PORT ST. LUCIE — Brett Baty rises from his chair and stands Texas tall with his shoulders squared, looking larger than his listed size of 6-foot-3, 210 pounds. He is a big kid with a big place in the Mets’ ultimate dream of sustainable long-term contention.
Ask Billy Eppler about Baty’s upside, and the general manager responds that he hates the question and the artificial guardrails an answer could place around the player.
Ask Buck Showalter about Baty’s upside, and the manager’s eyes widen as he says, “Oh my God.”
Ask Baty about Baty’s upside, and one of baseball’s best prospects stays right in the box.
“I feel like I can be one of the best players in the game,” he told The Post at his locker. “I think all players should have that mentality and should have that mindset, just because there’s so much failure in this game.
“You have to be confident every day, and come in and be consistent. That’s just what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to be the best baseball player I can be.”
At 23, Baty is the kind of baseball player the Mets will need if their big-picture vision is to come to life. So much is rightfully said about Steve Cohen’s willingness to spend his billions on free agents that the necessity of developing homegrown stars is often lost in translation.
Even Cohen can’t pay hundreds of millions to everyone, leaving holes that must be filled by the draft picks and young signees. If the Mets want to win their first World Series title since 1986 in the coming seasons, they’ll need their top two prospects — Francisco Alvarez and Baty — to join system success stories the likes of Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, and Jeff McNeil.
Baty’s door was thrown wide open once Cohen decided Carlos Correa was too big of a nine-figure injury risk at third base. The job belongs to veteran good-guy Eduardo Escobar, who caught fire in September after Baty’s sudden big-league promotion — after only six games at Triple-A Syracuse — was canceled by thumb surgery 11 games deep. But that doesn’t mean the kid can’t take that job from the vet.
Toward that end, entering Tuesday’s 5-0 loss to the Nationals, Baty was leading the majors with an on-base percentage of .516 and was fourth in batting average (.423) and OPS (1.039). Just the other day, Showalter said that the 12th overall pick in the 2019 draft was “wearing it out down here” on both sides of the ball, a claim Baty notarized with a great play on leadoff hitter Keibert Ruiz in the first inning — he lunged hard left to field a grounder in the hole, planted, spun and fired a bouncer to Mark Vientos to get his man.
Showalter is proud of the kid’s defensive improvement. But hey, some things about baseball have changed and some have not. Baty went 0-for-3 against the Nats, getting robbed of a single in the process. Even the hottest hitters get shut down without any notice — it’s the cruel nature of the sport.
“I’m just trying to get 1 percent better every single day,” Baty said. “I don’t really like to focus on, ‘Oh, I want to hit this amount of homers or I want to hit this for average,’ because it’s just so up and down. You could smoke four balls in a day and go 0-for-4 or you can have three duck farts and be 3-for-3. There are so many uncontrollables in this game.”
One of the controllables is payroll, and young talent making reasonable money allows a team to use free agency as a supplementary tool. “And that’s the place we want to be,” Eppler said.
The GM relented on the Baty upside question and said the third baseman can be “an impact player at the major league level.” Eppler likes Baty’s disposition this spring, seven months after the call-up magically homered in Atlanta on his very first swing as a Met.
“There’s an assuredness about him,” the GM said. “If he makes a mistake he owns that mistake, and I think he uses it as fuel. That’s a maturity component for me that speaks to some accountability, and his drive to be great.
“I think the best thing with Brett is he’s got perspective … and that’s going to keep him grounded and keep him focused on the right things. I don’t think Brett’s going to get lost in the fog.”
Eppler saw plenty of perspective while working for the Yankees during the final championship season of the Jeter-Rivera-Pettitte-Posada core. As much as the dynastic Yanks were known nationally as big free-agent spenders under George Steinbrenner, those title teams were made by the players raised in the system.
“If we want to be perennial contenders,” Eppler said, “that has to be done through homegrown talent.”
And Brett Baty is all of that. For now, his goal is to make the Opening Day roster. He will worry about his role in helping the Mets win a championship soon enough.