PORT ST. LUCIE — “Maybe they just don’t like my face,” Lucas Duda self-deprecatingly proposed. “Maybe I’ve got a weird face.”
No, I don’t think that’s it.
“Maybe I need to be more flashy,” the Mets’ first baseman offered at Tradition Field. “Maybe I need to flash it up a bit.”
Maybe.
I had just informed Duda that he is, in my opinion, the most over-hated, under-appreciated baseball player in New York. With Daniel Murphy moving to Washington, and with Brett Gardner battling a left wrist problem over in Tampa, the field has been cleared of all serious contenders.
Duda, 30 and with two seasons remaining before free agency, is a strong Mets asset. He has a knack for getting on base and the power to slug — “That’s exactly what we’re looking for,” Mets vice president and assistant general manager John Ricco said. His .838 OPS last year, with 27 homers, led all players who qualified for the batting title in a Mets uniform. No one can question the Mets’ decision to stick with Duda and jettison Ike Davis two years ago.
Yet in interactions with Mets fans, be they in person, via email or on Twitter, Duda frequently gets mentioned as if he’s a serious liability.
“I think we have to pay attention to, he is who he is. And that player is one of our best players,” Mets hitting coach Kevin Long said. “Yeah, there are ways to get better, and we’re continuing to search and attack those deficiencies. But at the end of the day, there’s not a whole lot I’m disappointed with, with Lucas Duda.”
So how does he disappoint so many others? The first complaint seems to be his streakiness. From May 31 to July 22, a 43-game stretch last year, he put up a brutal .160/.279/.263 slash line with three homers and 52 strikeouts in 160 at-bats.
“Streaks are going to happen, good or bad. It’s a part of the game,” Duda said. “Obviously, I want to try to limit them. Limit my bad streaks and expand my hot streaks.”
“Yeah, he knows it’s streaky. I know it’s streaky,” Long said. “TC [Terry Collins] knows it’s streaky. We all do. But it’s not like we’re not trying to be here [he swiped his right hand horizontally, like a steady, flat line] the whole time.”
“I think certainly you want to have a guy [from whom] you know what you’re getting,” Ricco said. “But at the same token, when he was hot, he won some huge games for us last year. If that’s in the middle of the hot streak, and he carries you, that could be important, too.”
Ricco specifically mentioned the Mets’ season-changing, July 31-Aug. 2 sweep of the Nationals at Citi Field. That series was carried not by Yoenis Cespedes, who made his Mets debut in the middle game, but by Duda, who homered three times, doubled, singled and walked for a weekend slash line of .625/.667/1.875.
On Aug. 1, Duda cranked a game-tying homer in the seventh inning and delivered a game-winning double in the eighth. Quite clutch. For the season, he compiled a respectable .258/.347/.404 slash line in situations that Baseball-Reference.com characterized as “Late and close.” He’s no “choker.”
His defense? It’s adequate. He has repeatedly owned up to his poor throw that allowed Kansas City’s Eric Hosmer to score the tying run in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the World Series last year.
“Physical errors, they’re going to happen,” Duda said. “It’s not like I was not mentally prepared. If they hate me for that, then they can hate me for that.”
He tries to block out the hating. He doesn’t partake at all in social media, he said.
Duda appeared quite intrigued by this topic, though. He mentioned the tough time Jason Bay had in a Mets uniform — “That was pretty intense,” he said — and he asked me who I thought was the most loved player in New York. I said Cespedes, who can be rather streaky himself.
“I’ll still continue to be myself,” Duda said. “Hopefully I can win some of them back.”
More important, if he continues to be himself, the Mets should win plenty.