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ANAHEIM, Calif. — They were once core four prospects and considered the Mets’ future, but these days Francisco Alvarez, Brett Baty, Mark Vientos and Ronny Mauricio are an overall reflection of the team’s disappointing play.

The foursome began Saturday with a combined -0.8 bWAR, a troubling factor in the Mets’ 11-21 start.

Baty and Vientos have taken on larger roles than originally anticipated due to injuries: Juan Soto missed nearly three weeks in April and Jorge Polanco has missed the past 2 ½ weeks. Mauricio became the starting shortstop last week when Francisco Lindor hit the injured list with a left calf strain.

The Mets need improvement, and it might start with these four, all of whom have shown flashes over the last few seasons. A closer look:

Alvarez

After a fast start to the season, the 24-year-old catcher has cooled, both offensively and defensively.

Though his strikeout percentage has dropped, so has Alvarez’s hard-hit ball rate. The idea that he can help anchor a lineup as a consistent 25-homer-a-season presence might be fading.

Will the Mets ever get the offensive presence from Alvarez that compensates for his difficulty behind the plate?

Most notably, Alvarez ranks only in MLB’s fifth percentile for blocking balls in the dirt. Alvarez has been league average in throwing out base stealers.

Luis Torrens is the superior defensive player — explaining the two-year contract extension he received from the club Saturday — and it might be time, for the third straight season, to consider whether Torrens should play more often than a traditional backup.

Baty

There was so much hope Baty had finally arrived following a strong two-month stretch to conclude last season, but mostly he’s just appeared lost at the plate and frustrated by umpires.

Baty, 26, has bat speed — he ranks in MLB’s 75th percentile in that category — but his strikeout percentage and hard-hit ball rate are problematic.

After spending the last two seasons at third base and second base, he’s playing neither position this year as he receives work in right field and at first base. Has the change been too much for Baty to absorb?

Vientos

Other than the Mets’ first road trip of the season, when he helped carry the lineup, it’s been a slog for the 26-year-old as he adjusts to playing first base on an almost regular basis.

Vientos’ underlying numbers paint an ugly picture, with his average exit velocity, strikeout percentage and walk percentage all ice cold. Ideally, the Mets would just use him against left-handed pitching, but that luxury hasn’t been possible due to the injuries.

Vientos entered Saturday with an .833 OPS in 26 plate appearances against lefties. But in 56 plate appearances against righties, that number dropped to .548.

Defensively, he’s a work in progress at first base. He earned praise early in the season for his glovework, but there have been glaring letdowns. And his baserunning doesn’t earn him bonus points.

Most glaringly, he ran through a stop sign at third base last week and was thrown out by plenty at home plate.

Mauricio

Of the four players, the 25-year-old Mauricio is the least tested. He began Saturday with only 321 major league plate appearances, largely a result of losing the 2024 season rehabbing a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

The Mets received a reminder of his power potential Friday when he crushed a go-ahead, seventh-inning homer. The blast was Mauricio’s first this season. He began the day with 10 strikeouts in 29 at-bats, without a walk.

“It’s been difficult,” Mauricio said. “I think there are moments where maybe you are trying to focus on too many things. In order to kind of make it a little bit easier on myself I kind of have to simplify the game, focus on the things I can control, and the things you can’t control you just let that go and play the game.”

With fireman Fernando Cruz having pitched Friday night and three of four days, it was Jake Bird who got the call in the role Saturday, which began an uneven string of relief work from a Yankees bullpen that is fighting for roles.

Bird showed potential and issues before Camilo Doval did the same in what became a 9-4 win over the Orioles in The Bronx.

After Ryan Weathers (with the help of a misplay from Ben Rice) loaded the bases without an out in the sixth in a game the Yankees led by five, manager Aaron Boone went to the righty Bird for the righty Pete Alonso.

A move that might have looked poor on paper worked, Alonso grounding into a double play that scored a run.

But on the verge of escaping, the inconsistent Bird walked Tyler O’Neill and gave up an RBI double to Samuel Basallo before getting out of the inning with the Yankees in front 6-3.

