The New York Mets added Andy Ibanez in part for his defense, but it certainly didn't play against Arizona on Sunday.
The New York Mets needed to make a roster move to make room for exciting new prospect A.J. Ewing, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who was going to go.
If you saw the performance infielder Andy Ibanez submitted on Sunday against the Arizona Diamondbacks and saw the comments that followed, you know exactly why Ibanez was designated for assignment yesterday, according to a report from Steve Adams of MLBTradeRumors.com, with the move also reported in multiple other outlets.
Ibanez had two bad throwing errors, and while they may not have cost the Mets the game, they did go a long way toward the Diamondbacks’ winning margin of 5-1.
The comments made it even clearer that Ibanez wasn’t going to be seeing the field any time soon in New York. The erstwhile third baseman characterized his baseball gaffes that were normal errors where things didn’t go his way, but manager Carlos Mendoza indicated that they were routine plays that had to be made.
To make things worse, Ibanez didn’t hit at all in his time with the Mets. He was expected to supply some offense against southpaws based on his career slash line of 272/.316/.437, and he was even better with the Detroit Tigers in 2023-24, where that line improved to 278/.331/.480 batting line.
But Ibanez made 26 plate appearances for the Mets and went 2-for-23 with a walk, three strikeouts and a pair of sacrifice flies, so he fit right in with the Mets struggling lineup. Adams described Ibanez as “both versatile and effective,” but he certainly wasn’t the latter and he never got a chance to be the former.
Ibanez will now go through waivers, and the good news is that he’s making just $1.2 million this year, and the Mets might be willing to thrown in some cash to pay the rest of his salary if a team is willing to throw a low-level prospect into the deal. He could accept an assignment to Triple-A and stick around as a depth option, but Mendoza may not want to go that route after what he saw over the weekend.
Ironically, unsuccessful moves like this may be a big part of the reason why the Mets just promoted Ewing. They’ve been trying players like Ibanez for weeks now with minimal success, and given the team’s current record of 15-25 and their strong farm system, the Mets may have made the call to ride-or-die with young prospects like Ewing who at least have a serious ceiling.