Starling Marte was starting to get hot when personal loss forced him away from the team.
That break hasn’t cooled him off, though.
Since returning from the bereavement list on May 21 after mourning the loss of his grandmother, Ponga Brigida, who raised him and his two sisters, Marte has picked up where he left off.
He had three hits and drove in a season-high four runs on Memorial Day, helping to power the Mets to their fourth straight win, a 13-5 shellacking of the Nationals to open a three-game series at Citi Field. Marte now has five multi-hit games since returning and is also starting to hit for more power. He has gone deep twice and notched four extra-base hits in that red-hot span that has seen him go 15-for-41 with nine RBIs and 11 runs scored.
“He’s been a little more selective, he’s really seeing the ball on the white part of the plate a lot more,” manager Buck Showalter said. “I think he’s really trusting himself and letting the ball travel, not rush through the hitting pattern, so to speak.”
Most importantly for the Mets, Marte is beginning to perform as they envisioned after signing him to a four-year, $78 million deal in the offseason. He is slashing .289/.330/.440 and has seen his OPS rise all the way to .774, a .171 increase dating to May 1.
Monday night was his best performance yet as a Met. He posted that season-high of four RBIs — in the first three innings — with each of his three hits blasted at least 97.4 mph. He helped get the Mets going with a first-inning single after they fell behind 3-0 in the opening frame and blasted a two-run homer in the second, a 106.3 mph bomb to left field that pushed their lead to 6-3.
As Showalter said, Marte has cut down on going out of the strike zone. He’s striking out less and not just putting the ball in play, but doing so with authority.
“I’ve been really studying how they’ve been pitching me,” Marte said, “and now that we’re a month-and-a-half, a little bit more, into the season it’s due that I’m able to make the adjustments.”