“Jake Bird had some really good moments again today,” Boone said. “I thought [he] stabilized through a dangerous part of the game for us.”

Bird passed the baton to Doval, one of the quietly more important Yankees considering his potential and his volatility for a team that needs quality setup men ahead of David Bednar.

Pitching for a second straight day, Doval walked Dylan Beavers and displayed a career-long issue: a struggle to hold runners on base.

Beavers stole second and third and then scored on a groundout.

“I thought he threw the ball well, but a little slow in the running game,” Boone said of Doval, who had been excellent Friday and on Saturday recorded two outs before giving the ball to Tim Hill, who once again just needed one pitch (which induced a groundout from Gunnar Henderson) to escape.

Paul Blackburn pitched the final two scoreless innings as the Yankees ran away from Baltimore and helped preserve further work from an unorthodox bullpen.

The Yankees are carrying Blackburn and Ryan Yarbrough, two arms capable of starting, while searching for reliable bridges to Bednar.

The bullpen as a whole started well, became an issue for a short while and has pitched better of late, posting a 2.79 ERA in the past 14 games.

“I think our pen’s done a really nice job,” Boone said. “I think leaving spring training, maybe we had some question marks to answer down there. And it’s still going to evolve and get there. But I think by and large, those guys have done a really nice job.”

Jasson Domínguez, who was drilled in the elbow and left Wednesday’s game, returned to the lineup and served as designated hitter.

Domínguez went 1-for-4 with a single.

Giancarlo Stanton has begun hitting, Boone said, taking cuts Friday for the first time since straining his calf April 24.

There is no known timetable for Stanton to start running.

Elmer Rodríguez is expected to receive at least one more start and is lined up to pitch Tuesday in a series opener against the Rangers.

• CHECK OUT THE LATEST MLB STANDINGS AND YANKEES STATS

His teammate earlier this season at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Carlos Lagrange, remains on the Yankees’ radar.

The fireballing righty has pitched to a 3.75 ERA in six starts — while maxing out at 83 pitches in an outing — and struck out 30 while walking 14 in 24 innings.

There is still uncertainty whether Lagrange, whose four-seamer has averaged 99.2 mph, can better help this season in the rotation or bullpen.

“[He] continues to give us reason to be very excited about him,” Boone said of the 22-year-old, who finished last season at Double-A Somerset. “Another step up to Triple-A, and starting there and getting rolling. So far I think it’s been good.”

Anthony Volpe, who remains at Double-A Somerset despite being healthy enough to return to the majors, was set to play his 12th rehab game Saturday night.

Volpe is expected to play for Somerset again Sunday before his rehab clock runs out and the Yankees will have to decide whether to bring him back — and if so, whether he would be the starting shortstop over José Caballero — or whether to option him to the minors.

Boone and Gerrit Cole greeted Sarah Langs, an MLB researcher who is fighting ALS, on the field before the game and gave Langs a signed bat for her birthday.

With a chance to secure the series win, the Braves had ace Chris Sale on the mound at Coors Field with young Rockies star Chase Dollander expected to take the mound after an opener.

The Braves followed my recommendation in the first inning, jumping on the opener Brennan Bernardino, as Ronald hit a line drive single and Drake Baldwin sent an opposite field shot over the left field wall for a two-run homer. Ozzie doubled before Bernardino recorded two outs and was yanked for Dollander to face Dubon. That’s a pretty disastrous opener scenario for Colorado. Dubon walked, but Austin Riley struck out to end the inning.

Chris Sale worked a clean first and handed things back to the offense. Jorge Mateo doubled with one out in the second and advanced to third on a Ronald Acuna groundout. Unfortunately, Ronald pulled up limping on that play and appeared to have injured his hamstring, walking off under his own power. Drake Baldwin brought Mateo home with a opposite field line drive single. The next threat was in the bottom of the third, as the Rockies got a leadoff single from Karros. Mauricio Dubon made a spectacular sprinting catch, crashing into the wall in center field, robbing double bases and an RBI for the first out of the inning. That was a big deal, as the Rockies ended up getting an RBI double, but that easily could have been a 2 or 3 run inning without that catch.

