Jeff McNeil’s first-half inconsistencies prevented the Mets’ second baseman from earning a second consecutive All-Star Game appearance and traveling to Seattle this week.
Instead, McNeil has a scheduled tee time.
McNeil will participate in the New York State Open that starts Tuesday at the Bethpage Black Course and tee off at 1:43 p.m., with the Metropolitan PGA confirming that he is playing on a special exemption.
He is registered as an amateur without a club affiliation, but McNeil will play two rounds, and if he makes the cut, he’ll appear in the final round Thursday.
The tournament’s past winners include Cameron Young, who became the first amateur to win the event in 2017 and has since compiled four top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour.
Though that’s a unique way to spend an All-Star break, it’s certainly not a surprise for McNeil to spend time golfing.
He holds a plus-1.8 handicap index at Monarch Dunes Golf Club — his home course in California.
In an interview with Post Sports Plus last April, McNeil revealed that he has already played Bethpage Black, and that he has shot a 68 at Pebble Beach Golf Links and 69 at Cypress Point Club.
It’s something he does on most off days during the season, he said, and he also enjoys watching the PGA Tour.
In 2020, McNeil posted a video on Instagram about shooting a 59, though he tried to downplay the accomplishment by writing that, “Due to covid-19 rules though it definitely isn’t legit because of pool noodles in the hole.”
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Still, Golf.com had ranked him as MLB’s best golfer in 2019.
In a video posted by Talkin’ Baseball in June, McNeil compared his golf game to Phil Mickelson, since they’re both left-handed and tend to hit longer shots.
“His short game is so much better than mine, though,” McNeil said in the video. “If I had any sort of short game, I think I could play with him. But I have zero short game. I can’t chip. I can’t putt, and that’s where the money is.
“So baseball it is for me.”
McNeil participated in the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship in 2009, which Jordan Spieth ended up winning en route to a professional career that has 13 PGA Tour wins and six other top-10 finishes.
“It’s pretty cool to see a bunch of the players I played against in junior golf out here — Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay, Daniel Berger, Patrick Rodgers,’’ McNeil told The Post’s Mark Cannizzaro in 2019 at Liberty National Golf Course. “In my head I’m like, ‘Yeah, I played with these guys before, this could have been me if I stuck with it.’ If I went to college and played, you never know what might have happened.”
But McNeil kept pursuing baseball, through a collegiate career at Long Beach State and through the minors en route to the Mets, and that turned into a career featuring two All-Star Game selections and winning the National League batting title last year with a .326 average.
Though his batting average has dipped to .253 so far in 2023, Mets hitting coach Jeremy Barnes told The Post that McNeil’s hard-hit numbers are improving.
“He’s hit some balls hard,” Barnes said last month. “He’s hitting the ball harder this year than he has the past couple of years, believe it or not. It’s just one of those weird things.”
