The Mets are telling everyone who will listen that they want Vientos to get plenty of at bats this year, but will he earn them?
Editor’s note: The Mets signed J.D. Martinez less than 24 hours after this piece was published.
What to make of Mark Vientos? Nobody really knows at this point. And it seems after seven years in the organization and nearly 300 MLB plate appearances, the Mets still don’t really know, either.
The Florida native profiles most as a DH, but he’s struggled to hit at the big league level so far. Fear not, though, because the Mets have spent all offseason telling us that they are ensuring he has a clear path to playing time in 2024 so that they can find out what they have in him. To that end, they’ve abstained from signing any of the DH options that have been and remain on the market. But paradoxically, they also have appeared legitimately interested in upgrading the DH position at multiple points this offseason, including as recently as last week, when they were reportedly in contact with J.D. Martinez.
Whether or not they do go ahead and sign Martinez, which seems increasingly unlikely, the team has tried to hedge their bets at DH during spring, as well. Luke Voit and Ji-Man Choi were brought in on NRIs in to compete with Vientos for a job at DH, though neither has impressed a ton, and both have opt-outs before Opening Day.
So the team’s actions indicate they may not have as much confidence in Vientos as they claim. Regardless, he’s still currently lined up to be the team’s primary DH option, with either DJ Stewart or Choi possibly forming some sort of soft platoon with him. There is currently not a lot of playing time to be found at first base for Vientos, though there may be some reps for him to take at third. With Brett Baty also having struggled last year, and carrying a leash that’s probably not a ton longer than Vientos’s, the possibility exists for Vientos to find some time there, should Baty falter. But his defense at third has never really been considered passable by any scout or statistic going on years at this point. We don’t know how much the Mets would really want to play him there.
Here’s what we do know about Vientos: he was an annual member of Mets prospect lists for years due to his power and his exit velocities, which have been some of the best in the entire organization. The kid hits the ball really, really hard. The problem has lied in the other parts of his offensive game.
Vientos carried serious contact concerns with him through the minor leagues, and those have only worsened in the big leagues. He ran strikeout rates close to 30% in Triple-A, and so far he’s punched out at a 30.3% clip in the majors. Last year, he ran a Z-Contact rate of 77.6% and an overall contact rate of 66.8%, both of which are well below average.
But that’s not necessarily a death knell for a slugger like Vientos. There are plenty of power hitters in baseball who whiff and strikeout a lot. Aaron Judge, in fact, tends to run subpar contact numbers most years. So the issue for Vientos is not necessarily the lack of contact alone, but rather that he doesn’t make up for it in his other offensive traits.
Vientos has, so far, combined that lack of contact with a total lack of selectivity; he carries a career walk rate of 5.5%, and ran a chase rate last year of 39.3% according to Fangraphs, which placed him 320th out of 362 hitters with at least 200 PAs on the season. One of the most important traits for sluggers like Judge or Kyle Schwarber is that they know what pitches to swing at. Vientos hasn’t displayed anywhere near that level of patience so far.
Of course, it’s certainly possible that more consistent at bats and more time reading spin at the major league level could help him improve his swing decisions. However, even with improvements in that area, he will never reach his full upside if he doesn’t start lifting the ball with any kind of consistency. Vientos has always had worryingly high ground ball rates in the minors, and those unsurprisingly have also not gotten better against MLB pitching. His career ground ball rate in the majors is 51.4%, which, for reference, is about where Starling Marte tends to be around. Great power hitters tend to have fly ball rates well under 40%.
So those are the three main issues that have led Vientos to a career 68 wRC+ to this point. However, he did appear to make strides in the second half of last year when he hit seven homers between August 29 and September 21. Could that have been a sign of progress? Well, as I noted in his season review last year, there was no indication of any actual improvement in his underlying numbers. Amazingly enough, from August 29 through the end of the season, Vientos’s ground ball and chase rates actually went up and his contact rate went down. There was more evidence that he was actually taking steps back in those areas, not forward.
He doesn’t exactly look like a transformed hitter this spring, either. You never want to dig too far into spring training stats, but this is a player that does have something to prove in camp and is theoretically trying to win a job on the team. And while he’s clocked some impressive homers, it’s not a good sign that he’s hitting just .204 in 51 PAs with a ground ball rate of 56.3% and a strikeout rate hovering around 30%.
For Vientos to be the impact hitter he can be, he needs to make some serious adjustments. There are numerous examples of players who turned their careers around by making significant changes to their swing, and a great example of that is actually J.D. Martinez himself.
After early career struggles that saw him run ground ball rates north of 45%, Martinez overhauled his swing after 2013, and has been one of the premier power-hitting DHs in baseball ever since. Martinez’s contact rates have backed up a bit as he has aged, but he still hits the crap out of the ball, so it hasn’t mattered as much. Martinez actually has some similarities to Vientos and may just represent the blueprint to success for him. To illustrate that, here a side-by-side of some of their underlying numbers from 2023:
The two impact the ball very similarly, but Martinez gets way more out of it, and you can see how. Vientos’s path to success should follow the same shape. He needs to focus on lifting the ball like Martinez did, and if he can make any notable strides in his in-zone contact and/or his swing decisions on top of that, he could carve out a nice career in the majors just like Martinez has.
So while more consistent MLB at bats could help him, it’s not all he needs, either. Vientos has had these fundamental flaws in his offensive profile for years now. They have been discussed at length for over a half-decade. That he hasn’t shown significant improvement on any of them over the years is not a good sign. Wholesale changes are likely necessary to get him where he needs to be—just like they were for Martinez—but instead, he’s been touting this spring about how he didn’t change anything about his swing this offseason. It’s not really what you want to hear.
Of course, you don’t want to completely close the book on the 24-year-old given his raw power and damage on contact. It would not be unprecedented for a player to improve as they mature, and it looks like he’s going to be given the runway to work out his issues in the majors this season—unless the Mets do cave and sign Martinez at the 11th hour. But if Vientos is going to become a real difference maker, those gains are going to have to happen soon, and happen quickly, because his chances are running out.