Hey Siri, What’s Going On With the Mets Center Field Situation?

The Mets upgraded their outfield in a big way this past winter simply by signing Juan Soto, but even with the $765 Million Man hitting reasonably well — if not up to his own high standards — the unit has been one of the majors’ least productive thus far. Now an injury has shaken up the roster, as Jose Siri has been sidelined by a fractured tibia, leading the team to test Jeff McNeil in center while he’s on a rehab assignment and setting up some further experimentation.

The Mets acquired the 29-year-old Siri in a trade with the Rays last November 19. Through the first two and a half weeks of the season, he shared time in center with Tyrone Taylor; both players are righties, so the Mets didn’t have a strict platoon in place. On Saturday, Siri fouled a ball off his left shin, and while initial X-rays were negative, a follow-up MRI taken two days later revealed a fracture. The Mets finally placed Siri on the 10-day injured list prior to Thursday’s game, but they haven’t given any indication as to when he’ll return. As manager Carlos Mendoza said, “[H]e’s going to be out for a while.”

“Awhile” will be measured in months. According to the Baseball Prospectus Recovery Dashboard, the few examples of position-player absences due to tibia fractures ranged from 86 days (Tommy La Stella in 2019) to 160 days (Andre Ethier in 2016), with Nick Gordon’s 137 days in 2023 representing the midpoint; one has to discount the 60-day absence of former Met Phillip Evans because the 2018 regular season ended before he could recover.

Siri, who hit just .187/.255/.366 (78 wRC+) for the Rays last year, had started this season even more slowly, hitting .050/.208/.100 (8 wRC+) in 24 plate appearances; he’s collected four walks but just one hit while striking out eight times. Foul balls off of body parts aside, he has not been making good contact, averaging just 81.8 mph on his 12 batted balls. Given his speed and his defensive prowess, he’s the type of player who doesn’t have to supply league-average offense to be useful; he produced 1.9 WAR in 448 PA last year despite his struggles at the plate, and Mets were hoping he could at least match that if not his 2.6 WAR and 106 wRC+ in 364 PA in 2023.

The 31-year-old Taylor, who hit a respectable .248/.299/.401 (98 wRC+) in 345 PA for the Mets last year, hasn’t been much better than Siri. Even with hits in his last two games, he’s batting just .174/.208/.217 (25 wRC+) in 48 PA. Never what you’d call a patient hitter — he owns a career walk rate of just 5.3% — he has yet to draw a free pass this year, and is chasing 41.6% of pitches outside the strike zone, a rate over nine percentage points higher than his career mark. That said, his 20.8% strikeout rate is a bit below his career norm, and his Statcast expected numbers (.237 xBA, .357 xSLG), while not particularly impressive, aren’t that far below his marks from last year, suggesting he’s capable of approximating that production.

Maybe so, but thus far Mets center fielders have been the worst in the majors in terms of both wRC+ and WAR:

That slash line is downright pitcher-esque. What’s Noah Syndergaard (career .153/.206/.266, 29 wRC+) up to these days, anyway?

With Soto in the midst of a 2-for-22 slide that has lowered his seasonal slash line to .221/.361/.412 (123 wRC+) in 83 PA, and with left fielder Brandon Nimmo off to a slow start as well (.194/.253/.403, 87 wRC+ in 79 PA), the Mets outfield as a whole has the seventh-lowest wRC+ among the 30 teams, and is tied for the fourth-lowest WAR:

If you’re looking for silver linings here, while the unit’s .199 BABIP is the lowest among the 30 teams, Mets outfielders are actually making better contact than most. Their 47.2% hard-hit rate ranks seventh, while they’re eighth in average exit velocity (90.6 mph), 11th in xSLG (.430), 13th in barrel rate (9.8%), and 14th in xwOBA (.328). Soto has been the most productive of the bunch, but it’s not as though he’s distorting those metrics either; his 7.3% barrel rate is actually below the group’s mark, and his .438 xSLG and 49.1% hard-hit rate are only slightly above the rest of the pack.

To replace Siri on the roster, the Mets called up José Azocar, a 28-year-old righty whom they claimed off waivers from the Padres last September. Azócar is more of an organizational depth piece than a real solution, as he has yet to show he can produce up to major league standards. In parts of three seasons, he’s hit .243/.287/.322 (74 wRC+) while playing defense that’s been slightly above average across all three outfield positions.

