Brett Baty Is Swinging Wildly and Failing Miserably In the Process

If you're a New York Mets fan, you probably don’t need us to tell you how long it took infielder/outfielder Brett Baty to become a reliable, above-average hitter in the major leagues. From 2022 to 2024, he racked up 602 plate appearances, in which he posted a rough 71 wRC+.

Just when the Mets were about to give up, though, Baty put up incredible numbers in the 2025 spring training, earning an everyday role. After he yielded a 66 wRC+ in his first 58 trips to the plate that season, he found himself in Triple-A again. But Baty returned a couple of weeks later and was so good over the rest of the season that he finished with a 111 wRC+ and 18 home runs last year.

With first-round pedigree and having seemingly turned a corner in 2025, the 26-year-old was set to star in a multi-position role for the Mets this year. Things, however, haven’t gone the way he probably imagined.

Brett Baty's Plate Discipline Has Evaporated

Heading into the weekend series against the Cubs, Baty is slashing a brutal .203/.197/.288. Yes, that’s right, his batting average is higher than his OBP, which can happen when sac flies or sac bunts enter the equation.

In short, his plate discipline has completely disappeared. He is the only qualified hitter in baseball without a walk and has struck out 32.8 percent of the time, roughly one-third of his plate appearances. That’s not ideal.

He had made strides with his chase rate last year, as it sat in the 70th percentile at 24.9 percent. This year, he is swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone 38.5 percent of the time, which ranks him in the 11th percentile. Yikes.

So, as you probably suspect, a lot of Baty’s issues have to do with horrible plate discipline. The quality of contact, however, has also been subpar, as his 2nd-percentile xwOBA (.216) suggests. Baty is well below the league average in metrics such as hard-hit rate (23rd percentile), expected batting average (19th percentile), and expected slugging (18th percentile).

Additionally, Baty feasted on fastballs last year, hitting .278 off them and slugging .495. The 2026 sample is still ridiculously small, but he is at .257 and .343, respectively. The difference in xwOBA against heaters is night and day: it was .383 in 2025, and has collapsed all the way to .205 in 2026.

So, to sum up, Baty is not just swinging at everything, but also can’t catch up to fastballs this year. It might be a timing issue because his average bat speed is still solid at 74.8 mph — good enough to rank him in the 84th percentile and exactly the same as last year’s.

Brett Baty Can't Turn To Luck To Fix His Velocity and Swinging Issues

We can’t even say that Baty has been unlucky: his .210 wOBA is right on par with his .216 xwOBA. He has just been terrible. Can he improve? Well, of course he can. Will he? That’s the million-dollar question.

Any bounce-back bids will have to start by not chasing so much. Believe us when we tell you that it’s much easier said than done, but he has done it before. He has rapidly improved his feel for the strike zone in the not-so-distant past. It happened last year! He’s not hopeless.

He will have to regain his stroke and his rhythm, especially against fastballs. And he will have to put the barrel on the ball more consistently. That sounds simple, but it's a lot of work to do in the middle of the season. He just seems late on high-velocity stuff, which in turn is making him susceptible to the more-difficult-to-hit breakers outside the zone:

With his timing still way off, the Mets’ utility man is pulling fewer balls in the air than ever before in his career, at 7.3 percent. His career mark is 14.1 percent, and the league-wide average is 16.7 percent. Getting Baty going should be a priority for the Mets at the moment. They are the second-worst offense by wRC+ in the entire league, so anything that the talented but inconsistent hitter can provide will be greatly appreciated.