These Are The Everyday Cars Mets Players Drive

Meet the Mets! Meet the Mets! A couple weeks back, we looked at the surprisingly boring cars owned by current Yankees players, and now we’ve got footage of Mets players leaving Citi Field to prove which is the superior New York team. It’s the Mets, of course, but I’m not just saying that because I’m a Brooklyn resident with a Mets hat on my bedside table and a City Connect jersey in my closet — I’m also saying it because Mets players drive more interesting cars than those fancy American League players up in the Bronx. 

Instagram user baseball_kam99, who previously captured those Yankees players driving away from Yankee Stadium, also posted the Mets version of the player exit reel. It features pitchers Edwin Diaz and Clay Holmes, first baseman Pete Alonso, shortstop Francisco Lindor, and right fielder Juan Soto — presumably, all other players simply hopped on the 7 train to head home. We may have a subway series coming up this weekend, but the Mets have already won the automotive series. Let’s look at what they won with. 

Edwin Diaz left Citi Field behind the wheel of a facelifted Lincoln Aviator, which means the car can’t be all that old. It’s not a performance monster, but the Aviator is a good-looking vehicle for its segment — I’m a sucker for daytime running lights that poke into the center of a car’s front end like that, the way they do on the A90 Toyota Supra. 

Diaz’s Aviator is boring old black, which does dock the pitcher some points for not picking Lincoln’s weird muted blue-green hue, but at least the dark shade makes the crossover’s bright accents pop all the more. It also makes the Aviator lettering down the side of the front fender more legible on a compressed Instagram video, which was immensely helpful in determining Diaz drove an Aviator or a Nautilus. They just look so similar on a vertical video, with half the screen taken up by a headshot. 

Pete Alonso, however, gets full points on color. His Range Rover is in the press color, that warm pale beige that almost fades entirely to silver under direct light. I imagine a color like that is absolute hell to keep clean, but Alonso seems to manage — his car is sparkling in the Instagram clip. 

Seeing Alonso in the Range Rover really sells just how big the current generation of the crossover is. The first baseman is 6’3″, but the Range Rover absolutely dwarfs him. He looks small inside, hidden behind that tall beltline and tucked away in the width of the interior. The Range Rover just looks downright cavernous, even with such a tall person in the driver’s seat. It makes one wonder what that SUV must look like when someone of average height is sitting in it, or how high you’d need to position the seat just to see out the sides properly. How do normal people look out the window before opening the door in a tight spot to ensure they’re not hitting anything?

Y’know what none of the Yankees had in their Instagram reel? An EV! Francisco Lindor does, though, because he cares about the future. Or maybe just because it’s cool-looking and smooth to drive. That’s also a possibility, but I’m going to keep believing that Lindor went for the electric Escalade out of a desire to do right by the planet. A drop in the bucket that is Queens, sure, but better than nothing. 

It’s a bit tough to tell in the clip, but it seems that Lindor’s Escalade IQ is done up in Cadillac’s Sandstone color. It’s a bit more interesting than a plain white, with some added depth and warmth, but it’s still pretty close to that base shade — close enough that this may well be Vibrant White Tricoat. I’d believe either one, and I also believe that Instagram video compression is deeply frustrating.

It’s admittedly a little bit unclear whether the satin black Escalade-V in the clip actually belongs to Juan Soto or not, given the note in the video that “He wasn’t driving,” but a high-output Escalade certainly seems to be a “famous athlete” type of vehicle. Soto’s Escalade predates the narrow-eye facelift the SUV got last year, so it’s not as new as some of the others in the Citi Field parking lot, but I’ve always been a fan of the pre-facelift aesthetic with the wider headlights. 

The satin black exterior, though, I am pointedly not a fan of. Even in a short, compressed video, Soto’s Escalade looks visibly smudged. Satin finishes are impossible to keep smooth and clean — if a baseball player under the most expensive contract in sports history can’t keep smudges off his car, no one can. The limo tint, too, gets a thumbs down from me. New York is well-lit at night, sure, but even the city that never sleeps gets too dark for windows like that. 

Clay Holmes, a fresh convert to the Mets after years on the Yankees, drives perhaps the most pedestrian car of the bunch: A Mercedes-Benz GLE. It’s not clear exactly which trim level he has, but it’s not an AMG — though it does have the AMG Line appearance package. This is a car that would’ve fit right in with the rest of the Yankees up in the Bronx, but down at Citi Field it feels like an understated choice. Holmes is under a three-year contract, though, so there’s still time to get him into something more interesting. 

In fact, Clay, if you need advice on what to get, feel free to ask. Write in to What Car Should You Buy, and the New York Jalops will get you sorted with a car befitting your station. Just be warned, the other two of us here in the city are Yankees fans — their taste can’t always be trusted.