The Braves broke things open in the fourth, however, scoring three runs on an Austin Riley walk, a Jorge Mateo infield single, an Eli White bunt single, and a Drake Baldwin frozen rope double. Atlanta now carried a 6-1 lead heading into the bottom of the fourth inning, where Chris Sale worked around a walk for another scoreless frame. Onto the fifth and Michael Harris doubled ahead of Austin Riley, who absolutely launched a homer off a 98 MPH fastball into the left field seats. That’s Austin’s second productive game straight at the plate, as getting real production from him would be huge for this team.

Chris Sale lost his command to start the bottom of the fifth, walking the first two batters. This seemed to frustrate Sale a bit, as he started pumping upper 90s with his fastball. One soft grounder and two strikeouts later, the inning was over with no damage done. The game settled down from here, and Sale completed two more innings, finishing with a flourish of three consecutive strikeouts following a leadoff single in the seventh. Chris ended up with 7.0 innings of 1-run ball with a season-high 11 strikeouts on a monstrous 20 whiffs.

Dylan Lee pitched a clean eighth inning and Matt Olson launched a moonshot of a solo homer in the ninth, at just under 110 MPH off the bat and a 39 degree launch angle, his 11th homer of this young season.

Hunter Stratton got mop-up duty in the ninth, with an eight run cushion. He had no issue finishing the game, with some assistance from a tailor-made double play to end the ballgame. That’s now 10 series wins and one split through 11 series and a 23-10 record for Atlanta. They will go for a sweep behind the returning Spencer Strider tomorrow.

ST. LOUIS — Roki Sasaki might’ve finally turned a corner from his recent struggles Saturday night.

Too bad the Dodgers’ offense took too long to do the same.

Despite a season-best six-inning, three-run start from Sasaki, the Dodgers remained mired in their recently maddening slump during a 3-2 loss to the Cardinals at Busch Stadium. 

In their latest sign of futility, they endured eight shutout innings that included as many hits as double plays (four each). Then, despite some good batted-ball luck that keyed a last-gasp, two-run rally in the ninth, they fittingly ended the game by stranding the tying and go-ahead runners on base.

“Just comes down to, we didn’t score enough tonight,” manager Dave Roberts said.

Indeed, Saturday followed what has become an uncomfortably common script for the Dodgers (20-13) in recent days.

They couldn’t generate power, failing to hit a home run for a fifth straight game (the longest drought for the club since 2015). They couldn’t take advantage of situational opportunities, either, going hitless with runners in scoring position until their short-lived comeback attempt in the top of the ninth.

That inning was keyed by three two-out singles that all deflected off the glove of a Cardinals fielder. Andy Pages then snuck a seeing-eye grounder through the infield to cut the deficit to one.

Alas, Dalton Rushing struck out as a pinch-hitter to end the game and send the Dodgers to a fourth straight defeat.

They still somehow finished with six runners left on base, even when accounting for all the double plays they hit into.

In the first inning, Will Smith became the first victim on an inning-ending grounder that was turned by shortstop Masyn Winn. In the third, Alex Freeland got doubled off after an overly aggressive jump on a lineout to second from Shohei Ohtani. Another double play ended the fourth, when JJ Wetherholt made a spinning turn at second on a ground ball from Teoscar Hernández. Then in the fifth, Hyeseong Kim couldn’t leg out a tapper back to the mound that was also turned for two.

“Once we started to build something, the double plays got us,” Roberts said. “They turned a couple really good ones. That certainly kills innings.”

It also meant that, when Sasaki stumbled in a three-run third inning, the 3-0 deficit might as well have felt like 30.

Even with some fortunate bounces at the end, the Dodgers fell to 5-9 in their last 14 games.

“There’s gonna be times where we’re not clicking,” Pages said through an interpreter afterward. “And this is one of those times right now.”

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What it means

Before Saturday’s game, Roberts joked he was an “eternal optimist” while declaring “today’s the day” the lineup would finally turn things around.

By the end of the night, such laughter was gone –– but the manager was still trying to put a spin on the team’s confounding recent struggles.

