The Universal DH is coming to baseball and that’s good news for a team like the New York Mets. The Mets are actually one NL team that has a surplus of bats that could come in handy for the DH style of baseball. JD Davis, Robinson Cano, Pete Alonso, Dominic Smith, and Yoenis Cespedes are all candidates to get chances at the DH spot. Yes, I said Yoenis Cespedes. New York actually believes he can help them this year.
During a conference call, general manager Brodie Van Wagenen talked about how Cespedes factors in for the 2020 season:
“Céspedes has been working hard. We are looking forward to him getting into camp, and believe that he should be closer to being game-ready than we were when we saw him last in March,”
“Céspedes is an incredible athlete — when he’s 100 percent healthy. He’s got a dynamic skill set with all five tools; we’ll want to make sure that we put him in a position to be able to utilize those tools from an overall lineup construction,” Van Wagenen said. “The ability to have a DH for our players, I think, can help manage workload. We feel like our lineup can be as deep as anybody’s in baseball. We think we have punch, guys that can impact the game with the bat, so we’re looking forward to utilizing the DH spot to both protect our guys’ health and to put up some offensive force.”
Cespedes, 34, is in the final year of a $110 million deal he signed back in 2016. More so than anything, I think that is the positive here. The contract year should keep Yoenis motivated to potentially cash in on a moderate contract in the offseason. If Cespedes is healthy, he should get some at-bats.
The question is going to be health. We haven’t seen Cespedes play in a long time. The Cuban born slugger hasn’t played in a game since 2018. I don’t think anybody knows what we’re getting in 2020.
