New York Mets: What To Do With Michael Conforto?

The New York Mets have a lot of outfielders. It’s fair to say that they have too many outfielders. So what will they do with their youngest and most cost effective?

The New York Mets have become dependent on having Yoenis Cespedes in their lineup, so when he hit free agency yet again this winter, the Metropolitans had to bring him back. He has been one of the few constants that has helped the Mets have an average-ish offense. New York ranked 25th in runs scored last season but fifth in home runs. Their recipe has been to hit a dinger or two and let their fantastic starting staff shut down the opposition.

In collecting power bats, the Mets brought aboard Jay Bruce at the deadline last year to help give their offense a boost, which he did not. After batting .219 with eight homers and 19 driven in through 50 games with the Mets, the team has been trying to move him all offseason to no avail. He’s a defensive liability that is due $13M in his final year before hitting the free agent market, so teams are not going to be offering large prospect packages to add on a player that showed he couldn’t perform outside of a hitter’s park in his limited exposure–especially when other power bats like Chris Carter and Mike Napoli can he had for less money and zero farmhands. Granted, both Carter and Napoli would be better suited for manning first base or accruing at-bats as a team’s designated hitter, but the same could be said for Bruce to some degree.

With Cespedes and Bruce manning the corners of Citi Field and either Juan Lagares or Curtis Granderson in center on any given night, that doesn’t look to leave a lot of regular playing time for 23-year-old Michael Conforto who burst onto the scene during the Mets World Series run in 2015.

After struggling a bit last season, his role on the club is up in the air. He hit .220 with 12 homers and 42 driven in across 348 plate appearances, but even with his low batting average he got on base at a .310 clip thanks to a 10.3% walk rate which helped him land a 96 wRC+, which is just a bit below average. For his first full season in the big leagues with sporadic playing time, that’s not terrible production.

More from Call to the Pen

With room for him on the roster in question, the obvious answer would be to send him to Las Vegas to get him regular playing time. Well, according to the New York Post, that decision won’t be made so easily since Scott Boras is his agent.

Trading Conforto likely isn’t the smart long-term move either, just like acquiring Bruce wasn’t a great move past the 2016 season. The one way that could land Conforto consistent playing time that is moderately feasible would be to dangle Lucas Duda on the trade block. After missing two-thirds of the 2016 season, Duda’s stock is down which isn’t the best news for the New York Mets, but there is also going to be a brief window in which he could be moved. The production at the plate they would typically get from Duda could probably be provided by Conforto, so there isn’t much being lost there.

The reason for haste here is that if the Kansas City Royals begin to fall out of contention, they’re probably going to start dismantling their core to get a jump on a rebuild, and part of that core is Eric Hosmer, who, like Duda, will be a free agent after the 2017 season. They’re different players, but the perception out there is that Hosmer is the better player (which could certainly be debated statistically) which would lead to him being the more sought after commodity in an already saturated market. Not many teams are looking for a first baseman at the trade deadline.

If the Mets were able to move Duda, that would free up first base for Conforto, and at the moment that is the only hope that he has at regular playing time in the big leagues. The question in New York is whether or not that is a viable option to consider both in the short-term and further down the road. Either way Dominic Smith (recently ranked baseball’s #63 overall prospect) will be in line to take over first base at some point in the very near future, which would move Conforto back to the outfield for the 2018 campaign.