The Mets designated Austin Slater for assignment Tuesday morning, moving on from the veteran outfielder after a brief and quiet stint in Queens. Slater did not appear in Monday’s 16-7 win over the Nationals in 12 innings, and the club opened Tuesday with another outfield shuffle as it prepared to face Washington again.
Slater hit.250/.286/.300 with one RBI in 21 plate appearances across nine games for the Mets, a line that did little to change the club’s view of him. Signed last month after the Marlins released him, he was brought in to replace Tommy Pham, who also had struggled in a limited stay. But the Mets kept cycling through options, and Slater never gave them enough to hold the job.
The timing matters because the Mets are trying to settle an outfield that has been in motion for weeks. Luis Robert Jr.’s injury opened one path to playing time, and A.J. Ewing has recently emerged as a quality option to start alongside Carson Benge and Juan Soto. Behind them, the Mets still have Tyrone Taylor, Brett Baty and MJ Melendez as depth choices, which made Slater easier to remove once his bat failed to take hold.
The numbers explain the decision. Slater is hitting.209 with a.518 OPS across 21 games between the Mets and Marlins this year, and he owns a cumulative.602 OPS since the start of the 2024 season. He went 4-for-18 for a.541 OPS with the Mets and had one hit in 16 at-bats against left-handed pitching with the Yankees last year, a reminder that even one of his clearer strengths did not carry over everywhere. For a player in his 10th major league season, that has become the story of a career spent with seven different organizations.
There is still a useful player in the record. Slater spent 2017-24 with the Giants and has shown he can handle lefty pitching in stretches. But the Mets did not get enough value to keep waiting, especially after winning their sixth game in their last seven tries and moving into Tuesday’s second game of a four-game road series with the Nationals. In a lineup and roster that keep changing, the margin for a player who is merely surviving has shrunk to almost nothing.
