MJ Melendez's Evolution at the Plate Leaves Mets With Another Confounding Paradox

[Andres Chavez]

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

The New York Mets entered the week of May 11 as the worst team in the league with a 15-25 record and a .375 winning percentage. That’s certainly not where owner Steven Cohen, president of baseball operations David Stearns, and manager Carlos Mendoza wanted to be after almost a month and a half into the season.

The offense has been the main culprit of the mediocre Mets season, as they are dead last in wRC+ with an 81 mark. It’s baffling how a team with such a talented collection of hitters manages to underperform almost on a daily basis.

In fact, things have been so bad that MJ Melendez leads the Mets in wRC+ among hitters with at least 50 plate appearances, with a 143 mark. He has played almost exclusively against right-handers, which is why he isn’t quite an everyday guy, but who knows where New York would be without him?

Understanding MJ Melendez's Jekyll-and-Hyde Season

Melendez is slashing a solid .271/.352/.500 with two home runs in 55 trips to the plate. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it doesn’t look all that sustainable if we look at his plate discipline profile.

An accurate way to put Melendez’s current stat line would be a savage fight between his quality of contact and his plate discipline metrics. The former is aided by a 63.3 percent hard-hit rate, a 95.7 mph average exit velocity, and a 16.7 percent barrel rate. The latter, however, paints a grim picture.

Melendez’s 30.8 percent chase rate is below-average, but it’s not nearly as problematic as his horrible 37.1 percent whiff rate, which would be among the league’s worst if he were a qualified hitter. The situation results in a 34.5 percent strikeout rate, which certainly doesn’t portend a continuation of his .271 batting average.

You can tell that Melendez has been getting away with some luck, judging by his .407 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and his .290 xwOBA, which pales in comparison to his .374 wOBA. Expected stats say that the lefty-hitting slugger should have a .191 batting average and a .372 slugging percentage.

So, yes, Melendez is punishing the ball when he hits it, but in reality, that hasn’t happened that often. In fact, he hasn’t swung that often, with his 47.9 percent swing rate qualifying as his lowest mark since 2023. 

He is trying to be ‘patient’ at the plate, as his 27.3 percent first-pitch swing rate is the lowest of his career. In the process, he has been letting a lot of hittable balls go by, as his 69.2 percent meatball swing rate is considerably lower than the league average of 76.2 percent and his career mark of 82.7 percent.

Melendez’s 33.3 pull air percentage, however, is one of the highest in the league. To sum up, he often takes pitches, trying to find the right one, and when he does, his intention is to put up a powerful swing to his pull side. 

It seems that, in the process, he has lost a lot of his contact skills, which weren’t great to begin with.

Of course, these are all conclusions based on a limited sample, so it might as well just be some unfiltered noise. But it will be interesting to see where Melendez’s 2026 tendencies take him, and if he can keep thriving with such a selective approach at the plate.

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