Mets Trade Jeff McNeil to A's, but His Batting Title Secures a Rare Place in Franchise History

There are Mets who pass through the franchise, and then there are Mets who end up in the trivia section. Jeff McNeil belongs to the latter group. When he packed up for Oakland, he didn’t just take his glove, his permanently scuffed batting helmet, and his habit of glaring at infield dirt with him. He took a slice of Mets history that’s smaller, rarer, and more easily forgotten than it should be.

Only two Mets have ever won a batting title. Two. In a franchise that’s been around since 1962, that list reads: José Reyes in 2011 and Jeff McNeil in 2022. That’s it. No Piazza. No Wright. No Strawberry. Just Reyes and McNeil, which feels less like a list and more like a trick question designed to start arguments at family dinners.

That alone should frame how McNeil is remembered. He wasn’t just another versatile guy who bounced around the diamond. He led the entire National League in batting average. For one season, nobody, not even the launch angle evangelists, could out hit the guy who swung like he was trying to sneak singles past a sleeping defense.

And fittingly, it all began quietly. Very quietly.

McNeil was a 12th round pick in 2013, the baseball equivalent of being invited to the party but told to bring your own chair. No fanfare. No hype. Just a name called late and a handshake. All he did afterward was hit. Everywhere. Kingsport. Savannah. St. Lucie. Binghamton. If there was grass, Jeff McNeil found it.

That was also when the nickname took hold.

The Flying Squirrel wasn’t some manufactured branding exercise. It came out of his college days at Long Beach State, where McNeil developed a habit of diving, scurrying, popping up, and somehow ending up with the ball in his glove. He moved low to the ground, darted sideways, and seemed immune to gravity. Teammates started calling him Squirrel. It stuck because it fit. Watching McNeil play defense was like watching something caffeinated with a really good internal clock.

Then came the injuries, because Mets. And then came the knobless bat, the strangest and most perfect symbol of McNeil’s career. Given to him by minor league hitting coordinator Lamar Johnson, it looked like something you’d find leaning against a shed behind Shea Stadium if Shea Stadium still existed. McNeil used it anyway. And kept using it. Because Jeff McNeil has never cared what something looks like, only whether it works.

When he finally arrived in the majors in July 2018, he wasted no time. First pitch he ever saw? Base hit. Naturally. By season’s end, he was hitting .329 and destroying right handed pitching at a rate that made analytics departments squint. He didn’t strike out. He didn’t wait around. He swung early, swung often, and hit where they weren’t.

That became his thing. In an era obsessed with the three true outcomes, McNeil played like he wandered in from a different decade and decided to make pitchers miserable with singles, doubles, and the occasional glare toward the dugout.

His peak years were legitimately special. In 2019, the power showed up to the party. He made his first All Star team. He became the fastest Met ever to reach 200 hits. In the shortened 2020 season, he still hit over .300, making him the first Met since David Wright to do that three seasons in a row.

Then came 2022, the season that stamped his legacy.

He changed his number so Starling Marte could wear No. 6. He started the All Star Game. And then he did the unthinkable. He won the batting title. Not with brute force, but with precision. Lowest called strike plus whiff rate in baseball. Elite bat to ball skill. No wasted movement. He didn’t hit the ball hard. He hit it correctly. That season earned him a Silver Slugger and put his name permanently next to José Reyes in Mets history.

And yet, baseball never stops asking uncomfortable questions.

The analytics tell a story that’s more nuanced than the box score. McNeil’s expected batting average and xwOBA in recent seasons remained solid, even strong. His strikeout rate stayed elite. His whiff rate ranked among the best in the sport. In 2025, his sweet spot percentage was outstanding, proof that the bat to ball skill never left.

But modern baseball doesn’t stop there. The exit velocity lagged. The barrel rate never rebounded. The hard hit percentage dipped. McNeil was still squaring balls up, just not with the authority front offices crave when paying mid 30s players real money.

Add the injuries. Wrist, oblique, elbow, thoracic outlet syndrome. And the picture comes into focus. This wasn’t about effort or heart or desire. It was about age curves, durability, and the reality that McNeil’s value came from doing many things well rather than one thing explosively.

His versatility, once his superpower, slowly became a roster puzzle. Second base. Left field. Right field. Center field. First base. Everywhere and nowhere at once. When Marcus Semien and Jorge Polanco arrived, the music stopped, and McNeil was the odd chair out.

David Stearns said all the right things last month. He talked about McNeil wanting to be here. About versatility being an asset. About roles still forming. None of it was false. It just became irrelevant once the Mets decided they needed flexibility more than familiarity.

So they traded him. With cash. For a 17 year old pitcher whose value currently lives in projection and spin rates. That return doesn’t diminish Jeff McNeil’s career. It contextualizes it. This wasn’t about winning a trade. It was about clearing space, clearing payroll, and committing fully to a new timeline.

Drew Smith. Brandon Nimmo. Pete Alonso. Edwin Díaz. Jeff McNeil.

One by one, the Mets have stripped away the connective tissue of the previous era. And suddenly, David Peterson is the longest tenured Met, which feels like a trivia answer from the year 2041.

McNeil leaves as one of the most uniquely Mets players of the last decade. Undersized, stubborn, productive, occasionally prickly, endlessly competitive, and impossible to fully appreciate until he’s gone. He didn’t look like a star. He didn’t swing like one. But for one shining season, and many very good ones around it, he hit like one in a way almost no Met ever has.

Only two batting titles in franchise history.

One belongs to The Flying Squirrel.

That should matter.