The Mets' offense is a mess. How do Jeff Albert and the hitting coaches plan to fix it?

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There are times when a team-wide offensive slump can be rationalized away by looking at more advanced metrics. In the past, many Mets’ slumps have involved underperforming with runners in scoring position, or not sequencing hits properly, or hitting into bad luck. There are no easy rationalizations for this one. “All our metrics are not where we want them to be,” director of major-league hitting Jeff Albert said bluntly. Entering this week, here’s where the Mets ranked in some primary categories: The expected numbers haven’t been much better: You can add that the Mets ranked 25th in chase rate and have been the sport’s worst team against pitches above 95 mph. However you felt about David Stearns’ offseason, you didn’t expect the offense to be this bad this swiftly. Strange things happen in baseball over the course of a month, but this is a month that justifiably leads to questions about the viability of New York’s offensive group, not to mention the injury uncertainty surrounding Francisco Lindor, Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert Jr. So when everything goes wrong, how do hitting coaches work to make it right? To find out, I sat down with Albert on Wednesday afternoon, more than five hours before the first pitch. Albert leads the Mets’ trio of hitting coaches, which also includes Troy Snitker and Rafael Fernandez. We talked about being on time for the fastball, stepping to the plate with the proper intent, and reasons to trust (and not trust) the Mets’ lineup to revive. The conversation has been lightly edited and condensed. So when an offense this talented goes through something like this for as long as it’s been, what runs through your mind? The biggest thing on my mind is keeping the focus, mentality and confidence of the group in the right place. That gets harder to do when you’re underperforming and outcomes aren’t where they should be or where expectations are. How much do you point to areas where you’re not performing, or do you not want to highlight the negative and keep it more positive? Now more than ever, there are so many metrics, and you’re really trying to filter out what’s important and not. In this case, all of our metrics are not where we want them to be. That’s what I mean about going back to the basics of controlling the strike zone, being on time — just fundamental things that these guys have done well through their careers that you need to be a good major-league offense. There’s not one or two metrics you look at and really want to improve at. It’s a bigger-picture mentality to go up there and get a good pitch to hit and drive the ball. How do you explain it going this far south the way it has? If anyone had a clear explanation … I’ve been on the other side of a long winning streak (17 games with the 2021 St. Louis Cardinals), and at that time, I couldn’t explain that, either. We’re not playing our best, and then you have some added pressure. I don’t want to talk about luck, but that’s happened going back to LA, where we’ve been in the game (and hit it hard at someone). A couple things like that, times when we felt the mindset and competitiveness were going in the right direction, and then you have one or two outcomes that can feel deflating. That’s baseball. These guys have dealt with that before. It’s continuing what we want to do in the long term and just having the mental toughness to keep working and fighting when things are not going our way. Obviously, going through this at any point is tough for a player. It’s tougher when your team is not hitting, it’s tougher when your team is not winning, it’s tougher when it’s all going on in New York. How do you prevent all that pressure from snowballing on a player? It’s important to acknowledge all those different things. We have new players, we have young players, we have new coaches. You can keep looking at all these external or peripheral things and pile those up. I don’t mind acknowledging those things because by acknowledging them, you start thinking about a lot of the distractions or noise for an individual player or us as a group. The more you acknowledge what those things are, then you can make a decision about where to put your focus. Add to that where it’s more magnified at the beginning of the season. I’ve been on teams that have had rough patches in the middle of the season, where it doesn’t feel good to go through that either, but it’s just not as magnified as it is now. A lot of those things in combination are happening externally. The work and preparation have been good; everybody feels good about that. That’s pushing us to focus on the mentality and perseverance of the group. Clay Holmes said last night, “There’s a lot of new here.” How does going through this right away this season affect the way you build relationships with new players? It accelerates the process because you find out a lot about who you are and what adjustments need to happen, both physically and mentally. One of the really positive discussions has been, essentially: Don’t waste it. I know from my experience and players I’ve worked with, when you go through a rough patch and can figure out what the adjustments are, we want to make sure not only that we get to the other side as soon as possible, but also that we can turn that into long-term consistency. Hopefully, we can shorten that learning curve when those adjustments need to happen in the future. One of the things that jumps out is how much you have struggled against fastballs. What’s behind that in your mind, and how do you improve in that area? That’s what I mean in referencing the basics: being on time. Even going back to spring training, the ball is on the ground a little bit and going to the opposite field a little bit more. But on the fastballs in particular, we’re seeing more of them, we’re making contact and the damage on the contact that this group is capable of hasn’t been there. That speaks to the mindset of our intent, our focus, our commitment to what we want to do — that’s what we’re really trying to improve. It’s not necessarily how we’re being pitched or how another team is attacking us, but much more about us being clear and in command and executing on the things we want to do. In spring training, you hear a lot about timing and how it takes reps. When you’re this far into the season and the timing is off, how do you get that back as a hitter? Yeah, I don’t think anymore that it’s early. What’s tricky about spring training with so many new guys is you’re still trying to learn what’s happening, so you’re not jumping to conclusions about outcomes in the game. We have enough information now. It’s hard to describe: It’s not so much looking at the stats on production against the fastball and the metrics on your swing. The way that has played out points more to the intent, the mentality of the group and us really trying to define who we are, what we’re good at, and to go out there and execute and play our game versus what another team is trying to do to us. You mentioned intent. What do you want your hitters thinking as they go into the box? I think it’s important to have the mentality that you’re going to drive the ball. We’re maybe top 10 in lowest strikeout rate. We can get the ball in play, but there’s a difference between contact and the quality of contact. The strike zone and chase rate, we’re aware of all those things. It’s hard to be productive if you’re not doing damage on pitches in the heart of the zone that you need to drive. And I don’t mean just slugging home runs, but putting the ball in the gap, hitting the ball hard and driving the ball. If you’re able to control the middle of the strike zone and be on time there, that’s a great place to start. If you’re driving the ball, teams have to be more careful and here come the walks. If you’re driving the ball early in the count, you’re not getting to two strikes, or you’re getting ahead in the count, and it snowballs. Some pitchers have gone deep into the game against us, and it’s not because we’re not getting the ball in play. We’ll get the ball in play early, but it’s hard to drive up somebody’s pitch count when you have two or three hits. If you’re driving the ball, that means you’re getting a good pitch. Go up there, look for a pitch in your strength, a pitch you can drive, and build the rest of your game around that. What gives you hope that you will be the offense you thought you could be? The talent of the group and the way the coaching staff works together. Despite all the outcomes so far, there’s a lot of togetherness among the group. Not just the work the guys are putting in, but the way the group is trying to work together. I don’t want to say, ‘We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine.’ There’s a certain amount of urgency to not wait around for an outcome. It’s a grind mentally to be positive when positive outcomes are not happening. It’s managing what adjustments are good. What things do we need to stick with? But it’s encouraging to me that the players and the coaching staff are really working together to make that happen. What concerns you that it wouldn’t happen? That it’s not happening now. That’s always a reality. It’s Major League Baseball. We’re in the middle of that reality right now. You ask about the relationships with new people; you learn a lot about guys. Are we going to come together? Are we going to fight? Where’s our mental toughness? I don’t know how else to say it: It’s a reality in baseball that you can fail. That’s there every day and you have to acknowledge that and then go out and choose what you want to do and how you want to do it. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms