Inside The Mets

Here's how Mark Vientos can avoid a sophomore slump for the New York Mets

After a breakout 2024 season, the young slugger has some work to do to maintain that momentum this year.

Lindsay Crosby

New York Mets third baseman Mark Vientos (27) reacts from the field against the Miami Marlins during the second inning at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium.
New York Mets third baseman Mark Vientos (27) reacts from the field against the Miami Marlins during the second inning at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium. / Sam Navarro-Imagn Images
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Last season, New York Mets third baseman Mark Vientos emerged as one of Major League Baseball's brightest stars.

In 111 games, the young slugger totaled 3.1 bWAR while batting .266 with 27 home runs, as the Mets made a surprising run to the National League Championship Series. However, he still has work to do if he wants to avoid the dreaded sophomore slump in 2025.

For Vientos, last season was an all-around improvement from a difficult and trying 2023 season; across 65 games that year, he hit just .211 with a .620 OPS and an OPS+ of just 69, which is 31% below league average. But Vientos was able to increase that number to 135 (35% above league average) through a much-improved batting average, fueled by more contact in the strike zone (from 71.7% to 75%) and lowering his chase rate a bit.

But there were also some warning signs in his profile last year, with both significant areas of underperformance that did not improve and some overperformance that is bound for regression back to the mean.

Vientos benefitted from a .324 batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Typically the realm of speedsters who can easily beat out infield ground balls, that figure is likely to regress slightly towards the MLB average of .292. That overperformance resulted in a gap between Vientos's actual batting average (.266) and his expected batting average (.246), per Statcast, of 20 points. That difference was in the top 30 for all of MLB last season, out of 252 qualified players.

But while he overperformed in the luck department, he underperformed in several of the fundamental contact and plate discipline metrics. Vientos made contact in the zone at just a 75% rate, significantly below MLB's average of 82% and leaving him 197th out of 207 qualifiers in that metric. His chase rate, or how often he expands the zone to try and hit a pitch, was at 32.3%, placing in the 24th percentile in all of baseball.

While Vientos has plenty of power to punish pitches in the zone, there is also a book on how to attack him. From 2023 to 2024, Vientos markedly improved against velocity, bringing his batting average against fastballs from .202 to .329. He finished with a .620 slugging percentage against heaters, one of the best marks in the league and almost double of 2023's mark of .345.

However, Vientos actually got worse year-over-year against breaking pitches, hitting just .169 on breaking stuff last year. Breaking it down by individual pitches doesn't help, as the slugger had negative marks against all types of breaking pitches: sliders, sweepers, and multiple types of curveballs.

The blueprint is pretty clear for Vientos: throw him a variety of breaking pitches and don't be afraid to throw some of them for strikes, either. But for some reason, MLB did not make that adjustment last season.

As the year progressed, Vientos actually saw more fastballs and less breaking pitches, with the slugger going from a 41.6% fastball percentage in July to a September mark of 53%. Breaking ball usage against him, however, dropped from 47.2% in July to just 33.8% by the end of the year. (Despite the suboptimal pitch mix against him, Vientos still posted a 32.7% strikeout rate after the All-Star Break, higher than all but two qualified players in the second half of the season).

Read more: New York Mets third baseman Mark Vientos poised for another huge leap in 2025

Will 29 other teams not make that easy adjustment this season? The hope is that Vientos is aware of the issue and is prepared to adjust his approach at the plate, in hopes of building upon his breakout 2024 season.

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Lindsay Crosby
LINDSAY CROSBY

Lindsay is a contributor for Mets On SI. He is an IBWAA award-winning baseball writer and podcaster living in the Southeast, covering Auburn University baseball since 2021 and the Atlanta Braves since 2022. He can most commonly be found in a baseball press box and you can follow him on Twitter/X at @CrosbyBaseball."

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