Ask anyone on the Mets about Mark Vientos and his sluggish performance to start the 2025 season, and they’ll tell you it’s only a matter of time until what we saw last year shows up again.
“His job is to try to go out there and control the strike zone and hit the ball hard,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said before Thursday’s game against the Cardinals. “And he’s done that, he’s just not getting the results.”
“He’s been having good at-bats the entire year, it just hasn’t gone his way,” Francisco Lindor said Thursday. “If he stays through the process, continues to have good at-bats, he’s going to have a successful year. He’s a really good hitter. He’s taking the right pitches, He’s swinging at the right pitches. It’s just a matter of time for him.”
That time may be now, after Vientos ended a home run drought that lasted 77 consecutive at-bats in the Mets’ 4-1 win over the Cardinals on Thursday.
In the second inning, Vientos launched a 90.4 mph fastball from Andre Pallante the opposite way over the right field wall. The ball was 100.1 mph off the bat but only went 338 feet — the third-shortest traditional home run at CitiField since 2016 — but it was enough to not only give the Mets an early 1-0 lead but also allow the 25-year-old to exhale. He pumped his fist rounding first base and let out a yell, and then another as he crossed home plate.
“It’s a good feeling for sure,” Vientos said after the game. “Trying to stay positive, have good at-bats. It’s easy to stay positive when your team is winning. That’s always a good thing.”
Yes, the Mets (12-7) are winning despite the lack of offensive contributions from Vientos but they were winning a lot last season because of the young infielder. His 27 homers — in just 111 games — helped the Mets overcome their slow start and make the playoffs, while his five homers in the postseason were integral to the team’s run to the NLCS.
He entered Thursday with just a .210 slugging after slugging .516 a year ago. But as Mendoza said, the hard contact was there — Vientos’ xSLG is .336 — the third baseman was just a bit unlucky in the early going. That fact has helped Vientos overcome this slow start, and he and the team hope it leads to a breakout.
“I’ve been liking the hard-hit contact that I’ve been having, and walking,” Vientos said. “If you stick to the process and just do that over and over again every single day you’re playing, and have good at-bats, they are eventually going to go your way.”
“With Vientos, we’ve seen that the whole year, we’ve just haven’t seen the results,” Mendoza said of Vientos’ home run. “He keeps hitting the ball hard.”
The home run was Vientos’ lone hit on Thursday, but it should go a long way for the slugger to reach his goals. Lindor, the Mets’ de facto captain and mentor to Vientos, is confident the youngster will get to where he needs to get to.
“He has to stay the course,” Lindor said. “By the end of the year, hopefully, he’s going to hit 30, 40 home runs. Whatever his goals are, I’m sure he’s going to achieve them.”
Read the full article here
