Mark Vientos may be turning the corner. What does that mean for the Mets?

PHILADELPHIA – It was the middle of last season, and Mark Vientos wasn’t quite like himself. Vientos wasn’t worried about his swing; Vientos is not really worried about his swing. This is his routine.

So he FaceTimed with Matt Lopes, a hitting coach he knew in South Florida, to talk about how to maximize his prep work.

“He didn’t feel like he was moving right at the time and just needed something to get his body in a better place,” Lopes said by phone last week. “It’s more of a focus on habits, where he has to focus on the whole drill work, how to go about training yourself.”

The two began talking remotely during the 2022 season, then worked together in person all last offseason in Florida. They talk every few days during this time, as well.

Vientos knew at the time that he needed to improve his work around the game; he won’t know how valuable that will be next year—plus, when he bounces between Triple A and the majors and contends with inconsistent playing time.

In the past few weeks, the 23-year-old experienced major league success for the first time. Since coming off the injured list at the end of August, he has hit six home runs and posted a .263 batting average and an .818 OPS.

“It feels great, for sure,” Vientos said. “It’s been a long time, and I feel like especially when you’re dealing with struggles it’s longer than it should be. But now I feel better that I feel myself.”

“He’s very good about a routine and the way it works,” coach Jeremy Barnes said. “Take the grind. He did a good job of that.”

During his rise through the minor leagues, Vientos developed a reputation as a slow starter who required an adjustment period at each new level. (A sparkling cameo in Triple A at the end of 2021 was the exception, though he struggled at that level to start next season.) At each spot, he racked up more than 100 plate appearances before he will find his stroke. When he did, he walked away.

The New York Mets hope that Vientos has reached the pivot point of his major-league tenure. Yes, it took more plate appearances than in the minors, but that can be attributed to the colorful nature of Vientos’ big league playing season. Those 167 plate appearances came over the course of 84 active days in the majors.

“When I go through something like this, I always go back to the times when I was able to handle it,” said Vientos. “Over time, I got into a groove and felt more comfortable. That’s how I feel now.”

“Being confident and finding consistency in your swing, I think it’s an impossible task if you don’t play every day,” Lopes said. “The rhythm and timing of it is so hard to find, it’s hard to feel like you’re the same hitter every day.”

Confidence has never been an issue for Vientos. This was the first thing Lopes noticed during their conversation. Despite saying he felt his swing, Vientos issued a clarification: “I’m not worried about my hitting ability. I can hit a baseball.”

“With Mark, he believes he can hit anybody and do these things at a high level,” Lopes said. “The success that he started today, those are things that he believes in himself and sees himself doing for some time now.”

“He believed in what he did,” Barnes said, “but now it’s settled.”

Barnes pointed out the way Vientos was first attacked by major league pitchers. Vientos has seen breaking balls nearly 42 percent of the time this season; only four players with at least 100 plate appearances have served up a higher percentage of curveballs and sliders. In August, 48 percent of the pitches Vientos saw were breaking pitches.

This month the result was different. Vientos hit five of the last six breaking balls he put in play. Three have already crossed the fence.

“He gave up bad pitches,” Barnes said. “He has come into the at-bat and is still grinding a little bit in the professional at-bats. And he is less in his power.”

And power is at play. Vientos didn’t worry about his swing because it quickly tapped into his power. He showed that in the upper house are running Aroldis Chapman, Luis Castillo and Zac Gallen.

“He has elite power,” Lopes said. “It’s not like that anymore. It seems effortless. He doesn’t show that he looks 100 percent, but you look at how the ball comes off his bat and you know – he’s in the top 1 percent for power.

Vientos is one of the swing players for the Mets entering next season. Depending on how aggressively they move in the offseason, he could enter the year as an everyday player, a bench piece or back in the minor leagues, waiting for an opening. His hope is that he has shown enough now to see regular at-bats again in 2024.

“I feel like just playing the game at this level every day and just seeing it, I’m better overall,” he said. “Everything I needed to get better, I did, so I see this season as a success.”

(Photo: Jim Rassol / USA Today)