DJ Stewart is forcing a not uncommon question in the majors:
Is a player having a moment or a metamorphosis?
There is a genus of lefty hitters who exist annually on the margins. They often sign minor-league contracts. Sometimes they are called Calhoun, Kole or Willie. Sometimes DJ Stewart. They usually get a cup of coffee or two during a season, normally as an injury fill-in. They occasionally assemble a starry few weeks or months that force a reassessment: have they graduated from journeyman to something more?
It is often a mirage.
The Yankees were the home office this season as it finally dawned on the braintrust that they needed more lefty diversity. So, they have run through Greg Allen, Jake Bauers, Willie Calhoun, Franchy Cordero and Billy McKinney – all of whom will probably be back in the general population for journeymen lefties after this season. For an extended period, the Yanks lived under the belief (delusion?) they had unearthed a late-blooming gem in Bauers.
But again this is so often a mirage, fueled often now by obsessing on a metric.
Players are going to respond to a reward system and if organizations are going to give pay/promotion based on exit velocity, players will chase it. Bauers increased his. But at what cost? He also raised his strikeout rate to more than 30 percent, a mark that screams you are going to become more and more susceptible to good pitching and playoff pitching as opponents adapt. Bauers hit the ball hard, just not often enough and with diminishing success. He was kind of a lefty Luke Voit – shrinking his overall value as a non-runner and non-defender (in the outfield) with a low average and an inability to hit lefty-on-lefty.
I mention Bauers because Billy Eppler told me that Stewart was a priority to sign to a minor-league deal last offseason because the Mets liked his underlying numbers so much – think exit velocity, launch angle, pitch selection, etc. Stewart said with the help of Triple-A hitting coach Collin Hetzler, he added a toe-tap timing mechanism to allow him to better get to fastballs in different quadrants. His exit velocity has risen, so has his success rate to date, but there is a 30.7 strikeout percentage.
So, who is he? It is a Mets issue as they try to distance themselves from their disappointing 2023.
“It’s a valid question to ask, but from my point of view, the work (Stewart) does daily and the power he has, that’s not fake,” Brandon Nimmo said. “Can he do it for a whole year? I can’t really speak to that. But I see what I am seeing, which is quality at-bats, where he is hopping on good pitches to hit and letting the pitches he should let go, go. That produces good results.”
In his first 51 plate appearances after promotion, Stewart hit one homer with a .593 OPS. In the next 63, he hit nine homers with a 1.247 OPS, but had just three walks vs. 21 strikeouts. An evaluator I greatly respect once counseled that if you are good enough to play in the majors, then you are good enough to put together a good month or two. He was explaining why it is so easy to be fooled in his job – and so key not to be. Think about Matt Carpenter’s two months with the Yankees last year when he looked like the best hitter in the sport. It earned him a one-year, $6.5 million pact with the Padres, where he was hitting .176.
Mike Ford is like a patron saint of this type of lefty hitter. For two months with the 2019 Yankees, he was a revelation (12 homers, 163 plate appearances, 137 OPS-plus). His underlying stats keep getting him work. The Yankees were the first of seven organizations (five in the majors) to employ him from 2020-22, a period in which he managed eight MLB homers in 305 plate appearances with a 61 OPS-plus. He was designated for assignment seven times. Back with the Mariners for a third time, he is making like 2019 again by mainly helping Seattle solve (125 OPS-plus) what had been an inept DH spot – against the Mets on Sunday he hit his 14th homer in 199 plate appearances in a 6-3 loss.
If he qualified for the batting title, Ford’s rate of homering in 7.0 percent of his plate appearances would trail only Pete Alonso (7.5), Shohei Ohtani (7.4) and Matt Olson (7.2). Stewart would lead at 8.8 percent.
Is this a sign that a former first-round pick (25th overall for Buck Showalter’s 2015 Orioles) has found himself at age 29? “People take different times for things to kind of click for them,” Stewart said.
Or is Stewart just a version of another lefty journeyman, Daniel Vogelbach? As opposed to Vogelbach, Stewart can play a position, the corner outfield, and the Mets want to see him at first. And he is not the turtle-ish Vogelbach. But even though he has made some nice defensive plays – including one in right-center Sunday against Ford – Stewart is not viewed as a strong fielder or runner. The value is in his bat.
And he has done enough hitting so far to likely be retained, since the Mets are not facing a 40-man roster crunch. Stewart perhaps could be the DH successor to Vogelbach – unless Shohei Ohtani is actually coming. He has put himself in play the only way a journeyman can – by assembling the kind of success that forces a team to ask:
Is it a moment or a metamorphosis?