Laura Albanese: Mets need to make sure lost season doesn't send young pieces into mental rut

TORONTO

The highest-paid player in baseball would run from the outfield and sit alone or with a front-office official near the indoor batting cage between innings.

There’s more context to this, but when former Mets hitting coach Eric Chavez told that story on the EC3 podcast this week, the focus fell on Juan Soto — the slugger on the sofa — and the perceived lack of internal leadership, an indictment of president of baseball operations David Stearns.

But now that we’ve gotten the knee-jerk reactions out of the way, take a minute to pan out on the portrait Chavez painted.

“I think [Soto] is one of the coolest human beings, just a really good person,” Chavez said. “He struggled the first two months emotionally and I don’t blame him.”

We can’t perfectly measure the accuracy of Chavez’s assessment — only Soto can answer that, and he declined to comment — but you can see it, can’t you? For years, Soto was the nomad superstar, and he had finally found a place to call home. But the weight of that $765 million was heavy, he was underperforming by his standards, and it was taking him time to acclimate to a new clubhouse, new teammates, and a new place in the world.

If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, it might be hard to sympathize. But this is more than a thought experiment — it’s about baseball, and it illustrates a very real threat on the Mets’ future — one that has little to do with Soto.

Never mind Tuesday’s 3-0 win over the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre; it was only the Mets’ second in 11 games and puts them a mere 14 games under .500.

Right now, every single player on this roster is the slugger on the sofa. Days are dark in Flushing, and David Peterson’s trade, followed by Carlos Mendoza’s firing, all but conceded the season. When Bo Bichette started crying during his return to Toronto on Monday — “I think I gave it everything I had,” he said, still heartbroken he couldn’t help the Blue Jays close out Game 7 of the 2025 World Series — you also felt the weight of everything else that’s happened since then.

Bichette, too, is still finding his footing. He, too, hasn’t met his own expectations.

The thing is — Soto is fine now. Bichette will be fine eventually, though this season might cost him a potentially larger payday. But seasons like this year and last do stain a franchise, and the most susceptible are also the least experienced.

In some respects, we’ve already seen that with guys such as Brett Baty and Mark Vientos — both of whom came up with tremendous upside, but have simply failed to deliver thanks to a mix of underperformance, organizational instability and likely mismanagement. But the Mets simply can’t afford to have that happen to this latest crop of younglings.

If there’s been one bright spot so far, it’s been seeing Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing come into their own — growing pains notwithstanding. And though he waded into major-league waters last year, you can’t forget about Nolan McLean, who was excellent Tuesday, throwing six scoreless innings and yielding five hits with two walks and seven strikeoutss. His early-season struggles, though, only proved that he’s still learning, growing and acclimating. Meanwhile, performances like the one against the Blue Jays continue to prove that careerlong excellence is within his grasp.

His mindset helps, especially in times like these.

“I’ll try to forget about this game as fast as possible,” said McLean, who gave up six runs in his previous outing. “There’s nothing about tonight that will help my next start. Anytime it’s good or bad, it’s on to the next start.”

Still, these are formative moments in all their careers, and they’re being forged in a dumpster fire.

For what it’s worth, interim manager Andy Green, who knows these guys as well as anyone, doesn’t think this season will leave a lasting scar. But he also knows you have to keep an eye on it.

“They’ve been incredibly resilient in their life — that’s who they are as people,” Green said. “I can’t look at this adversely impacting them. I could understand where somebody might think that .  .  . We’re encouraged by the way they’ve handled that. It is harder in that set of circumstances for sure, but I have not seen any yielding in them whatsoever. They’re learning, they’re growing, they’re being challenged and they’re handling it well.”

It’s true, but at the same time, we’ve seen players such as Jonah Tong and Ronny Mauricio come up and struggle. For as mentally tough as McLean has proven to be, he’s been unsteady at times, too. They’re all human, and if these Mets play for anything this year, it should be to ensure that their young talent doesn’t get stained by the muck of mediocrity.

Chavez said something else in that interview. When he saw Soto sitting solo or with the Mets’ assistant general manager, he brought his concerns to Stearns: Couldn’t this be a negative influence on young players? Per Chavez, Stearns responded: “Those players need to learn that they’re not Juan Soto.”

But let’s look at it from a different lens.

Sure, not everyone is a generational talent, but anyone can be the slugger on the sofa.

Unlike Soto, though, not everyone has the ability to get up.

Notes & quotes: Luis Robert Jr. (spine) went 1-for-2 with a walk to begin his rehab assignment with Triple-A Syracuse; Jorge Polanco went 0-for-3 in a loss to Worcester. There’s no firm timeline for their return, and Green indicated he didn’t want to move Ewing from the outfield upon Robert’s return . All of which is to say the Mets will have some tough decisions to make – and potentially a glut of designated hitters now that Jared Young has all but taken the first base gig from a struggling Vientos...Clay Holmes (broken leg) will throw a bullpen in the coming days and it appears he might be progressing ahead of schedule, something that could make him a trade candidate ahead of the Aug. 3 deadline.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.