Kyle Ross-Imagn Images
We love a postseason breakout star. September’s hipster favorite who by November 1 is on billboards from sea to shining sea. This year, it’s Mets third baseman Mark Vientos, a 24-year-old who just completed his first full season as a major league regular.
The top four hitters in the Mets lineup have been absolutely critical this postseason, by which I mean that if they’re not hitting, ain’t nobody hitting. Three of those top four hitters are the three highest-paid players on the roster by luxury tax hit: Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, and Pete Alonso.
(Starling Marte and Edwin Díaz make more than Nimmo and Alonso this year specifically, and the Mets paid Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander more than $20.5 million each to play for other teams, but I’m making a point here. Let me cherry-pick in peace.)
Lindor, Nimmo, and Alonso are as veteran-y as it gets; Lindor’s about to enter his second decade as a superstar, while Nimmo and Alonso are Mets lifers.
And New York had no shortage of similar options to fill that no. 2 hole in the order, but Marte, Jeff McNeil, and J.D. Martinez have all been some combination of too hurt, too old, or too platoon-sensitive.
So the Mets needed a young guy. And even then, Vientos wasn’t the first choice among third basemen with late-1999 birthdays.
Brett Baty, the Mets’ 2019 first-rounder, got the first crack at the job, and proved himself completely inadequate to the task, hitting .215/.282/.325 over parts of three seasons. By mid-May, that was untenable, and Vientos — despite concerns over his hit tool and his propensity to guard the hot corner in a way that makes you want to buy him a first baseman’s mitt — took over. By mid-August, he was slugging over .500 and had worked his way into the two-hole.
Since August 15, Vientos has started 48 games, including the postseason, and hit in the first four spots in the lineup 44 times.
The fact that Vientos wasn’t the first choice for his position makes him all the more alluring to his public. It’s very in keeping for a team that positions itself (credibly or not) as an underdog.
Moreover, Vientos provides an invigorating jolt of chaotic energy to the second-oldest position player group in the league. Lindor, Nimmo, and Alonso might be considered expressive, even gauche, by Yankees standards, but compared to the cores of some other NL contenders, they’re pretty staid and businesslike.
The insouciant 22-year-old Lindor we remember from his 2016 World Series trip is now a dad with a bad back. Time comes for everyone.
Vientos’ teammates have started calling him “Swaggy V,” which speaks not only to his personality, but to the average age of the clubhouse. It’s a nickname that’s as characteristic of Geriatric Millennials as “Whitey” was of Silent Generation ballplayers.
But energy only gets you so far, and they don’t give cool nicknames out to scrubs. Among players with at least 20 plate appearances this postseason, Vientos is fifth in wRC+. He leads all players in hits and RBI, and is tied for second in home runs and third in runs scored.
I do want to be slightly more scientific about how he got there than “he has good vibes,” so let’s look at his plate discipline numbers this postseason versus those of the entire league.
Mark Vientos’ Plate Discipline vs. League Average
From these numbers, we can draw three conclusions. First, Vientos is having quite a bit of batted ball luck. Shocking, I know, for a hitter who’s having the two best weeks of his life against playoff-quality opposition.
But Vientos is making good swing decisions. He’s slightly more aggressive than league average in general, but he’s much more aggressive both within the strike zone and in the center of the strike zone — Baseball Savant’s Heart attack zone.
(Not the Heart Attack Zone, that’s a different thing.) On pitches in the meaty part of the zone, Vientos is doing serious damage, with his batting average, slugging percentage, and wOBA all roughly twice the league average.
Maybe that’s inflated by some batted ball luck, or maybe it’s inflated by his grand slam off Landon Knack in Game 2 of the NLCS.
MARK VIENTOS GRAND SLAM!! ? ?
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This pitch has some decent run on it, but it ends up right in the middle of the zone. Any competent big league hitter is going to hit this ball hard, and any hitter with as much power as Vientos is going to put it in the seats. Usually.
Because Vientos is still swinging and missing a lot. He’s struck out 13 times in 39 plate appearances, which is not good by anyone’s standards.
But where he’s swinging and missing interests me. Vientos is swinging at pitches in the middle of the zone more frequently than league average, and putting the ball in play on a greater percentage of those swings.
But around the edges of the zone, he’s making contact on just over half as many pitches as the league average, and he’s swinging at pitches in the Chase zone 10 percentage points more frequently than average, while making contact on a lower percentage of those swings.
So he’s chasing more, which is bad. And he’s swinging and missing when he does chase, which is also bad. Or is it?
When a hitter gets fooled and swings, nothing good is going to happen, but when Vientos gets fooled, he misses.
Sometimes that means a strikeout, but earlier in the count it means he gets another shot, instead of popping up or hitting weak grounders. There are worse things you can do than swing and miss.
Vientos is either going to square a pitch up or miss it altogether. And even then, everything is going Vientos’ way.
He’s put one ball from the Chase zone in play this postseason. It was a self-defense swing on an inside sinker from Zack Wheeler in Game 1 of the NLDS.
And you know that? He was able to get his hands inside the ball and yank it into left field for a single. Not the prettiest swing of his career, but it’s a line drive in the box score.
Which raises the question: What is the prettiest swing of Vientos’ career?
Well I can tell you the most impressive swing of this postseason. It came one night after that single off Wheeler, when Vientos hit a game-tying ninth-inning home run off Matt Strahm.
About seven weeks ago, Anthony Santander hit a game-winning grand slam off Bryan Abreu that changed my life. Santander got around a 98-mph fastball above the zone and over the outside part of the plate, exactly the kind of pitch you’re supposed to either take for a ball or inside-out the other way for a single.
And somehow Santander had the strength and bat speed to turn it around for a 403-foot home run to the pull side. Ever since then, I’ve been obsessed with home runs like this, pull-side dingers off fastballs high and away.
As I write, there have been 5,512 home runs hit in competitive major league games in 2024 — regular season and playoffs combined —
