Oh Where, Oh Where Can Brett Baty Be?

Full disclosure, right up top: I’m rooting for Brett Baty to win the Mets’ starting third base job out of spring training. There are many reasons: First, all things being equal I’d prefer to see a young player get playing time rather than a veteran. Playing the kids shows an open-mindedness on the team’s part, as well as a level of faith in young players that allows them to go out on the field with a sense of freedom rather than a fear of failure. It’s forward-looking, which is an important consideration even for a club as well-resourced as the Mets.

But second, I’m a baseball writer who communicates mostly in puns, and to people like me, Baty is a divine blessing. As a general rule, baseball doesn’t do unit-based nicknames as much as hockey or even football, which is a pity. While other sports are rolling out the Legion of Doom or That 70s Line or Gang Green, baseball — a sport with an unparalleled literary and folkloric tradition, I might add — is resting on the laurels of the $100,000 Infield. It’s been more than 30 years since the Nasty Boys, for God’s sake.

So if the Mets end up having an infield of three multi-time All-Stars between the ages of 28 and 30, plus a rookie third baseman, we’re calling it the Three Men and a Baty infield. Agreed?

Ordinarily, a consensus top-25 prospect (Baty is no. 23 on the FanGraphs Top 100) would be given quite a bit of runway to earn a starting spot in the majors on any team. But the Mets, even after failing to bring Carlos Correa into the fold over the winter, have a strong incumbent third baseman in Eduardo Escobar. Escobar is coming off back-to-back 2-WAR seasons; in fact, he’s eclipsed the 2-WAR threshold in every 162-game season dating back to 2018. He also has a $10 million hit against the competitive balance tax and a $9 million club option for 2024.

This isn’t some anonymous journeyman fifth infielder Baty has to dislodge; Escobar is a real player. So what does Baty have to do in order to make that happen?

Well, so far, he’s hitting quite well. Baty is 8-for-17 with a double and a home run in Grapefruit League play; he’s put 13 balls in play, of which Baseball Savant has exit velo data for 11. Six of those were hit at 90 mph or more, including three at 99.8, 107.4, and 109.9. (It’s worth noting that Baty’s home run was not among the batted balls with a listed exit velo.)

But everyone knows aggregate spring training stats are basically junk. Not only is spring training inherently a small sample, opposing pitchers might not be going about their outing the same way they would a regular season appearance, and the quality of competition varies wildly. For instance, of the 18 pitchers Baty has faced so far this spring, only one or two could be considered an established big leaguer, depending on how you feel about Austin Davis and Anthony Misiewicz. To Baty’s credit, he’s crushed the opposition that’s been put in front of him, but we already know what he can do to Quad-A-type pitchers.

The truth is, if Baty hadn’t injured his thumb two weeks into his big league career last August, he might have claimed the job already. Baty made his major league debut last August 17, when he was called up concurrently with Escobar going on the IL for an oblique strain. Baty started the ensuing 10 games in an infield that included Jeff McNeil and Francisco Lindor; Pete Alonso started at first eight times and DH’d in Darin Ruf’s two starts at first.

We didn’t get to see how Buck Showalter and the Mets planned to juggle Baty and Escobar because they only spent two games on the roster together. The switch-hitting Escobar started the first against Rockies lefthander Kyle Freeland; Baty started the second against Germán Márquez, tore a ligament in his throwing hand while stopping a ball down the line in the eighth inning, and was never heard from again.

Baty’s ability to field his position could be the decisive factor. In fact, a more accurate title for this piece might be “Crush Now, My Baty; Be Still, Glove, Don’t Cry,” but I worried that the bridge of “Deliver Us” from The Prince of Egypt might have been one step too far into obscurity for a headline. What a shame, as The Prince of Egypt is an inner-circle Hall of Fame movie soundtrack. Anyway.

Coming off a 2022 big league cameo in which he made two errors on 30 chances in 11 games, Baty has made three errors in nine spring training games. Two of those were the kind of error that doesn’t inspire much confidence — just biffing fairly routine grounders.

Defense is the kind of thing veteran managers love to ding young players for, and that’s true across all sports at all levels, whether the rookie in question is actually a defensive liability or not. Outs at the plate don’t stick in the memory the same way errors in the field do. And remember, third base defense was the putative reason the Cubs conjured for keeping Kris Bryant in the minors in April 2015.

If the Mets don’t feel good about using Baty at third full-time, there isn’t really another spot to put him. First base is an obvious destination for any defensively deficient third baseman. But not only is Alonso about as well-entrenched as any first baseman in the league, if Baty struggles to catch the ball at third, that problem only becomes more serious if he moves to a position where catching the ball cleanly is basically the entire job. The Mets already have Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and Tommy Pham lined up for the corner outfield spots, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask Baty to learn the outfield in three and a half weeks after playing just 249 innings there in the minors anyway. I’d just as soon take my chances with him at third. And a part-time role at DH is problematic because while the Mets have a need at that position, (depending on how Pham gets used) it’s not on Baty’s side of the plate. The left-handed hitting Daniel Vogelbach hit righties to the tune of .261/.382/.497 last season; as high as I am on Baty’s bat, I’d take the under on his replicating that line as a rookie.

But sending Baty down to work on his defense is a similarly unappetizing proposition. This is a player the Mets picked 12th overall in 2019, then developed into one of the best offensive prospects in the sport. He’s 23 years old and has little if anything to learn in the minors. In 95 games and 420 plate appearances across Double- and Triple-A in 2022, Baty hit .315/.410/.533 with 41 extra-base hits. The greatest effect the minor leagues would have on Baty would be to reduce how much service time he accrues in 2023; caring about such things is poverty franchise behavior and would be out of character for the Mets under Steve Cohen.

And therein lies the solution. While most other teams would be concerned with the expense of a bench that includes not only Escobar but Vogelbach and Ruf, the Mets care not one iota for the financial norms of baseball. They could make Escobar the most effective and well-remunerated fifth infielder in the league if they so chose.

Even so, Escobar isn’t exactly a perfect partner for Baty at the hot corner. While his switch hitting ability allows him to form a platoon with the rookie, giving Baty the lion’s share of the playing time, Escobar is far from an elite defender himself. Last year, his defensive WAR ranked between that of Austin Riley and Alec Bohm among full-time third basemen. But if the Mets truly view Baty as a defensive liability, they have players available to mitigate the problem. Given the Mets’ ambitions and the potential in Baty’s bat, they’d be foolish not to give him every opportunity.