Author: Oliver Lang
Editor: Brian Symons
Spring training is in session, and in just around a month the season is scheduled to start. And while many of the top free agents in baseball have been scooped up, a good number by the Mets, there’s one player in particular who has had his ups and downs with the Metropolitans who has yet to sign with a team. This, of course, is 2-time homerun derby champ, Yoenis Céspedes. Back when the Mets got him midway through the 2015 season, he led them to the World Series and was instantly beloved by Mets fans everywhere, and that trend continued until it didn’t.
After the magical World Series run that Céspedes had a key part in, he raked in New York, batting .280 with 31 home runs in 132 games in 2016. While he only played in 81 games in 2017, he was still great, batting .292 with 17 home runs. However, after that, things took a series of turns for the worse.
In his age 32 season in 2018, he played a mere 38 games, and in that span hit 9 homers but only batted .262, and he didn’t play for all of 2019 due to injuries so it was clear that even if he did play, Céspedes would only be on the roster for a fraction of the season. Then there was the wild boar incident.
While on his ranch, where he was recovering from injury with hope for a return to Queens, a wild boar broke his ankle. After this strange incident, he wouldn’t be able to play until the 2020 season—which leads to yet another wild Céspedes and the Mets story, the disappearance of Yoenis.
Yoenis Céspedes was coming into the shortened 2020 season with high hopes, and others were feeling similarly. The former Mets star hadn’t played in over a year, and Met fans were hungry for some Céspedes power, and to his credit, Yoenis showed it, kind of. On opening day against the Atlanta Braves, the score was 0-0 going into the 7th when Céspedes came up to bat. He then proceeded to hit a go-ahead bomb to left field that put the Mets up 1-0 over Atlanta, which is where they’d stay. However, he did practically nothing good besides that. In 8 games he hit 2 home runs and batted an embarrassing .161, not nearly what was expected of him. Instead of pushing and trying to improve as a hitter, he took the easy route and just left. He didn’t come to the field when he was supposed to and didn’t tell anybody anything. During the game of his disappearance, people had no clue where he was—some even thought he might have been kidnapped, as he wasn’t answering people’s calls. It was then found out that he had decided to opt-out, but decided not to tell his own team about it on a day he was supposed to report to the stadium for a game. Pretty much, he didn’t play how he wanted and decided to quit instead of making an attempt to improve.
Getting back to now, he is a free agent and nobody has picked him up yet, but talks about the possibility of him going back to the Mets have taken place. He would likely be just a bench hitter, as the Mets are already loaded with all-stars on the field, and he’s coming off of bad seasons, along with causing numerous problems for the team. In addition to that, 2021 will be his age 35 season, so he won’t necessarily be a prime Céspedes who could lead an entire team to the playoffs. However, he will likely be a low-risk signing who can’t really hurt them that much, as he will cost almost next to nothing and won’t play very much. It’s really a complicated situation, where he could just be a waste of money that doesn’t do much of anything and has hurt the Mets in recent years, but at the same time, the money will be low enough that it doesn’t harm the team. And if there were even a chance of 2015 Yoenis Céspedes coming back, it would be well worth the risk. There is a risk in there, and a team as good as the Mets are this year doesn’t need or want anything that could derail their chances of being the champions of baseball. But if we are all being honest, someone who sits on the bench most of the time and has potential for high reward sounds like a risk worth taking, so to answer the looming question, should the Mets sign Céspedes for the 2021 season—as long as they don’t overpay for him, yes, Yoenis Céspedes should be a New York Met in 2021, and who knows, he may help them get to the World Series again.
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