Perhaps no player in minor-league baseball has had a faster commute home the past two seasons than Jaylen Palmer.

Palmer, the Mets’ No. 18 prospect according to The Athletic’s Keith Law, has been playing in Coney Island for the High-A Brooklyn Cyclones after growing up in nearby Canarsie, just miles from the ballpark.

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But Palmer’s season hasn’t been as easy as his proximity to a home-cooked meal. Two months into the minor league season, Palmer is slashing .168/.283/.296 with a .274 BABIP, four homers, four doubles and 13 RBIs through 40 games. “It’s been a struggle,” Palmer told The Athletic recently.

Palmer’s hitting woes aren’t new. He’s struggled with pitch recognition before, and his swing has been inconsistent. Splitting time in High A and Low A last year, Palmer struck out 146 times in 389 at-bats. His High-A strikeout rate was 38.5 percent. So, he came into the year hoping to reduce his strikeouts, but it hasn’t gone according to plan. He’s struck out 59 times in 125 at-bats, a 40.7 percent rate.

“Consistently I’m just not there right now,” Palmer said of his hitting woes. “So once I figure that out I think everything will start to click.”

The 6-foot-4 utilityman was drafted by New York in the 22nd round of the 2018 draft, forgoing a commitment to nearby Long Island University-Brooklyn, and got a $200,000 signing bonus. Palmer, 21, attended Holy Cross High School in Queens, just 3 miles from Citi Field, where he played shortstop and idolized Jose Reyes and Derek Jeter as a kid.

Drafted as a shortstop, Palmer has played third base in the minors, as well as the outfield, where his future might be. Palmer stole 30 bases (36 attempts) in 2021 and already has eight on the season. His legs make him a natural in center field and his arm strength followed him into the outfield. He knows he can’t be picky at the major-league level, which is why he’s comfortable being moved around the diamond.

“I feel like I adjusted to be the utility guy and be in the lineup every day,” Palmer said. “If it’s outfield, infield, it’s been better. So the outfield is kind of grown on me.”

Schwartz abandons swing change

Palmer isn’t the only Mets prospect who wishes he was hitting better in Brooklyn. JT Schwartz, Law’s 20th-ranked prospect entering the year, is slashing .250/.351/.338 with a .351 BABIP, one homer, seven doubles, one triple and 19 RBIs through 45 games. A fourth-round pick out of UCLA last year, Schwartz recently abandoned the new hitting approach he spent the first two months of the season implementing. Since leaving the new approach for his old one, Schwartz is batting .320.

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“It was kind of a bigger hand move with my set up and load,” Schwartz told The Athletic of his old stance. “I think they’re just too many moving pieces and it was kind of tough to figure out.”

Injuries defined Schwartz’s three-year career at UCLA, which caused him to spend the 2020 college baseball season undergoing three surgeries. Schwartz hit .328 through 15 games in 2020 as a redshirt freshman while playing through a hernia and a torn labrum in each of his hips. Schwartz said he played through the pain because he wanted to get on the field after redshirting. The early end to the season allowed him to address all three injuries, and he returned in 2021 to hit .396 with 12 home runs, good enough to win the Pac-12 batting title. His .514 on-base percentage was the second-highest in school history for a single season. That summer, the Mets drafted him.

Schwartz’s power hasn’t translated from college, but the potential is there. He hit his first career minor-league home run earlier in the season and has already doubled the amount of extra-base hits he had last season. The Mets prioritized adding muscle to his 6-foot-4 frame in order to improve his bat speed. The 22-year-old has always been able to put the ball in play and the lack of power doesn’t appear to concern them. After all, the Mets already have plenty of it at that position. Going forward, he said the goal is to find a swing that represents a compromise of what has worked for him before and what the Mets want to see.

“I think it’s kind of to find a middle ground to where it’s something that’s comfortable but something I can use,” Schwartz said. “The previous swing change and the bat speed and that to use that info to try and find something new and more simplified. So I guess a middle ground between the more dramatic swing change and kind of where I was before where I wasn’t hitting the ball hard.”

(Top photo of Palmer: Courtesy Brooklyn Cyclones)