Roberts maintained that the club’s slide is “what every team is going to go through in baseball throughout the course of a season.” He downplayed the notion that it has revealed larger concerns in the offense, noting what he felt were higher quality at-bats throughout Saturday’s game.

“I thought the intentions were better on balls in the hitting zone,” he said, after noting pregame that his hitters seemed too “passive” on pitches they should attack.

“Yes, we hit into some double plays tonight. But I thought we took some good walks and, obviously, in the ninth inning, I thought we put together some good at-bats. I just think we need to be aggressive and take what the pitcher gives you. But every team goes through this through the course of the season.”

Who’s hot

Sasaki … at least by the end of the night.

After drastically changing his signature splitter last week — abandoning his traditional forkball grip for a more prototypical splitter release — the right-hander used both variations of the pitch Saturday. It led to varying degrees of success.

Early on, Sasaki had his usual command problems, walking two batters and hitting another in his first two innings. Then in the third, the Cardinals finally got to him. Iván Herrera and Alec Burleson hit back-to-back doubles off his fastball. Jordan Walker got a hanging forkball in an 0-2 count that he belted for a two-run blast.

Just like that, it was 3-0 with no outs in the inning.

Another disastrous performance seemed to be at hand.

The one thing Sasaki has done well this season, however, is bounce back from such adversity. And over the rest of Saturday night, he provided his best example yet. The 24-year-old retired 12 of his final 13 batters to complete six innings for the first time this year. He also recorded only his second “quality start” (at least six innings, no more than three earned runs) in 14 career starting performances in the majors. 

There’s still a long way to go in his development. And his ERA is still an unsightly 5.97.

But the trend line, for the first time this year, finally appears to be pointing up. 

“I do think that there was a lot of growth,” Roberts said. “Each of his last handful of starts, he’s gotten better.”

Who’s not

Of the many, many hitters who don’t look right in the Dodgers’ lineup, no one’s slump has been more consequential than Ohtani’s.

After his ice-cold bat, the rest of the offense seemed to follow his lead.

On Saturday, the two-way star went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. In this series, he has now made an out in all nine trips to the plate. Overall, Ohtani hasn’t recorded a hit since Monday. And after it seemed like he was getting back on track last week, his season batting average is back down to .252 and his OPS is down to .835.

When Ohtani last spoke to reporters Tuesday, he framed his slow start as nothing out of the ordinary, saying it usually takes until May for him to typically find his swing. However, he also acknowledged that, when his hitting mechanics are off, his two-way duties can make it more difficult (or at least take longer) to get his swing synced back up.

Case in point: He has just one home run in his last 18 games and only two extra-base hits in his last 12.

Up next

The Dodgers will try to avoid getting swept for the first time this season Sunday, when Justin Wrobleski (4-0, 1.50 ERA) will face off against ex-Dodger Dustin May (3-2, 5.28 ERA).

The Arizona Complex League, a.k.a. Rookie Ball, started this afternoon. I normally don’t do a full recap of the ACL Cubs. Instead, I just give a link to the box score and comment if anything extraordinary happened today. I also don’t wait for the ACL Cubs to finish before I hit “publish” on the nightly wraps. I’d rather get the recaps to you before you go to bed at night than wait for a West Coast rookie ball team to finish up. Today was a day game so that was not a problem, but once summer rolls around and things get scorching hot in Arizona, the games will almost all start near sundown.

Last night shortstop Ty Southisene scored the winning run for Myrtle Beach in the bottom of the ninth. That’s the last thing he’s going to do for the Pelicans because he was promoted to High-A South Bend.

Everyone lost but Mesa.

Iowa Cubs

The Iowa Cubs were cast out by the St. Paul Saints (Twins), 16-2.

So the Saints scored in every inning but the sixth. Doug Nikhazy’s I-Cubs debut was one he’d like to forget as he got clobbered for eight runs on six hits over 2.2 innings. Nikhazy walked three and struck out four.

Close to all of the I-Cubs offense came from right fielder Kevin Alcántara. Alcántara singled and scored in the second inning on a double by DH BJ Murray. Then in the seventh inning, Alcántara hit his league-leading 11th home run of the year.

Alcántara went 3 for 4 with the home run and he scored both of Iowa’s runs.

