Tyrone Taylor is not going to be mentioned as one of the first five or 10 most vital contributors to the New York Mets this season, but there is a reason why manager Carlos Mendoza has labeled him a “winning player” multiple times.
The center fielder has taken the lion’s share of the reps in center field after his platoon with Jose Siri after the first-year Met went down with a broken leg, and has since held things down with his usual stellar defense and an overperforming bat that has beefed up the bottom of New York’s lineup.
“I think just trying to make adjustments every day, just trying to get better every day, whether it’s with my approach or mechanics-wise,” Taylor said of his recent boon. “Just trying to be free up there.”
On Sunday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers, he threw out Mookie Betts at home when he tried to tag up on a fly ball to center to help limit the damage sustained by Kodai Senga in a first inning that could have gotten out of hand after Shohei Ohtani’s lead-off home run.
The Mets went on to win the game 3-1, securing a rubber-game win to get them back on track after losing six of their previous nine games.
On Monday night against the Chicago White Sox, Taylor led off the bottom of the ninth inning of a 1-1 game with a double into the gap in left-center. He eventually came in to score on Francisco Lindor’s walk-off sacrifice fly.
A career .240 hitter, Taylor is batting .305 with an .812 OPS in his last 22 games. Defensively, his range (outs above average) of 4 ranks in Major League Baseball’s 92nd percentile and his arm value of 1 is in the 88th percentile.
“I see a guy that has a lot of confidence,” Lindor said of Taylor. “I see a guy that feels like he can hit every pitch, a guy that gives good at-bats every single day. He’s been doing this for a long time, but this year, the first couple days of the year, it seemed things weren’t going his way. All of a sudden, now, he’s picking it up. He lengthens the lineup.
“He’s making the bottom of the lineup look really good. I’m proud of him with the work he puts in day in and day out. He goes out there and gives everything he’s got.”
