PHILADELPHIA — Since Aug. 2, the first game after the trade deadline in which he was available to be in the starting lineup, Cedric Mullins had started 26 of 34 games entering Tuesday.
Beginning Tuesday, that mostly everyday workload began to change.
Manager Carlos Mendoza said he will play “the matchups” and perhaps “the hot hand” in center field after the club activated Jose Siri from the injured list.
The plan for now is to play the righty-hitting Siri against lefties, and he started Tuesday against Philadelphia southpaw Ranger Suárez.
The lefty-hitting Mullins will play primarily against right-handed pitchers despite a season in which he has hit lefties far better than righties.
With the Mets at least, he simply has hit no one, which has led to a platoon and the possibility that Siri — or Tyrone Taylor, who could start a rehab assignment from an oblique strain next week, or maybe Jeff McNeil, who Mendoza said will still receive spot starts in center but the club clearly prefers him in the infield — can begin to assume more time patrolling center.
“I know Cedric has some good numbers against lefties, but obviously he’s going through a rough stretch here,” Mendoza said of Mullins, who arrived from Baltimore as an everyday player but had hit .174 with a .556 OPS, including an 0-for-26 stretch in his past 10 games, entering Tuesday’s game at Citizens Bank Park.
Siri is known for flashy, excellent defense that includes a powerful throwing arm that the Mets had barely seen this season because he fractured his tibia 10 games into his campaign. Several setbacks and an eight-game rehab assignment later, the 30-year-old was brought up in the middle of a playoff chase.
“That leg is completely healed,” Siri said through interpreter Alan Suriel after hitting .269 with a .783 OPS with Low-A St. Lucie and Triple-A Syracuse.
If nothing else, Siri could serve as a strong, late-game defensive replacement and pinch runner with phenomenal speed. It is possible he serves as more, though, for a team that has not found a true answer in center all season (and chose against debuting prospect Drew Gilbert, who was traded to the Giants and has begun his career well).
Mets center fielders entered play with a combined .601 OPS that was the fourth worst in baseball — and was significantly buoyed by McNeil’s .857 OPS while taking 99 plate appearances at a position that he may not be able to play every day.
Mullins, an All-Star with the Orioles in 2021 who had posted a respectable .738 OPS this season before the trade, has not yet played like the solution the Mets had hoped he would be.
After another poor game Monday that culminated with his being subbed out for pinch hitter Luisangel Acuña, who rarely hits himself because of a poor bat, Mullins said he has made adjustments at the plate with the Mets and believed he had found a tweak that worked but had lost it.
The goal for Mullins, according to co-hitting coach Jeremy Barnes, is to be more direct to the ball.
“When you have a lot of length in your swing or you’re having to make moves back here [in the load], you then have to compensate for those out in front of your body,” Barnes said of Mullins, who he believes had hit lefties better with the Orioles because the like-sided pitchers forced him to be quick to the ball.
“Whether it’s mental or not, he gets more direct [against lefties] because he has to,” Barnes said.
Barnes called Mullins’ pregame work Tuesday “really good,” showing signs of the kind of more-direct swing the Mets are hoping can turn him into the player they hoped he would be in the second half and postseason.
With about two and a half weeks left in the regular season, there is still a bit of time for Mullins to prove himself and prove he belongs in a postseason lineup.
But not much — and now there will be less playing time for Mullins to take advantage of.
“Playing the matchups, playing the hot hand, whatever you want to call it,” Mendoza said. “We’ll go from there.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
