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Mark Vientos is a bad player that the Mets should DFA at the earliest opportunity. End of article.

*taps earpiece* I’m being told I actually need to substantiate this opinion. I’m not quite sure why—it’s one of the more obvious things that can be stated about the current Mets’ roster—but alright, here it goes.

Mark Vientos is not a particularly good hitter and hasn’t been for some time. He’s currently batting .219/.254/.380 with a 78 wRC+. His .320 xwOBA might suggest he’s been a bit unlucky to date and he’s actually pulling more balls in the air than he ever has previously, but he’s also managing a paltry 15.8% line drive rate. There’s a lot of hard hit grounders and lazy fly balls that turn into outs here that xwOBA is likely not fully accounting for.

In terms of plate disciple, Vientos has a 6th percentile SEAGER, 14th percentile chase, and 25th percentile in-zone contact (numbers courtesy of Rob Orr’s app). All of these marks are going in the wrong direction relative to 2025, when Vientos was already a below average hitter. He’s had exactly one above average offensive month (August 2025) by wRC+ since the start of last season.

Then there’s the glove, which is somehow even worse than Vientos’s bat. Per OAA, only four first baseman have been worse at the position to this point in 2026: Rhys Hoskins (posting a 108 wRC+), Curtis Mead (135 wRC+), Jake Bauers (137 wRC+), and Bryce Harper (142 wRC+). To reiterate, that’s a probably-cooked 33-year-old and then three of the better hitters in baseball, all of whom do at least something positive to justify their place on the roster. Vientos’s complete inability to make even the most simpleofplays or to make routine plays look dramatic (*insert one of the many clips of Keith groaning about his footwork*) is glaringly obvious. He’s fallen all the way down the defensive spectrum and still isn’t a viable defender.

As if being a short-side platoon DH who can’t hit wasn’t enough, Vientos does a bunch of other things that make him even worse, both to watch and in terms of on field value. You can’t be one of the slowest players in the league, run through a stop sign, and get thrown out by 20 feet. You can’t go out there immediately after making a brutal error and going 0-for-4 and say you deserve a pat on the back for working hard (it’s the major leagues my man, everyone should be working hard). You can’t gripe about no one believing in you when, to be blunt, you’ve been bad for the majority of your major league career. This stuff paints the picture of a guy who could generously be described as extremely tone-deaf in ways that are directly detrimental to the team.

Now, to be fair, a lot of the blame for this situation rests on the Mets’ front office. Yes, Vientos’s role has become outsized due to Jorge Polanco’s injury, and yes, it’s probably unfair to criticize the team for not bringing in another expensive player (e.g., Ryan O’Hearn, Wilson Contreras) to fill this role given their current payroll (though they probably should’ve allocated Bo Bichette’s money towards one of those players instead). At the same time, their insistence on hanging on to a player of Vientos’s quality is frankly baffling.

For reference, here are a couple other first basemen that could’ve been had in the last calendar year:

• Ty France: signed a 1-year, $1.35M contract with the Padres; currently has a 137 wRC+ and elite 1B defense (5 OAA) in 39 games / 112 PA
• TJ Rumfield: acquired by the Rockies in exchange for Angel Chivilli; currently has a 117 wRC+ and 2 OAA at 1B over 59 games / 233 PA
• Spencer Steer*: 124 wRC+, average defense at 1B, flexing across both corner OF spots and 2B as well
• Curtis Mead: acquired for backup catching prospect Boston Smith in March; 135 wRC+

*Caveat here is that Steer hasn’t changed teams, but he appeared to be available this offseason

Hell, even a player like Eric Wagaman, who the Mets claimed after he was DFA’d by the Twins, might be better than Vientos at this point. Wagaman’s presence on the roster drives home the point; it’s generally very easy to acquire players of this quality or better for next to nothing. Yet the Mets have seemingly been unwilling to pass Vientos through waivers or trade him somewhere else for a marginal return.

The 2026 season has been a disaster. By and large, I would still defend most of the Mets’ offseason—they did reasonably well considering the options available to them—but failing to critique the decision to hang on to Vientos more harshly is a clear miss. Nothing about his poor performance to date in 2026 is particularly surprising, and rolling into the year with an out-of-options, most likely bad player who is something of a malcontent that you are unwilling to cut was a horrible decision.

That’s a mistake the Mets should rectify at the next available opportunity, hopefully at the latest when Jorge Polanco returns in a week or two. To summarize in meme format:

A large part of the Yankees’ success through the first two months of the 2026 season has been based on their homegrown talent. The way that Ben Rice and Cam Schlittler have taken the next step from good supporting cast players to bona fide stars at their respective positions has greatly improved the team’s future outlook, and when you add in the supporting value they’ve gotten from players like Will Warren, Austin Wells (defensively anyway), and even the brief cameos of Anthony Volpe and Jasson Domínguez, it’s a pretty promising young crop.

