Hey Dodgers, BO Tuck(er) Yourselves — Bichette's a Better Fit

The Mets lost Kyle Tucker and then, almost immediately, found Bo Bichette. Which in Queens qualifies as whiplash, progress, and possibly growth.

Here’s how fast it happened. One minute the Mets were at the grown-ups table, pushing a truckload of money toward Tucker and saying, “What if we paid you roughly the GDP of a small island nation…per year?” The next minute Tucker was packing for Los Angeles, where the Dodgers continue to collect All-Stars the way kids collect Pokémon cards. You don’t even get mad anymore. You just nod, sigh, and check to make sure Andrew Friedman hasn’t also acquired Venezuela (the country, not Fernando) or Greenland.

Tucker chose the Dodgers’ offer a shorter deal, slightly more guaranteed cash, and the undeniable perk of batting in a lineup that looks like it was assembled by a video game set on “unfair.” For the Mets, it was another reminder that even when Steve Cohen shows up with a checkbook the size of a catcher’s mitt, Hollywood still wins some of these battles.

And then something unusual happened.

The Mets didn’t sulk. They didn’t leak panic. They didn’t announce a press conference explaining why this was actually part of the plan all along. Instead, they pivoted sharply and landed Bo Bichette within hours.

That move tells you a lot about where David Stearns’ head has been all winter.

Stearns has said, repeatedly and without blinking, that this roster needed balance. Less left-handed thump and more right-handed thunder. Fewer adventure-seeking gloves and more adults with reliable defensive passports. Tucker would have helped, sure. But Bichette fits the blueprint in a way that feels almost intentional.

Bichette is a right-handed bat with a history of hitting baseballs loudly and often. When healthy, he’s one of the most consistent contact hitters in the sport, the kind who makes pitchers work, line drives scream, and infielders reconsider their life choices. He’s not coming here to replace Tucker directly nobody is pretending third base is left field but he is arriving to make the lineup less predictable and far less polite.

The positional gymnastics will be part of the early conversation. Bichette has been a shortstop his entire big-league life, and now the Mets are asking him to unpack at third base. That’s not nothing. Especially when you realize the Mets’ corner infielders, Jorge Polanco and Bichette, have a combined one batter of major-league experience at those positions, which is either bold creativity or the baseball equivalent of “we’ll figure it out later.” Either way, it also speaks to a larger truth about this roster: the Mets suddenly have more infielders than seats.

Between Bichette, Baty, Vientos, Mauricio and Acuna, the Mets now possess something they haven’t had in a while — surplus. Real surplus. The kind that lets you call other teams and say, “We’re not desperate, but we’re listening.” That matters, especially when the outfield still needs reinforcements and the trade market tends to reward clubs with options.

Defensively, this move also lines up with the Stearns manifesto. The Mets already upgraded the middle of the infield earlier this offseason, and adding Bichette continues the shift toward competence over chaos. Fewer balls clanking off gloves. Fewer innings where pitchers record four outs. Fewer moments where Gary Cohen has to pause mid-sentence.

Is Bichette a perfect roster fit? Not immediately. Is Tucker the cleaner answer to the Mets’ most obvious need? Absolutely. But roster construction isn’t about fantasy drafts it’s about flexibility, leverage, and giving yourself multiple paths forward when Plan A boards a flight to LAX.

The Mets still need an outfielder. They still need another impact bat. They may still need rotation help. But instead of standing still after losing Tucker, they changed lanes and kept moving. In an offseason defined by exits, that alone feels like progress.

If you strip away the contract numbers, the positional hand wringing, and the natural instinct to compare everyone to whoever just signed with the Dodgers, what the Mets are actually getting in Bo Bichette is something refreshingly simple. A hitter who hits baseballs hard, often, and in places fielders generally do not enjoy standing.

Start with the underlying offensive value, because that is where Bichette quietly separates himself. His expected numbers tell a much sunnier story than any surface level concern coming out of 2024. In 2025, Bichette posted an xwOBA north of .360, a number that lived comfortably above league average all season and barely wobbled over time. If you watched the rolling chart, it was not a roller coaster. It was more like a steady cruise, the baseball equivalent of setting the cruise control and letting everyone else speed past and get pulled over.

For context, xwOBA, or expected weighted on-base average, is Statcast’s way of measuring how productive a hitter should be based on the quality of contact he makes and the outcomes he controls. It uses exit velocity, launch angle, and strikeouts and walks to estimate offensive value, stripping away luck, defense, and ballpark quirks. In other words, xwOBA tells you whether a hitter’s results are earned or fluky. Bichette’s number says the contact was real, the approach was sound, and the bat was doing exactly what a high-end bat is supposed to do.

That consistency matters. Bichette did not spike for two weeks and disappear for a month. His expected production sat in the .350 to .380 range almost all year, which is exactly what teams mean when they say middle of the order bat and exactly what Mets fans mean when they say please do not disappear for three weeks in August.

The quality of contact backs that up. Bichette’s average exit velocity sits at 91 miles per hour, comfortably above league norms, and his hard hit rate pushed close to 50 percent. Nearly half the balls he puts in play come off the bat with authority. More importantly, they are not all moonshots or all grounders. His sweet spot rate lives in the low 80s percentile wise. That is a fancy way of saying he does not just hit the ball hard, he hits it right.

This is also not a free swinging chaos bat. Bichette makes contact. Lots of it. His strikeout rate sits well below league average, his whiff rate is comfortably strong, and when he decides to swing, he usually finds the baseball. Yes, he chases more than you would like, and yes, he does not walk as much as the sabermetric purists would prefer. But this is a hitter whose game has always been built on bat control and barrel to ball skills, not standing there waiting for a perfect pitch that never comes.

