Javy Baez had a stellar stretch of games with The New York Mets after he was traded. In my head, what he did before the trade is absolutely irrelevant. His all or nothing swing irritates the shit out of me when he strikes out on 3 pitches that appear to be several feet outside. But his clutch hitting and big home runs made up for it.
Baez had a terrible shortened 2020 season. Baez is a career .264 hitter, but most of his career, he was in the .270-.290 range. Which is where I would be satisfied with him being with his insanely good defense.
Mainly, Baez is cool. We haven’t had a “cool” player since Prime Jose Reyes. He brings out a big personality from Lindor, which it seemed like he needed to be able to play well. He will also give the Mets the ability to not play Lindor every single game until he hurts himself, so that’s also good.
Baez could be a very good 5 hitter with the top half of the lineup potentially being Nimmo-McNeil-Lindor-Pete-Baez. Good luck everybody else! And that would be before we bring in another free agent with a high average bat – which I fully expect the Mets to do having JD Davis, Dom Smith, and Jeff McNeil on the trade block. Good luck everybody else!
This off-season should be a big one for the Mets as Steve Cohen has approved reaching the luxury tax just to bring guys on the team back. I fully expect him to throw a few money bags at this team to fill out this lineup and extending Baez would be an incredible start. Hopefully we have a President of Baseball Operations and GM before this deal is done though..
A Fan With A Mic 