Mets' Marcus Semien leans on his work ethic after 14 seasons in big leagues
The Mets’ Marcus Semien stands on second base after his RBI single against the Miami Marlins during the fourth inning of an MLB game at Citi Field on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
SEATTLE — Aging is an inevitable process for those with the privilege of staying alive, but in baseball, it’s often described in stark, unforgiving terms.
By the time players hit their 30s, there’s speculation of when the decline will hit, if it hasn’t already. There was talk of it when the Mets passed on re-signing Pete Alonso and when they traded for Marcus Semien, who, at 35, is the team’s oldest position player.
So when Semien’s bat stayed dormant, the continuation of a trend that began in 2023, of course there were questions. But there’s another side to aging, too: Knowing better, and knowing how to be better.
Now, with some decent recent returns, the Mets hope he can keep it going. Because a productive Semien means one piece to resuscitating this offense that, while dead for most of the season, managed to score 29 runs in the four-game win streak they brought with them to the West Coast.
“I’ve had a lot of slow starts,” Semien told Newsday Monday. “Being the new guy and starting off slow is never fun. I learned that my first year in Texas in 2022. But just stay the course, keep working, stay healthy, understand it’s a long season. By the end of the year, your numbers will be your numbers if you continue to get better.”
That hard-fought experience ensures that, at least mentally, he doesn’t get stuck in the sort of psychological quicksand that makes physical achievement even more difficult. Entering June slashing .226/.280/.335 is not fun, and doing it in a new city, after having replaced a fan favorite in Brandon Nimmo, could be downright demoralizing.
He also had another strike against him: A guy who’s used to playing every day, he played in only 127 games last year after his season was cut short with a foot injury. It takes time to adjust after such a long layoff.
But this is Semien’s 14th season in the big leagues, and if he’s going to have one superpower, it’s the ability to stay within himself. It’s something that’s gotten easier with time.
“I understand fans want to see us do great all the time,” he said. “I wish it didn’t happen all the time, but the work never stops behind the scenes to get better and better, and it’s nice to have some good games.”
You don’t necessarily want to overstate Semien’s recent returns, but it’s fair to say they’re promising. Going into Monday night’s game against the Mariners, he was 5-for-10 in his previous three games, with a double, a homer, three runs, three RBIs, two walks and two strikeouts. But his at-bats have also been looking progressively better — even before you could see the results. And that’s because Semien knows that while you can’t control the rewards, you can control the work. It hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“I’ve seen [the work ethic] since day one spring training,” Carlos Mendoza said. “He’s a guy that’s going to grind, that’s going to be in the cages, that’s going to be watching film, that’s going to be talking to, not only the hitting coaches, but his teammates. It’s a guy that doesn’t panic. That’s the biggest thing. That’s a guy who’s been in this league for a long time and he understands that there are going to be stretches where it’s hard, but he doesn’t panic.”
For one thing, Semien has spent countless hours in the cages working on how to hit against velocity. It’s something that was evident against the Marlins’ bevy of flamethrowers this weekend. Incidentally, while he’s always struggled the most against off-speed pitches, that isn’t the case this year, where he’s hitting .304.
When the Mets were swept in Miami the previous weekend, “we saw a ton of velocity and it took us a little off guard,” Semien said. But they learned. “Personally, I had to make sure I was ready for that velocity. That’s really the foundation for me when I’m doing well . . . [if I can] slow the game down and [also] see the off-speed that’s maybe out of the zone.”
It comes down to being more efficient with his swing, which he practices every day. When it comes to off-speed pitches, “if you’re swinging at the right ones and have a good bat path, you’ll be successful.”
But that can be tough: a shorter swing for velocity, and staying longer through the strike zone for off-speed. And that decision needs to be made in a fraction of a second, though Mendoza noted that Semien is mostly sticking to keeping his swing short and reducing his chase.
The very best in the game, like Juan Soto, can stay through the zone a long time while preserving a short swing. The timing and the mechanics have to be just right.
You get better by “doing it every day,” Semien said. “I’ve been playing this game a long time. This will be the hardest thing we do in our lives, trying to hit a 100-mph fastball.”
“Doing it every day” is key here, because while sure, there’s been a suggestion that Semien’s decline is age-related, there’s also the fact that he’s been “doing this every day” at the major-league level since Barack Obama’s first term in office. That’s a lot of reps, and knowledge that could feasibly help him compensate where other factors are lacking.
“He knows his foundation,” Mendoza said. “He sticks to what he believes and what got him here so far, and [that’s been] a pretty successful career.”
And a chance that he can continue to extend that success.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
