WASHINGTON -- Had the Mets not stormed back in improbable fashion to win Sunday’s Subway Series finale against the Yankees, Bo Bichette’s face almost certainly would have been plastered across the back pages of every New York City tabloid. It was not just Bichette’s dropped popup that was at issue.
His overall performance, also, was growing far too concerning to ignore.
Through his first 46 games with the Mets, Bichette accumulated -0.7 Wins Above Replacement, according to Baseball Reference calculations. By that measure, entering Monday’s play, only five Major League players had been worse.
That was what made Bichette’s solo homer in a 16-7, 12-inning win over the Nationals on Monday so important. Beyond providing a crucial run in a game that the Mets won with a 10-run rally in the 12th, it offered evidence that Bichette, with more than 70 percent of this season left to play, can still find a way to be a productive member of the Mets.
“I know it’s been a big topic, but at the end of the year, we’re going to look back at these [seven] weeks and nobody’s going to be talking about this,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He’s that good of a hitter. He’s that good of a player.”
New York was leading by a run when Bichette came to the plate with the bases empty in the seventh. Nationals lefty Mitchell Parker hung a curveball well north of the strike zone, but Bichette -- as is his nature -- swung anyway, blasting it a Statcast-projected 409 feet over the left-field fence. He took a few slow steps out of the batter’s box before breaking into a trot, savoring every bit of his first extra-base hit in 82 plate appearances.
Bichette wound up reaching base four times, while Brett Baty hit the Mets’ longest home run of the season to date (451 feet) and Carson Benge notched his third go-ahead, extra-inning RBI in the last week to key the 10-run 12th.
The final extra inning also included multiple hits from Bichette, who singled and scored against Paxton Schultz early in the rally before rapping a two-run double off position player Jorbit Vivas. On the night, Bichette finished 3-for-6 with a walk, two runs scored and three RBIs.
It was his first multi-hit effort in 11 games, though Bichette feels his work in the cage has produced better at-bats lately without box-score results.
“I feel like I’ve had a lot of swings that have been really close lately,” he said. “I was just kind of waiting for something to connect to feel good about it.”
Through 47 games, Bichette is still batting just .219 with a .570 OPS -- the latter mark ranking him 163rd out of 173 qualified MLB hitters. But he now has a platform game off of which he can build.
“Eventually, it’s going to happen,” Mendoza said. “Good game today. I’m pretty sure that he’s going to get going here, and he’s going to carry us for quite a bit.”