The first month of the 2022 season was a nightmare for Mark Vientos. He hit .158/.267/.316 striking out in 30% of his plate appearances.
All told, this was just typical Vientos and really no cause for concern.
In his professional career, Vientos has struggled in the first month only to explode in the second month. Case-in-point, Vientos had a .689 OPS in the first month of the season with Double-A Binghamton only to explode with a 1.182 OPS in the second month.
As noted, we’re seeing in again. In the game against the game against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, Vientos homered. That was his fourth homer in as many games:
Syracuse Mets infielder Mark Vientos homered again tonight, he now has 4 home runs in his last 4 games.
— Michael Mayer (@mikemayer22) May 13, 2022
In the game, Vientos was 1-for-4 with the aforementioned homer. So far this month, Vientos is 7-for-20 (.350) with four homers and seven RBI.
So far this month, Vientos already has three more homers than he had in April. He also has two more runs scored. He’s four hits shy of his April total, and he’s one off his RBI and walk numbers.
Remember Vientos played 19 games in April with 70 plate appearances. So far in May, he’s had 26 plate appearances over six games.
Over his six games this month, he has a 1.450 OPS. Again, last season, he had an OPS over 1.000 in his second month of the season.
This is who Vientos has been as a prospect. He’s a slow starter who takes off after the first month of the season. Looking at what he’s doing now, it appears to be happening again.
If so, that’s absolutely great news for the Mets. That goes double when you consider Vientos keeps getting stronger as the season progress. If that happens again this year, and it’s already started, it’s quite possible we see Vientos called to the majors at some point this year.
