With AI news sweeping the nation, I decided to get into the spirit and ask myself, if I were a 'Baseball Oracle' AI algorithm that knew every MLB player's stats since 1901, both in the majors and minors, then who is Mark Vientos' closest MLB comparison?

So my AI brain crunched Vientos' minor league numbers and his age progression to this point, and I came up with Gary Roenicke, a right-handed platoon DH who had his best years for Baltimore. Now, Roenike was never associated with the Mets, but looking up his similarity scores on baseball reference, Mark Canha's name comes up, so Canha can be the final result for Mets fans' familiarity's sake.

Canha's a guy who has traditionally hovered around .260 and hit 15 home runs, but one year he hit 26 home runs and batted over .270. I would expect the same from Vientos over the course of his Mets career. Of course, I want him to be a Pete Alonso type or even another Paul Goldschmidt, but I feel it's better to take a deep breath and be realistic. Butch Huskey and Bernard Gilkey were two other former Mets who line up closely with Vientos in my mind. 15 home runs, .260 average, and one or two years where he hits 25, maybe 30 home runs. A right-handed Lucas Duda perhaps? Jay Payton without speed?

I don't expect Vientos to hit .331 with a 1.093 OPS in the majors, but I guarantee that he will be an improvement over the DH platoon of Vogelbach and Pham. By the way, Vientos went to the same high school as Eric Hosmer and in my opinion, best case scenario, he has a similar career to Hosmer, World Series win (with the Mets) included.