The team does have other internal options for center, including Nimmo, who made 22 starts and 28 total appearances in center last year, his first while regularly playing left. Rookie Luisangel Acuña played 31 games in center at Triple-A Syracuse last year, and had a few appearances there in the Venezuelan Winter League as well. While sharing time with Brett Baty at second base, the 23-year-old Acuña has hit .263/.349/.342 (106 wRC+) in 43 PA, much more productive than Baty’s .209/.209/.302 (43 wRC+) line in the same number of trips to the plate. Acuña is also the more experienced of the two at the keystone, so moving him to center would carry a cost, at least until McNeil returns. “We are preparing Acuña for a potential start [in center] if we need him to,” Mendoza said on Thursday. “He’s playing well. He’s earning opportunities here.”

As for the 33-year-old McNeil, who hit a modest .238/.308/.384 (97 wRC+) last year, he strained his oblique in mid-March and has yet to make his season debut. He began a rehab assignment at High-A St. Lucie last Friday, and after three games at second base, he started in center on Thursday night and played six innings there. He made his lone putout on an impressive sliding catch in the left-center gap:

Jeff McNeil makes a sliding catch in center field!

McNeil is playing center tonight on his rehab assignment for Single-A St. Lucie: pic.twitter.com/vWvsW9IR7O

— SNY Mets (@SNY_Mets) April 17, 2025

While McNeil has nearly 300 games of major league experience in the outfield, just three of those have come in center field, all in 2023. Prior to Thursday, he’d made three cameos in center in the minors totaling 12 innings, but he did play center for 21 games at Long Beach State back in 2013, just before the Mets drafted him in the 12th round.

If he were to join the center field mix in the majors, the lefty-swinging McNeil would fit into a platoon with Taylor; oddly, the Mets have faced just two lefty starters so far, including the Astros’ Framber Valdez on Opening Day. In Soto, Nimmo, Baty, DH Jesse Winker, and switch-hitter Francisco Lindor, the Mets don’t lack for bats with the platoon advantage against righties, but they haven’t been able to take advantage of that, as Lindor and Winker have — you guessed it — started slowly as well. The team currently owns a 92 wRC+ against lefties, compared to a 96 wRC+ against righties. Beyond the heroics of Pete Alonso (214 wRC+), it’s not offense that’s put New York atop the NL East standings with a 12-7 record, it’s a pitching staff with a 2.30 ERA.

Looking further down the road, later this season the Mets could take a look at Drew Gilbert in center, at least if things go well. The 24-year-old Gilbert, a 2022 first-round pick who was acquired from the Astros in the 2023 Justin Verlander trade, was the Mets’ no. 2 prospect last year as a 50-FV center fielder with plus speed and above-average raw power packed into a 5-foot-9 package. Unfortunately, a right hamstring strain in his seventh game at Triple-A Syracuse cost him two months, and he hit just .215/.313/.393 in 56 games at the level, with unimpressive Statcast numbers (85 mph average exit velo, 26.1% hard-hit rate). He did close his season on a higher note, homering nine times in his final 30 games. Limited by further problems with his hamstring this spring, he began this season on Syracuse’s 7-day IL, and after six games on a rehab assignment at St. Lucie, made his return to Syracuse on Thursday night, going 1-for-4 while playing center. A solid performance over the next couple of months could put him on the radar for a call-up.

Of course, if the Mets continue to contend, they could be in the market for an upgrade at the trade deadline. Theoretically, White Sox center fielder Luis Robert Jr. would be the top option among players who could be moved during the season, but after a disappointing 2024 campaign, the 27-year-old Robert is off to an even worse start this year (.136/.235/.203, 32 wRC+). Scroll back up to the first table above, and you’ll see that the team’s wRC+ and WAR from center outrank — rank being the operative word here — only the Mets. Robert is signed through 2027, and the White Sox expect a major haul when they finally trade him, so there’s no sense in doing so while his stock is so depressed.

The good news is that the Mets’ strong start has bought them some time to experiment with their handful of internal options while hoping that Taylor comes around, and that Siri gets a reset once he’s healthy. In the meantime, it should be interesting to see how McNeil and/or Acuña take to center, and how the Mets fill the position if they still need an upgrade later this summer.