But as you look towards who could join this group, many fans’ eyes gravitate towards George Lombard Jr., the organization’s top prospect and one of the best in all of baseball. The newly minted 21-year-old got off to a blistering start in Double-A Somerset, prompting an aggressive move from the organization to promote him to Triple-A on April 29th, just as they did in 2025 when he got off to a hot start in High-A.

So far, the results have been mixed. Through 28 games entering Tuesday night, he’s slashing just .196/.360/.299 with an 88 wRC+, but his numbers look much better under the hood, yet there are clear areas of improvement he still needs to make. He’s played multiple positions as well, increasing his defensive flexibility beyond the six.

The ultimate question that’s on everyone’s mind is how quickly Lombard can get himself in the big-league conversation. After all, the Yankees have viewed Triple-A as more of a stepping stone for top prospects in recent years, and there’s an obvious position for him to play right away with Ryan McMahon’s offensive struggles at third base. We don’t have a clear answer on that yet, but it’s safe to say there’s still some work to go, even if things look encouraging for a debut at some point this year.

Potentially his biggest calling card as a hitter right now is his plate discipline. Lombard has always had a good eye and has never posted a walk rate below 10 percent at any level, but the fact that he’s walking in a fifth of his plate appearances is eye-opening. The best part might be that his strikeout rate has been almost identical since being promoted at 21 percent, indicating that he’s not any more overmatched against more experienced pitching.

If there’s anything to nitpick here, it might be that Lombard has been too passive. He’s only swinging at 57.5 percent of pitches in the strike zone, nearly 10 whole percentage points below MLB average (67.1%). He’s swinging at under 40 percent of the total pitches he sees, also considerably below average. That, coupled with an 80th-percentile chase rate, likely contributes to his huge walk rate.

This seems to be more of a feature than a bug of Lombard’s game, however, and that might cap his ceiling as a hitter. While more complex pitch-level data is only available in Low-A and Triple-A, the overall percentage of pitches he’s swinging at has remained consistently low throughout his minor-league career. He’s managed to get good results for the most part in spite of it, but it’s something that’s worth monitoring.

Expanding to batted-ball outcomes, he’s consistently hitting the ball hard, ranking in the 80th percentile or better in average exit velocity and hard-hit rate, but most of that contact is on the ground, which is why he’s sitting below the Mendoza Line. Lombard’s ground-ball rate has spiked from 34 percent to 44 percent since being promoted, his highest rate since he was in A-ball in 2024.

That isn’t to say he hasn’t had his moments driving the ball in the air.

Lombard’s still pulling the ball at a high rate and has had some loud outs to the warning track in left field, which has caused him to slightly underperform his xwOBA (.333 vs. .315 wOBA). He’s starting to find his slug considerably more, hitting two home runs last week and smoking a single 111 mph last night, so this might just be a case of waiting and seeing.

If I had to pick one thing to watch going forward, though, it’s the platoon splits.

The right-swinging Lombard has had a big disparity there all season, hitting to a .969 OPS against left-handed pitching compared to a .726 mark against righties, but you also have to look under the hood to see if the swings and at-bats are as stark as the slashlines indicate. With him in Triple-A, we have that data.

The difference is stark. He’s able to drive the ball considerably better against lefties, particularly to the pull side, while swinging at significantly more strikes and chasing less. Against left-handed pitching, Lombard is analytically one of the best hitters in Triple-A, but against righties, he’s struggling. This is his biggest obstacle to making the jump to full-time major leaguer at this current point in time.

Defensively, Lombard is getting more reps at second and third base than he was getting before his promotion. He’s mostly shifted back to shortstop since Volpe was promoted a few weeks ago, but has played 13 total games at second or third base on the season.

With Volpe and José Caballero seemingly having shortstop accounted for and the uncertainty regarding McMahon’s struggles and Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s pending free agent status, the team seems to be preparing Lombard to assume one of their positions when he’s promoted, despite profiling as one of the best true defenders in the minor leagues. He’s looked quite comfortable at third, however.

So where do we stand after his first month in Triple-A? Lombard still has a ways to go before we see him in the Bronx, but I can’t imagine the Yankees could’ve expected much more from him entering June. He was only able to legally buy a beer yesterday and he’s on the doorstep of the major leagues, something he reached sooner than Volpe in a similar situation as a first-round shortstop drafted out of high school.

I do think they might leave him down longer than he truly needs to in order to make sure he’s truly ready after throwing Volpe into the fire in 2023 without much experience at the level. His glove is absolutely MLB-ready, but the team isn’t lacking defensively in the infield on most nights (Amed Rosario starts notwithstanding).

With Lombard, they need to make sure his bat is able to at least be playable by the time they promote him and give him everyday reps. He seems like he could come up and be a nice platoon bat soon enough with how he’s smashed lefties, but the Yankees have that base covered without even factoring in that it would be a poor way to break in a top prospect to the big leagues.

What Lombard does over the next two months will be crucial in how the Yankees conduct the trade deadline. If those platoon splits start to even out and he starts to perform better at-bats against same-handed pitching, the team might view third base as an area that doesn’t need external reinforcements. There’s a world that exists where he’s donning the pinstripes for this team in October, but it’ll require him to continue progressing on schedule as time goes on.

