You might like him at the plate sometimes. You will definitely like him on the bases.
FWIW, Baez did undergo a bit of a change when he went to New York. He cut his K rate from 36.3% to 28.5%, more in line with his prior career norm (which, yes, I acknowledge was bad enough), but he also hiked his walk rate from 4.2% to 7.0%, which would be the highest of his career. And it’s not as though all his walks were clustered in just one or two games: in Chicago he walked in 15 of 92 games, which is 16% of games. In New York he walked in 11 of 46 games, which is 24% of games. That contributed to his OBP-AVG diff of .072 as a Met, which is by far higher than any one season that went before it.
Maybe this means nothing. Maybe it’s all dumb luck. Or maybe a fresh set of eyes from Mets batting coaches led Javy to become just a touch more patient, as opposed to the Cubs just letting Javy be Javy. If that’s true, maybe Scott Coolbaugh and A.J. can build on that. I think that’s worth hoping for.
It costs nothing to be optimistic about it. After all, he’s ours now, so we might as well root for that. 😁