The veteran utilityman needs to prove he’s still a starter-quality player.

Since 2018, Jeff McNeil has been a mainstay of the Mets’ lineup. Through 2022, whenever he wasn’t injured, he was a heavyweight who could move around the batting order, hitting basically anywhere in the lineup and making an impact. His contact ability made it so he was constantly on base while not striking out that much, and his versatility made it so he could be found anywhere in the field and playing good defense to boot.

The last two years have been a bit more of a struggle for McNeil. He hasn’t been hitting as well, which takes a big part of his value from him. He’s still been able to play good defense (when healthy), but his struggles at the plate have seen him appear consistently lower in the batting order.

Last season, McNeil had some struggles overall. He hit .238/.303/.384 with a career-worst 14.4% strikeout rate. He had a 97 wRC+ and 1.3 fWAR, both the second-worst marks of his career—after a similarly disappointing 2021 season. He was a noticeably different player from the first half to the second, which made some hope for this to be a slump rather than just a petering out of McNeil’s ability. In the first half, he hit .216/.276/.314 line with a 70 wRC+ and a 12.2 K%. In the second half, he hit .289/.376/.547 line with a much higher 18.8 K% and a 156 wRC+.

An optimistic reading of that could be that he simply had a horrific slump, and he finally broke free in July to turn his season around. And that would be a welcome development. But given that the year before he also had a down year (by his standards), there’s also a chance he may have changed his approach to try for more power, which based on the large jump in slugging percentage may be the case. That isn’t the worst idea, but if he under up cratering, he’ll have nothing except defensive flexibility.

The other issue with McNeil’s 2024 season was that he broke his wrist—right as the Mets were making their playoff push and he was appearing to turn a corner—and missed the rest of the season and most of the postseason. He was finally added to the Mets’ postseason roster for the NLCS.

Over the course of his career, he’s only gone one season—in 2022—without hitting the injured list. He’s always had injury issues, including during his minor league career, and he’s about to play his age-33 season. The wrist injury was a freak injury, but he McNeil does have a history of soft tissue injuries, especially in his legs.

Now the projections for the 2025 season differ slightly. On FanGraphs, Steamer projects him to hit .271/.331/.395 with 108 wRC+ and 2.3 fWAR. That would be a welcome improvement but not the return to McNeil’s glory days that most would hope for. But OOPSY, FanGraphs’ new projection system, has a more pessimistic projection for him, predicting a .253/.316/.354 with a 93 wRC+ and 1.4 fWAR. That’d be right in line with his last season and would look like an aging player slowly sinking.

The Mets could hope that one of the middle infield prospects they have makes a push at some point and turns McNeil into a super-utility player off the bench. Between Luisangel Acuña, Ronny Mauricio, and the possibility of Jett Williams nipping at his heels at some point, there’s a decent shot that the team tries one of the kids at second base sooner rather than later. But if none of those options work out, the Mets may need another second baseman before the calendar year (or even season) is over. At multiple points last year, McNeil lost a lot of playing time to Jose Iglesias, and the Mets may need to have another bench piece who could possibly take that spot if the need arises again, whether that’s a prospect or a veteran free agent.

Last season was a big disappointment by Jeff McNeil’s standards. Some of the worst numbers of his career in the first half sunk his season early, and despite a seeming bounce=back in the second half, an injury ended his season early before he had a chance to truly right the ship. Hopefully McNeil will pick up where he left off last year, but if not, the Mets may need to pivot quickly.