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Finally, Jeff McNeil is Out of the National League East
Published:
Finally we don’t have to watch this dude anymore:
What an offseason this has been. Brandon Nimmo? Gone. Pete Alonso? Gone. Now the Flying Squirrel and his dumb faces head to the baseball purgatory of Oakland. He can toil away at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento waiting for the new stadium to be built in Vegas.
Back in September, we published an award-winning column titled Where Does Jeff McNeil Rank on the List of All-Time Annoying Mets? A lot of Phils fans had him in the top five. We wrote this at the time:
McNeil is equal parts hate-the-face and a pest, like a baseball Brad Marchand. He’s a utility player with a career .304 batting average against the Phillies, who reaches base at a .366 clip. He’s got 102 career hits against the Phils, but only 20% of them for extra bases. He’s not hammering balls into the second deck like Pete Alonso or getting Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor headlines, but he’s slapping opposite-field singles, fouling off ten pitches in a row, and throwing his helmet around after a bad call. He’s whining like a big baby because he didn’t like the way Rhys Hoskins slid. He’s just a pain in the ass with a dumb nickname.
The return is a 17-year-old pitching prospect and some salary relief. Do we think McNeil was a MAGA and didn’t get along with Francisco Lindor? That seems unlikely since he’s a Southern California guy, but we’ll have to wait and see what Mike Francesa says.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com