Center field has been a revolving door for the Mets in the David Stearns era, and the latest name to cycle through the spot, Luis Robert Jr., didn’t exactly rewrite the script.
Since Stearns took over in 2024, six Mets have gotten a shot to claim the starting center field job. Two of those tenures ended this summer, with Robert going on waivers in the least ceremonial exit of the bunch. The list tells the story: a position that’s mattered a lot and been settled very little.
At the bottom is Jose Siri, whose run was wrecked by a broken leg early in the year and basically vanished after that. In 16 games, he posted a .292 OPS, went 2 for 32, and finished at -0.5 bWAR. There just wasn’t enough there, even in a tiny sample, to get anything useful out of the position.
Cedric Mullins lands just ahead of him, though his .565 OPS and .182 average make his Mets stint look worse than the overall value suggests. He gave the team 42 games and 0.4 bWAR, but the deadline deal never paid off. The memory that sticks is the one where Daylen Lile failed to catch a ball in left field and Mullins didn’t turn it into a double, a moment that still hangs over the 2025 mess.
Harrison Bader checked in next with a .657 OPS across 143 games and 0.9 bWAR. The Mets managed to keep him healthy in 2024, and that alone made his run more stable than a lot of the other options. The bat settled in around midseason, the defense graded well, and while he didn’t create any iconic moments, he also didn’t leave much frustration behind.
Luis Robert Jr. comes in third, and the odd part is that his .702 OPS is the best mark of anyone on this list. That still fell far short of what the Mets wanted, but his 58 games produced 0.8 bWAR, and his glove gave the club what it needed. Statistically, it was a forgettable stretch that still outpaced what he had done in his final two years with the Chicago White Sox.
A.J. Ewing is already above Robert in bWAR, sitting at 2.3 over 97 games with a .663 OPS.
There’s still time for him to move even higher on this list by the end of the 2026 season, and the defense has stayed Gold Glove-caliber even as the bat has cooled badly in recent weeks. The biggest separator between Ewing and Robert is playing time, which has let Ewing pile up value in the field.
At the plate, the gap is not huge, with Robert’s power the clearest edge.
Tyrone Taylor is the one who tops the rankings, and it’s mostly because he actually stuck. He’s the only player here to last more than a season, covering 310 games and finishing with 3.8 bWAR.
He arrived as outfield depth, took the job from Bader, and eventually became a trade deadline name himself. His .677 OPS was below the .746 he posted with the Milwaukee Brewers, but the drop was driven mostly by a lack of pop in 2025, when he hit only 2 home runs in 341 chances.
In the end, Taylor pretty much gave the Mets exactly what they could have expected.
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