Pitchers have not found an easy answer for him either. Fastballs, breaking stuff, offspeed, it all gets handled. In 2025, Bichette produced positive run values against nearly every pitch type that mattered, with particular damage done against sinkers, sliders, changeups, and curveballs. If you are looking for a just throw him sliders away solution, you will not find one here. He adjusts, he stays through the ball, and he uses the entire field, which is why his spray chart looks less like a pull happy slugger and more like a geometry lesson.

And this is where the Mets lineup balance comes into focus. Bichette is not just a right handed bat for the sake of symmetry. He is a right handed bat who puts pressure on pitchers every single plate appearance. Low strikeouts. High contact. Loud contact. Sustained expected results. That combination travels well, ages well, and plays particularly nicely in a lineup that has spent too many seasons living and dying by the three true outcomes roller coaster.

Now defensively, there is no sugarcoating it. The metrics at shortstop were not kind. His range numbers cratered, and the defensive run values reflect that. But context matters. Bichette was playing shortstop every day, coming off injuries, and being asked to do a lot. The Mets are not bringing him in to be a Gold Glove defender. They are betting that a move to third base, fewer lateral sprints and more reaction and arm, stabilizes the glove enough to be playable. Not spectacular. Playable. And with the bat he brings, playable is plenty.

On the bases, he is not going to turn Citi Field into a track meet. The sprint speed is below average, and the baserunning value is essentially a shrug. He is not hurting you. He is just not stealing your fries either.

The bigger picture is this. Baseball Savant does not see a declining hitter. It sees a durable offensive profile that rebounded hard in 2025, one built on contact quality, bat to ball skill, and consistency rather than flukes. The expected stats say this was not smoke and mirrors. It was real.

So while the positional fit may require a little spring training creativity and perhaps a few extra early work sessions at third base, the bat is not the question. The Mets did not pivot to Bichette because they missed out on Tucker. They pivoted because Bichette fits what David Stearns has been quietly building toward all along. A lineup that is harder to pitch to, harder to defend, and far less dependent on hope.

The next logical step is roster leverage, and this is where the Mets’ surplus of infielders becomes an asset rather than a logjam. With depth across the infield, the Mets are positioned to deal from strength to address a clearer need: an impact outfielder who lengthens the lineup and changes the offensive shape of the team. Jarren Duran, Steven Kwan, and Luis Robert Jr. all represent different stylistic fits, but each would materially alter how opposing pitchers have to navigate a Mets lineup.

Duran is the most explosive option. The Red Sox would likely be looking for controllable infield talent that can help them both now and into the near future, particularly with Alex Bregman opting out and departing for Chicago, taking his .273 average, 18 home runs, and 62 RBIs with him. That exit leaves a real production void at third base, making a young, controllable bat like Brett Baty or Mark Vientos a logical area of interest for Boston. At the same time, the Red Sox are facing an outfield logjam, with Jarren Duran, Wilyer Abreu, Ceddanne Rafaela, and top prospect Roman Anthony all vying for everyday roles, plus Masataka Yoshida locked into a DH and left field mix. For the Mets, adding Duran would inject top-of-the-order speed and pressure that the lineup currently lacks. He would turn singles into doubles, doubles into chaos, and give the Mets a true table-setter who forces defenses to rush decisions. His presence ahead of the middle of the order would meaningfully increase run expectancy without requiring a three-run homer to break a game open.

Kwan is a different, more surgical fit. Cleveland already has José Ramírez at third base, but the Guardians have historically shown a willingness to target young, controllable middle infield talent from the Mets, as they did with Andrés Giménez and Amed Rosario. Brett Baty has shown he can handle second base, while Mauricio and Acuña provide depth at both second and shortstop—areas the Guardians value. From the Mets’ perspective, Kwan would bring elite bat-to-ball skills and on-base consistency, giving the lineup a stabilizing force who shortens games for opposing pitchers. He would deepen the order by eliminating easy outs and allow the Mets to stack professional at-bats in front of their power hitters, creating sustained innings rather than isolated bursts.

Robert represents the swing-for-the-fences option. The White Sox, in a clear retooling phase, would almost certainly want upside and control, potentially younger infielders with both offensive ceiling and positional flexibility. For the Mets, Robert would add a middle-of-the-order presence with legitimate power and athleticism, something closer to a lineup-shaping move than a complementary one. When healthy, he changes how games are pitched, forces matchups earlier, and adds a threat that can flip a score with one swing. The risk is real, but so is the reward, and the Mets’ depth gives them the ability to absorb that risk in a way few teams can.

In all three cases, the common thread is this: the Mets’ infield surplus gives them options, and each option reshapes the lineup in a distinct way. Whether it is speed and chaos, contact and control, or power and intimidation, turning excess infield value into outfield impact is how a good roster becomes a dangerous one.

Looking ahead, the Mets could still pivot to signing Cody Bellinger, which checks nearly all the boxes. He is an elite defender at multiple positions, a quality middle-of-the-order bat, and a player comfortable handling big-market pressures. Adding Bellinger would give the Mets immediate outfield impact while also allowing them to shift the focus of their surplus-infield strategy toward acquiring a starting pitcher like Freddy Peralta or another piece to strengthen the rotation.

Landing Bichette didn’t just fill a hole; it shifted the strategic landscape. Not only do the Mets get a right-handed bat and a glove at third, they also prevent a division rival, the Phillies, from adding a middle-of-the-order weapon. With infield surplus providing trade leverage, the Mets can now target outfield reinforcements or rotation upgrades while keeping the core of the lineup flexible. Losing Tucker hurt, but turning that setback into multiple potential moves is the definition of offseason growth the kind of disciplined maneuvering that top baseball organizations use to convert surplus into impact, and potential into wins.