The seemingly neverending shuffle of the Cincinnati Reds outfield got another significant round on Wednesday afternoon. This time, it featured the demotion of a player nobody, if polled in the offseason, would have expected would be off the active roster just 60 games into the 2026 season.

The Reds made a straight swap, optioning former leadoff man and everyday CF TJ Friedl to AAA Louisville and recalling Opening Day RF Noelvi Marte in his stead.

This is the TJ Friedl who posted a robust .364 OBP in 685 PA atop the Reds lineup at the big league level just last year. This is the TJ Friedl who posted a nearly ~4 WAR season in 2023 when he hit .279/.352/.467 with 18 homers and 27 steals. This is the TJ Friedl who, aside from 7 games rehabbing, has been out of AAA and at the big league level full-time since the middle of the 2022 season.

Rather, this is merely some version of what’s left of that TJ Friedl.

So far in 2026, Friedl’s the owner of a meager 44 wRC+ in 178 PA. There have been 235 MLB players who have logged at least 140 PA so far this season, and only Lawrence Butler of the A’s (43) owns a lower mark than Friedl’s. It’s been a decline so rapid that the Reds seemingly struggled to truly grasp it, with TJ still regularly starting and playing entire games as recently as two weeks ago despite those struggles.

Ultimately, it became too much to continue to try to hide, especially with Marte knocking the cover off the ball again at AAA and getting regular run as the CF of the Bats in the process. That paired with the solid performances by Blake Dunn and the almost profile-perfect pinch hitting by Will Benson meant it was Friedl’s spot on the roster – not one of the other OFs who’ve been on the shuttle bus between Cincinnati and Louisville – that was on the line.

The only question now is just how much of a ‘regular’ the Reds choose to make Marte. The infield injuries and shuffling have rendered Spencer Steer more of a regular in a corner OF spot, while NL Player of the Month JJ Bleday has a stranglehold on the other corner. That means CF is the one spot where there’s more of a track to playing time, though each of Dunn, Dane Myers, and Benson have a claim to some time there, too. I don’t get the impression that the Reds would actively recall Marte just to have him sit bench more often than not, though, so it will be interesting to see if he’s given a shot to claim the regular CF spot with a consistent spate of playing time in the coming weeks.

Ahead of their series finale against the Mariners, the Mets have optioned Jonah Tong to Triple-A. To take his place on the roster, the club has recalled right-hander Joey Gerber.

Tong was brought up recently due to the mounting injuries to the club’s pitching staff and has experienced mixed results while primarily serving as a reliever and a bulk arm behind an opener. His first appearance was strong, as he shut out the Marlins through three innings to close out a 2-1 loss at loanDepot Park. What was especially encouraging is that he limited the traffic on the basepaths, walking one and not allowing a hit while needing just 28 pitches to complete his three innings of work.

Since then, he has struggled with his command. He earned a win in 3 2/3 innings against the Reds while serving as the bulk pitcher, though the underlying numbers weren’t encouraging. He walked four and allowed three hits in those 3 2/3 innings, though he was just charged with one unearned run. Yesterday’s outing was his worst, as he was tagged for five runs (four earned) on five hits, with two walks in 3 1/3 innings. Overall, he walked seven and struck out seven in ten innings. Tong was very much not ready when he was called up and will go down for some more work at Triple-A, where he posted a 5.68 ERA in 38 innings across his nine starts before coming up to the majors.

With Kodai Senga potentially on the way back as early as next week, sending Tong down makes sense in any event, since he’ll likely slot right into that role in the rotation. For now, the club is in need of some relief help, as they’ve used a lot of pitchers over the past two days given that both were, essentially, bullpen games. Gerber made one appearance for New York back on April 13, where he pitched the final two innings of the team’s loss to the Dodgers and struck out five while allowing two hits and walking one batter. In Triple-A, the righty has allowed 15 runs (14 earned) with ten strikeouts over 14 1/3 innings, which amounts to an 8.89 ERA on the year.

Major League Baseball started the All-Star voting process on Wednesday, beginning the campaign for the 2026 All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

The current ballot setup involves two phases, with fan voting for starting position players from June 3-25. From there, the top two players at each position, and the top six outfielders will move into the second phase, with voting totals reset and that vote open from June 29-July 2.

Here are the Dodgers on the ballot this year

• DH — Shohei Ohtani
• C — Will Smith
• 1B — Freddie Freeman
• 2B — Hyeseong Kim
• 3B — Max Muncy
• SS — Mookie Betts
• OF — Andy Pages
• OF — Kyle Tucker
• OF — Teoscar Hernández

A reminder that pitchers are not voted on by fans. So let’s stick with position players today. In total, 20 position players will make the National League All-Star team — nine starters voted on by fans, then nine players voted on by the players, and two others chosen by the commissioner’s office. Often those last spots include a team’s only All-Star, to satisfy the requirement that all 30 MLB teams have at least one All-Star.

Today’s question is simple: Which Dodgers position players should be All-Stars in 2026?