Arbitrary endpoints in baseball are fun. If you want to make the case for something, it’s usually not hard to do it if you get to pick the start and end dates, which is exactly what’s about to happen here. Since April 23, Carson Benge has hitting much better than he had from Opening Day through April 22.
To be clear, we’re talking about a tiny sample of 36 plate appearances here, but over that span, Benge has hit two home runs, two doubles, and has a .303/.361/.545 line, a 16.7 percent strikeout rate,
and a 156 wRC+. For the sake of comparison, he had hit .136/.197/.200 with one home run, one double, a 24.7 percent strikeout rate, and a 23 wRC+ through April 22.
In total, Benge has hit .192/.266/.313 with a 67 wRC+ thus far in his rookie season. Thanks largely to his defensive work in the outfield, he’s been worth 0.2 fWAR despite the bad numbers at the plate, but it’s fun to think that he’s started to adjust to playing in the big leagues and might continue to improve upon them. And at least some of the metrics on his Statcast page look encouraging, even if there’s plenty of room for improvement in some of the others.
Considering how much it looked like Benge might need to be sent down to Triple-A Syracuse for additional work at the level not too long ago, it’s pretty great that he’s started making a case to stick around in the big leagues. And in a season that’s had very few positives for the Mets, hoping that he can maintain his recent success gives us something to follow, even if the team doesn’t work its way back to competing for a spot in the playoffs.
