Daniel Murphy is on fire. Coming into Sunday’s matchup with the Cubs, Murphy was riding a 7 game hitting streak during which time he is hitting .500 (14-28) with six extra base hits, five runs scored, and four RBIs. This recent offensive explosion has brought his triple slash to .301/.337/.455. On Sunday, Terry Collins decided to move Murphy up to the leadoff spot in the lineup, presumably to take advantage of Murphy’s hot streak. While…
Creative and new ideas and solutions often seem to come along as a result of limitations. Limitations are what forced Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta to architect ‘Moneyball’ in Oakland in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. After the rest of the league seemed to catch up with the A’s in the mid-2000’s, they came storming back with a vengeance last season, surprising everyone and winning the AL West crown. That division title sent a…
Last Wednesday, Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting piece, suggesting that Lucas Duda be the Mets leadoff hitter. That, combined with Friday night’s decision to bat Justin Turner in the 5th slot in the lineup got me thinking. What would a sabermetrically optimized lineup look like on the 2013 Mets? So, let’s use The Book, by Tom Tango, Michael Lichtman, and Andy Dolphin to construct the optimal lineup for the 2013…
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Mets bullpen is bad. The pen’s 5.28 ERA is second worst in all of Major League Baseball. They also rank in the lower half of the league in HR/9 and in the lower quarter in K/9. While Terry Collins deserves his fair share of the blame for his utterly confusing bullpen management, the modern “norms” of bullpen usage deserve to shoulder at least some of the burden.…
It’s the time of the year when everybody seeks out the guy who seems to be struggling the most, says he sucks, and then calls for him to be traded. The culprit this year: Ike Davis. Coming into Sunday’s matchup with the Nationals, Davis owned a .161/.254/.321 slash line and was striking out in 28.6% of his plate appearances. Pretty ugly numbers, especially when you consider his slow start last season. This has lead to…
Every time I see or hear somebody freak out about how a player is doing early on in the season, I’m reminded of this song. The incredibly small sample size that we have available to us right now is not enough to tell us anything significant about players and the seasons that they will have. Here’s a few of the biggest small sample size benefactors/victims on the Mets so far. Daniel Murphy: Murphy has started…
In a season where there might not be a whole lot to cheer for, outside of the inevitable debuts of Travis d’Arnaud and Zack Wheeler and the continued maturation of Matt Harvey, something that Mets fans can take pleasure in is watching homegrown southpaw Jon Niese try to take the next step forward and bring himself into the next tier of starting pitchers. Over the past three full seasons, we’ve seen Niese take some giant…
June 1, 2012 is a night permanently engrained in the memory of all Mets fans. Just like our parents, or grandparents, or even some of us might remember where they were when Kennedy got assassinated, Mets fans will always remember where they were when Johan Santana threw the first no-hitter in franchise history. For me it was at the Fireplace in Paramus. I was working that night, on the side of the counter that you…
The following article is the final part of a three-part series analyzing the Mets announcers, and is a joint effort by Charlie Hangley, Jim O’Malley and myself. The sections on Tim McCarver and Ralph Kiner were written by Jim, Charlie contributed the parts about Lindsey Nelson, Steve Albert, Steve LaMarr and Lorn Brown. I wrote the sections on Bob Murphy and Fran Healey. I also compiled all of the contributions and edited them together. For…
According to doctors, David Wright suffered a strained intercostal muscle in his rib cage while carrying the country on his back playing for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic and will be re-evaluated after three to five days rest. Manager Terry Collins is not optimistic about Wright’s chances of playing on opening day, citing a similar injury sustained by Daniel Murphy in February, which he has yet to fully recover from. Collins noted that…
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