Murray was 2 for 3 with the double and a walk.

Center fielder Brett Bateman went 1 for 2 with two walks.

That’s all of Iowa’s hits today.

Murray’s double.

The Jaguar strikes again for 397 feet.

Knoxville Smokies

The Knoxville Smokies were left on the launchpad by the Rocket City Trash Pandas (Angels), 7-5.

Starter Tyler Schlaffer pitched 4.1 innings and surrendered two runs, one earned, on three hits. Schlaffer did walk four while striking out three.

Schlaffer was relieved by Jace Beck who allowed one inherited runner to score and five more of his own. Beck’s final numbers were five runs on seven hits over 1.2 innings. Beck walked one and struck out two.

Left fielder Andy Garriola homered twice tonight: a two-run home run in the second inning and a solo home run in the fourth. Garriola leads the Smokies with seven home runs. Tonight he finished going 2 for 3 with walk and the two home runs.

Shortstop Jefferson Rojas was 2 for 4 with an RBI double in the sixth inning. Rojas scored on Garriola’s first home run.

South Bend Cubs

The South Bend Cubs were boiled by the Ft. Wayne TinCaps (Padres), 7-6.

Kevin Valdez started and allowed four runs on six hits over 3.2 innings. He walked three and struck out two.

Ethan Flanagan took over in the fifth inning and gave up just one run on four hits over the next four innings. Flanagan struck out four and walked one.

JP Wheat was called upon to get the save in the top of the ninth and in typical wild JP Wheat fashion, he took the loss after allowing two runs on no hits and four walks. Wheat also uncorked two wild pitches. He struck out one in the one inning of work.

Second baseman Drew Bowser tied the game up 5-5 with a two-run double in the fifth inning. Bowser went 1 for 2 with two walks and a hit batsman.

First baseman Cole Mathis was 1 for 3 with a triple and two walks. One of the two walks came with the bases loaded for one run batted in. He scored twice.

Bowser’s double.

Myrtle Beach Pelicans

The Myrtle Beach Pelicans were hypnotized by the Columbia Fireflies (Royals), 4-3.

Dominick Reid turned in a decent start, going five innings and allowing just two runs on five hits. He did walk four batters while striking out six.

Hayden Frank tossed the final four innings, gave up his first two runs of season and took the loss. Frank allowed two runs, one earned, on three hits. He walked one and struck out two.

Catcher Logan Poteet was 1 for 2 with two walks and an RBI single in the seventh inning.

Left fielder Jose Escobar went 1 for 4 with a two-run single in the first.

Poteet’s RBI single.

ACL Cubs

Cubs 7, Athletics 5

Kaleb Wing, the Cubs’ fourth-round pick last year, made his professional debut in this game and allowed one run on two hits over four innings. He struck out six and walked no one. Something tells me he’ll be in Myrtle Beach soon.

Second baseman Juan Cabada, a top 20 prospect in most Cubs prospect lists, went 3 for 5 with a triple, a run sored and three RBI in his stateside debut.

And, so, it ends. By going 0-for-4 today, Vargas’s streak ended at 27 games. That’s still the second longest in franchise history. You have to go all the way back to the early stages of the franchise’s sophomore season in 1999, to find the only bigger streak. Club legend Luis Gonzalez reached 30 games between April 11 and May 18 that year. But, as we’ll see, there are grounds for thinking Ildemaro’s may be more impressive, given the offensive environment of the time. It’s been a while since any D-back has come close to approaching Gonzo. Over the past twenty years, just three reached 20 games: Paul Goldschmidt (26 in 2013-14), Ketel Marte (21 in 2024) and Vargas. Here’s the top dozen.

What’s most impressive is, nobody saw this coming. Of all the people potentially to challenge the record in 2026, he was likely among the longest odds. Corbin Carroll? Sure. Ketel Marte? Of course, especially given his previous 21-game streak. They have a far better track record. For most of the other entries on the chart above, the players concerned were well known to be decent hitters. Even the notoriously light-hitting Tony Womack came in to the 2000 season with a .278 career average. But at the end of last year, when the streak was just three games old, Vargas was a career .249 hitter. His previous high hit streak before this? Just ten games, in 2022 when he was with Washington.

