Mets release power-hitting first baseman

The Mets have released first baseman Luke Voit, as indicated on his player page at MLB.com. He’s once again a free agent.

Voit inked a minor league pact with the Mets back in February. While he doesn’t have the requisite service time to qualify as an Article XX(B) free agent and thus secure a standard opt-out date five days before the start of the season, his minor league contract included an opt-out this past weekend.

The 33-year-old Voit had a tough go of it in Mets camp, tallying 41 plate appearances but batting just .118/.220/.235 with a homer, a double and 14  strikeouts (34.1%). That performance, coming off a down season in which he hit just .221/.284/.265 in a small sample of 74 plate appearances with the Brewers made it difficult to envision the former Yankee slugger winning a spot on the roster in Queens.

Voit led all of Major League Baseball with 22 homers in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season — part of a brief peak with the Yanks where he performed like one of the game’s top offensive first basemen. From 2018-20, Voit turned in a combined .278/.371/.541 slash with 58 big flies in 905 plate appearances. He was strikeout-prone (26.7%) but drew plenty of walks (11.6%) and had more than enough thump in his bat to offset the penchant for punchouts.

Injuries have since derailed that promising trajectory. Voit tore the meniscus in his left knee during spring training 2021 and underwent surgery. Two weeks after being activated in May, he suffered a Grade 2 oblique strain. Voit seemed to rush back from that injury, returning in under a month, and just weeks later was back on the shelf with pain in his surgically repaired knee. He returned in August but went back on the injured list with continued knee troubles the following month. Voit had a healthy but middling season at the plate in 2022 between the Padres and Nationals. A neck injury slowed his 2023 campaign.

It feels like longer than three years ago that Voit was a prime-aged slugger coming off a league-leading home run total, but that’s to be expected for a hitter who’s gone through the extensive injuries he’s experienced. His spring showing didn’t lend much credence to the idea of a rebound, but Voit demolished Triple-A pitching in limited action last year, hitting .263/.420/.615 (153 wRC+) with 15 homers in just 200 plate appearances between the Brewers and Mets organizations. That at least showed that there’s still some life in his bat, and between that performance and his track record with the Yankees, he should be able to latch on with a new minor-league deal elsewhere.