A week ago, Opening Day dawned 39 degrees and stinging rain. Eventually, the sun did come out and it warmed up considerably. The Mets tried to keep up, but ultimately failed. The temps then plunged again the rest of the week. Let’s face it: so far, early spring has been cold, damp and miserable. After six games, the Mets don’t even have it that good.
A lot of us are feeling a stiff wind coming down from the North. While it can be fun to blame Canada, the breeze is really coming from the Mets’ bats. Much has been made of the surge in strikeouts among the “hitters” – pardon the expression – and rightly so. Yes, it’s only six games, but it’s been a record-shattering six games, and not in a good way. Mets batters have struck out 55 times in 197 plate appearances – excluding pitchers hitting – a K percentage of 27.92. 
So basically, the Mets have had their side struck out almost three innings at a pop, and again, that doesn’t even take into account the pitchers. Now, if the team were mashing home runs at an equally astounding clip, this would be nearly palatable. But the homers are coming at a more human rate — a tick more than one per game – so the strikeouts stand out. One need look backward no further than their most recent game to see how damaging this trend has been. In the third inning, with the Mets having just taken a 1-0 lead on Alfredo Simon, Ruben Tejada led off with – what else? – a strikeout. But Simon followed that up by walking his opposite number, Jon Niese, and surrendering a loud double to Eric Young, Jr. Poised to build on the lead, the most “professional” hitters in the lineup strode to the plate. Daniel Murphy struck out on four pitches, David Wright on five. The Mets fragile offense then went into hiding and Niese – who had the audacity to not be perfect – had one poor inning and ended up hung with a 2-1 loss. Oh, and by the way: the Mets finished the game totaling eight strikeouts, one of their lower game totals this young year.
It appears at first flush that the strikeouts are going hand-in-hand with a one-and-done offense. In half the games, the Mets have had one fine offensive inning in which they took a lead, only to pack up the tents, have that be all for the day and end up losing. Now, of course some of this has to do with the usual early-season offensive doldrums every team suffers – we can think of the hoary saw that “Pitchers are always ahead of hitters in April.” – and the sample size is miniscule, but if the trend permeates the entire season, the Mets will have trouble matching the 74-win totals of the last two years, let alone reach Sandy Alderson’s ephemeral 90. For all the better-than-decent pitching the Mets have gotten from their starters, it’s a simple fact that if you don’t hit, you ain’t gonna win.
It would be nice if we all could get warmed up.
Follow me on Twitter @CharlieHangley.
The strike outs are a joke! Opening day 18 strike outs, it will take a few weeks for that to average out. But the fact is the Mets are not getting on base. With the 18 strike out the Mets scored a season high of 7 runs. There was also bad calls by the home plate umpires in the first series, for both teams. But the GM love of OBP, seems to have been totally ignored for the first 6 games, the Mets have had very few walks, and have not taken opposing pitchers deep into the count.
True. Case in point was last Thursday vs. the Nats. When they worked the count in the first inning, they scored 2 runs and made the starter throw 28 pitches. They then turned hacktastic, not having another AB last more than 4 pitches, and — not coincidentally — not scoring any more runs. That same Nats’ starter lasted until the 8th, btw.
The Mets hit pretty well in spring training. Trouble is, the hitting was mostly done by guys now in AAA. So if one is wondering where did the spring hitting go, it went to Las Vegas, where the boys’ hits and walks in 5 games total an amazin’ 84.
hacktastic…..interesting….failure to follow Adapt to or follow through on what the GM wants to see displayed in regards to OBP tactics seems to be a failure on the part of the field manager.