The 24-game streak at the start of the season makes it particularly impressive. That’s the longest streak to open a campaign for fifty years. Ron LeFlore of Detroit reached thirty at the beginning of 1976. Doing so also allows Vargas to get into some uncharted territory elsewhere. At the end of the streak yesterday, he was batting .404 on the season with 99 PA in the books. That’s comfortably the deepest into the season that an Arizona player has been able to post a .400 average. Here are the five previous D-backs with the most PA to reach the .400 mark (only stats at the end of the game being counted):

1. 77 PA: Geraldo Perdomo, May 3, 2023, BA .409
2. 67 PA: Mark Reynolds, June 1, 2007, BA .413
3. 64 PA: Greg Colbrunn, May 25, 2000, BA .404
4. 60 PA: Orlando Hudson, April 15, 2007, BA .411
5. 58 PA: Pavin Smith, April 18, 2025, BA .408

Gonzalez came achingly close to smashing them all, including Vargas. On June 4th, 1999 he went 2-for-4 and raised his average for the season to .398. That was as close as he got in a meaningful size. But that .398 did come over a much longer period, covering 227 plate-appearances and 201 at-bats. On the surface, that’s much more impressive than Vargas. Except, 1999 was a very different era, as Jack reminded me on X. There are reasons hit streaks of over 25 games have become much less frequent. The overall batting average that year was .271: this year, it’s .243. Put another way, if we assume 4 AB per game, a league average batter hitting 25 games in a row was roughly five times more likely in 1999.

The actual results bear this out. We asked Baseball Reference for all the hitting streaks of 25 games within a single season during the divisional era, led by Pete Rose’s 44 games in 1979. There were 82 all told over the fifty-seven seasons from 1969-2025, so about one and a half per year. But there have only been six since the end of 2016, and none of those got past 26 games. [Vargas’s season-spanner doesn’t count, of course] In contrast, 2011 alone had four, two of which reached the thirty-game checkpoint. Things peaked, unsurprisingly, in 1999, with six 25+ streaks. Gonzo’s 30-game run was surpassed later in the year by Vlad Guerrero reaching 31.

The other unexpected bonus in this being an early-season surge, is seeing a Diamondback hitter as the #1 for the batting title. When was the last time a Diamondback was in that position? The most literal answer is boring, albeit with a surprising name. Jeff Mathis went 3-for-4 on Opening Day 2017, and that .750 batting average was tied with six others for the major-league lead after that day. But that’s also not really what we’re wondering. What about as late in the season as we are now? Then the answer is a more predictable name: Paul Goldschmidt led all of MLB in batting average on August 18, 2015. Here’s the relevant Fangraphs leaderboard.

In fact, again looking from May 1 onwards in each season, only 2015 Paul Goldschmidt and 1999 Luis Gonzalez have ever led MLB in batting average. The latest date Gonzo led was June 5, 1999 — when he was hitting .390, the day after coming one hit short of batting .400. Again, it was a very different offensive environment, let’s say. As some of you might know, we have never had a full-season batting champion. 2015 Goldy would finish 4th, while 1999 Gonzo would finish 6th. The closest we’ve ever come was 2019 Ketel Marte, who finished 3rd, and never led.

Here are the others who led after only 1 or 2 games besides Mathis: 2000 Steve Finley, 2013 Gerardo Parra, and 2014 Goldschmidt (after just the Australia series; it helps that only two teams had played!). And here are the others who led later on in April: 2001 Jay Bell (April 18-19), 2007 Orlando Hudson (April 15 and 20), and 2011 Miguel Montero (April 8-10, 13-14). All told, that’s some pretty good company for Vargas. Is it sustainable? Almost certainly not, though even after this afternoon’s ohfer, Ildemaro still has a striking 47-point lead over the current runner-up, the Astros’ Yordan Alvarez.

Still, we’ll continue to enjoy it while it lasts. You can only appreciate the wonders of a game where, for more than a month an unheralded journeyman on his fifth stint with the Diamondbacks, was the best hitter in baseball.