waivers first. That makes him a tricky piece.
In most cases, a player like this probably clears. The Mets may not mind the idea of stashing him in the minors if it comes to that.
Actually carving out a major league roster spot feels like a much steeper climb, even if he hits. It would take something extraordinary.
The bat power is the one tool that has always translated for him in the majors, and if this ends up becoming a situation where he shares first base with Jared Young, that would be one of the stranger developments of the season. It also shouldn’t be expected.
Morel’s major league splits are backward enough to complicate any tidy fit: he has hit .202 against lefties and .227 against right-handed pitchers, with a .672 OPS versus left-handers and .715 against righties.
Still, the Mets have clearly moved into “let’s have fun mode,” and a player like Morel fits right into that space. A random minor league free agent who spent a month and a half in Triple-A making pitchers miserable?
Sure, why not. Robert Stock, Jack Weisenburger and Cristian Pache are already around trying to stir things up in the playoff picture, and Morel is welcome to join the pile.
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Beltran is not a cleanly simple fit, though, given how his last turn in the dugout ended after he resigned in 2020 amid the Astros cheating scandal. Even so, the idea of a return has lingered because of his connection to the franchise and the possibility that the Mets could be willing to revisit a bold, familiar option as they try to steady things for the next chapter. [Read more 🡒]