ATLANTA — By the end of the eighth inning Monday night, Brett Baty felt too fired up to immediately head into the dugout. The New York Mets’ third baseman had just cleanly fielded a grounder off the bat of Atlanta Braves star Austin Riley with the bases loaded to preserve a two-run lead. So Baty lingered on the field for another moment with his arms raised. When he met Francisco Lindor, he began pumping up the veteran shortstop, slapping his own glove in jubilation while shouting with a wide smile.
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That type of scene never occurred last season.
This season, Baty has displayed a spark of joy nearly every day after making a play.
“He’s in a really, really good spot and he has figured out that good vibes will help him play better,” Lindor said. “Staying positive, staying happy and staying with high energy makes him play better. We hope for him to stay at that level. It’ll be pretty hard for him to stay upbeat, upbeat and upbeat all the time, but if he can do that over 160 games, he’s going to have a really successful year.”
Baty’s play is arguably the Mets’ most encouraging development through their first 11 games. After a miserable rookie year, he looks like a completely different player, the kind of player Mets officials drooled over in the minor leagues. Baty’s swing looks better. His defense looks better. He’s playing with more emotion. He’s playing with more confidence.
“It could have been a number of things,” Baty said regarding the difference between last season and this one. “But I am just going to try to be myself every single day. And if that wasn’t reflected last year, then that’s in the past and we’re over it. I am going to try to be Brett Baty every single day.
“Like Francisco said the other day when he said he was going to be Francisco Lindor. I am going to be Brett Baty. And that just means doing whatever I need to do to perform on the field for the New York Mets.”
One rival scout who has watched Baty closely the last couple of years said the first few dozen plate appearances of 2024 have featured the “best swings I’ve seen him take.”
Baty is 13-for-40 (.325 batting average) with one home run. He has recorded at least one hit in nine games. He improved his swing by emphasizing selectivity, cutting down on movement and … thinking of a relic.
Baty has never made a call inside a phone booth.
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Which 24-year-old has?
But he grasps how little space exists in a phone booth, how the small enclosure inhibits much movement. There’s this phone booth outside a popular taqueria in Austin, Texas, near Baty’s hometown that makes for cool social media posts. He has gone inside of it. While working on his swing ahead of the season, Baty repeatedly asked himself a question, essentially turning a batter’s box into a phone booth. Those are his coaches’ words translated into how he sees it.
“In essence, can all your movements be done in a phone booth?” Baty said. “Which is unrealistic, obviously, but thinking that, your moves are smaller, your head is moving less, your whole body is moving less.”
In the offseason, the Mets’ coaching staff believed Baty needed to make tweaks, not sweeping changes. In 389 plate appearances last year, Baty hit just .212 with a .598 OPS and nine home runs. Too often, he tried to cover the entire plate and that led to him battling in a “defensive mode,” Mets co-hitting coach Jeremy Barnes said. In other words, Baty was behind on pitches a lot of the time, often striking a ball too late or missing. At the plate, he was often too wide or lifted his leg too much. His approach was inconsistent which led to poor results.
Early in 2024, Baty has done a better job of being selective. He has a game plan and sticks to it. While he can stand to raise his exit velocities, he is hitting balls in the air more often and making more contact. Barnes said that’s a product of being more compact with his swing — operating like he’s in the phone booth — and “catching the ball around his front foot,” which essentially means striking balls earlier.
It might be the best transformation in a phone booth since a young Clark Kent.
“He’s always had a really good swing,” Barnes said. “It’s just about getting to it more often.”
To some Mets officials, Baty’s most impressive defensive play so far happened last week when he ranged to his left, cut off a softly hit grounder in front of Lindor, quickly released the ball and made a strong throw on the run to beat speedy Cincinnati Reds star Elly De La Cruz.
Brett Baty's throw beats Elly De La Cruz to first 😤
(via @AppleTV) pic.twitter.com/14OAGMFLeF
— SNY (@SNYtv) April 6, 2024
“Being able to start to make plays like that,” Mets third base coach/infield coach Mike Sarbaugh said, “can only help him build his confidence.”
Baty hasn’t played perfect defense, but he’s yet to make an error and has fielded balls at a far more consistent level compared to last year. Websites like FanGraphs ranked him as one of the worst fielding third basemen last season. Things that plagued him in 2023 — errant throws, slow reactions and inconsistent exchanges — haven’t happened much so far.
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Coaches say Baty looks highly engaged before pitches, which has led to him anticipating plays and making quicker reads. Twice, he has knocked balls down, kept them in front of him and made throws for outs. He has made a few highlight-reel-worthy plays. He has competently handled routine ones, too.
Lindor said, “He wants the ball hit to him.”
After the first week of spring training, after Baty failed to make a couple of plays in the field and collect hits, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza told him, “We want you to be yourself and have fun.” Since then, and especially since his pinch-hit home run in the second game of the season, Baty has noticeably played looser — and better. Baty said the confidence he feels at the plate because of preparation is the same way he feels at third base.
“I’ve seen him mature a little bit since the spring to now,” Sarbaugh said. “He’s seeing the work he has put in to start to pay off. In such a long season, you’re going to have days where things don’t go well. You just want him to keep believing in it so that the next day he comes back and he’s right where he was before. Just being able to deal with that. What he has been doing, I think, has helped him prepare for that. I’ve been very happy with the progress he has made.”
That’s the big key for the Mets: Keeping Baty in this spot. The season is barely two weeks old. A nice start doesn’t mean Baty has cemented anything. There’s a long way to go.
The Mets entered 2024 wanting to learn more about what they have in some young players, notably Baty. It’s a pivotal year for him.
The most important takeaway from Baty’s early results is he’s playing with a level of confidence that was missing in 2023 yet was a necessity for 2024.
“That’s the ‘it’ factor,” Barnes said. “It’s early, but this is what we saw in the minors — a guy that your eyes just go to on the baseball field. We’re seeing that at third base. We’re seeing that at the plate. He has a presence to him.”
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(Top photo of Brett Baty: John Bazemore / Associated Press)