Jeff McNeil returned this weekend from a hamstring injury and picked up right where he left off, smacking a pinch-hit double in the seventh inning of Saturday’s tied (at the time) game, then following it up with a single in the ninth.
It was nothing new from McNeil. The 27-year-old utility man has put together a 144 wRC+ in just over one full season at the big-league level, good for the same 6.5 fWAR Juan Soto and Nolan Arenado have produced in the last 13 months. Since joining the Mets’ MLB club, McNeil has done nothing but hit, supplementing his offensive production with reliably average defense across a few positions.
McNeil is an oddity in today’s game. He’s been one since high school. Rather than sticking strictly to baseball, as other notable young professional ballplayers did, he split time between basketball, baseball, and golf, averaging 17 points per game as a point guard and competing in the 2009 U.S. Junior Amateur. Eventually, baseball won out, and he landed at Long Beach State, a rather strongly pedigreed program for a guy who skipped most of his high school career, playing only summer ball until he was a senior.
McNeil was, as almost all major league players are, one of his college team’s best players. He was the second Dirtbag selected in the 2013 draft, going two rounds after right-handed pitcher Shane Carle. But he only went in the twelfth round—very good for a college baseball player, but later than most eventual studs. He was not a top pick. There was little fanfare surrounding his entry into the farm system. He hit well as a minor leaguer (a 136 career minor league wRC+), but one can click back through MLB Pipeline’s rankings of Mets minor leaguers, going back to 2015, and find McNeil mentioned only once—as the 29th-best prospect following his second year in the system. In an age in which scouting and analytics are better able to predict MLB success than they’ve ever been before, McNeil slipped through the cracks, finally getting his call only with the Mets out of contention and Yoenis Céspedes heading to the disabled list.
Part of the unheralded nature of his debut probably has to do with his, again, unconventional style. Leading the race for the NL batting title, McNeil’s .197 isolated power ranks in the MLB’s bottom half, and his walk rate is among the 25 lowest for a qualified hitter. He’s a contact hitter in a decidedly power-focused age. And it’s working.
This isn’t to say that all hitters should hit like Jeff McNeil. Baseball has shifted towards walks and home runs for a reason—they’re efficient ways to avoid outs and produce runs. What makes McNeil so good is not that he goes against the grain. What makes McNeil so good is that he’s very successful at an objectively disadvantageous mode of hitting.
Contact hitters don’t thrive in baseball’s current era. They simply aren’t as productive. But McNeil is such a good contact hitter that he overcomes the hurdles being one presents. He’s ninth in the MLB in on-base percentage. He’s seventh in wRC+. His 3.8 fWAR, to date, is 45th in all of baseball, between the likes of Francisco Lindor and Anthony Rizzo. He’s not particularly fast. He’s not particularly powerful. But he’s so good at contact hitting that he’s not only surviving in a contact-depleted game—he’s thriving in it.
It’s possible that studies down the line will show some psychological element to having McNeil in the lineup that makes teams better. Perhaps the presence of someone who can get this many hits sparks rallies, or builds a team’s confidence, or puts pressure on pitchers. This is conjecture, and it’s at least equally possible that in the coldest, most calculated way, McNeil is exactly what his advanced hitting statistics say he is. But if nothing else, as the Mets try to complete a stunning comeback and find their way into October baseball, Jeff McNeil is going to stress out a lot of opposing fans. Just not in a normal way.
