Losing Juan Soto for 2-3 weeks will hurt the New York Mets, and not just in the obvious and expected ways.
Losing a superstar due to an injury is painful for every team, and the New York Mets are finding out all about that now with outfielder Juan Soto. The direct losses are fairly easy to see and quantify, but sometimes the auxiliary losses have a greater effect over time.
Will that be true with Soto? It’s tough to tell at the moment, but Anthony DiComo of MLB.com did a dive into several of the not-so-obvious effects of losing Soto, and it’s well worth examining.
Mark Vientos will play every day
This was starting to happen even before Soto got hurt, and Vientos was responding well. He was starting to hit, and the first baseman proved to be a vital offensive cog in their successful West Coast road trip. The offense has been great, with DiComo adding that Vientos has produced a .956 OPS so far through a dozen team games.
There is a downside to this, though, as we saw last night against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Vientos is a corner infielder, but his natural position is third, and now he’s getting a lot of time a first. Against the Diamondbacks he blew a throw home that an experienced first baseman would have made easily, and it was one of multiple defensive lapses that cost the Mets a win.
Carson Benge will get more time to prove itself
This one’s trickier. Benge was a great storyline coming out of camp, and his Opening Day home run will stand up as a highlight of this season regardless of what happens.
But Benge looks increasingly overwhelmed at the plate, offering defensive swings in one at-bat after another. He finally broke an 0-for-24 slump in the middle game of the Arizona series, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need more time at Triple-A Syracuse.
For better or worse, though, that can’t happen. The Mets need Benge’s defense, as we saw quite dramatically when Brett Baty couldn’t reach a fly-ball double that a good defensive outfielder probably would have caught.
Soto probably won’t win the MVP
This one’s a little tricky, too. The short answer when it comes to winning is “who cares?” But awards like MVP are important to players like Soto, even if he does already have his big contract. Soto was already looking at an uphill climb to overtake Shohei Ohtani in this race, and it’s not a stretch to say it’s almost completely out of reach now.