Just Missed
Javy Baez checks in with the worst swing of the season, possibly the history of Major League Baseball
The New York Mets acquired Javy Baez at the trade deadline for a multitude of reasons, chief among them being that Francisco Lindor wanted to be in the infield with his fellow Puerto Rican. Lindor, of course, was on the IL at the time, so Baez was also acquired to fill the shortstop void.
He was also supposed to give the Mets a much-needed jolt of energy in Lindor's absence, which he did in his very first game as a Met, crushing a clutch two-run shot in a 5-4 win over the Cincinnati Reds. Since that game, though, the Mets are 6-16, and Baez missed half those games with injury. It's an epic August swoon, one the Mets hoped to avoid when they traded for him.
The peak of Mets and Baez embarrassment came on Tuesday night, when the Mets fell to 2-9 over their last 11 games, all of which have come agaisnt the L.A. Dodgers and San Francisco Giants. It was an 8-0 romp at Citi Field, the low point coming when Baez quite literally swung at a pitch before it even left the pitcher's hand. That's only a slight exaggeration:
YikesTown, Population: Javy. Normally we'd say "in fairness..." and then say this was maybe a bad angle, but I'm not so sure here. This truly looks like the worst and/or earliest swing in the history of baseball. We're not going to sit here and argue that it's easy to hit a baseball or easy to pick up on a breaking ball, but for a noted non-discipline haver at the plate this just seems like par for the course. Hard to defend him on this one.
This at-bat was part of an 0-for-3, one walk, one strikeout night for Baez, which puts him at 8-for-42 with two homers, just four RBIs and 16 strikeouts in his short Mets tenure. Miraculously, they are still only 6.5 games back of the NL East-leading Atlanta Braves, who appear to be very catchable, especially with a favorable upcoming schedule for New York. There is still time to change the narrative, even if the same old Mets narrative is seemingly impossible to change.