{"id":696925,"date":"2026-05-12T11:24:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T11:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/696925\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T11:24:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T11:24:22","slug":"mets-bo-bichette-problem-just-part-of-mlbs-third-baseman-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/696925\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets&#8217; Bo Bichette problem just part of MLB&#8217;s third baseman problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is third and wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Bo Bichette and the Mets are not alone. Nearly every team spending significantly on third base is receiving a horrendous return on investment. It has turned the position into the cold corner.<\/p>\n<p>Through the weekend, major league third basemen collectively had produced a 95 wRC+, which would be the lowest since 2011. The slugging percentage of a position long known for power was .374, the lowest since 1972. The OPS was .690, also the lowest since 1972 \u2014 that was the year, by the way, when the Mets\u2019 primary third baseman was Jim Fregosi after arguably the most ill-fated trade in their history, his acquisition from the Angels for Nolan Ryan.<\/p>\n<p>And this might not be a blip. In the past 50 seasons, the three lowest OPS marks for MLB third basemen en masse were .705 in 2025, .701 in 2024 and .690 so far this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is third and wrong. Bo Bichette and the Mets are not alone. Nearly every team spending significantly&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[72,5,88,3225,865,1527,4,61,62,1028,863,1494,185,430,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-696925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-alex-bregman","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-bo-bichette","11":"tag-carlos-correa","12":"tag-jose-ramirez","13":"tag-manny-machado","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-new-york-mets","16":"tag-new-york-yankees","17":"tag-nolan-arenado","18":"tag-rafael-devers","19":"tag-ryan-mcmahon","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-sports-columnists","22":"tag-sports-plus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116561357269957640","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}