Mets likely will not shatter franchise HR mark

Obviously, 200 is a nice round number. People like round numbers especially those ending in one or more zeroes. Until Roger Maris came along it was comforting and easy to remember that the record for home runs in a season belonged to Babe Ruth with his 60 in 1927.

200 is the Mets’ franchise record for home runs in a season. The season was 2006. The big guns that year were Carlos Beltran (41 dingers), Carlos Delgado (38), and a young David Wright (26).

That 200 home run season edged past the 2000 team which hit 198 regular season bombs. That club was led by Mike Piazza (38) and had three players in the 20’s: Edgardo Alfonzo (25), Robin Ventura (24), and Todd Zeile (22). Ah memories.

The current Mets team is highly dependent on the long ball for offense and if we do a simple prorating of its first month plus of work we would think that they will surely pound that 200 number into submission. After all, even after not displaying much offense in Colorado the team was 21-16 and had hit 53 homers. If they were to keep up that pace then the team total would come to 232 which obliterates the current record.

But there is a problem with projecting this way. Using this method we can expect Yoenis Cespedes to hit 53 homers, Neil Walker 44, and Bartolo Colon 4. And who amongst us think we’ll live to see another Bartolo blast? If you saw the one then you’ve seen them all.

In order to get a better idea of how many homers the team will accumulate I looked at the established home run rate for all the position players and made a few guesses for the pitchers. If a position player is a veteran then I used his rate just in the majors and if it was a young player then I combined the rate he had established in his minor and major league career.

The hardest thing to do was to estimate how many at bats the player would end up with. You tell me: how many AB’s do you expect David Wright to have this year? We all know his next trip to the batter’s box could be his last. I opted to assign him 400 for the season and obviously could be off by 100 or more either way. So too for the catchers. My estimate is the catchers end up with Plawecki at 300 AB’s, d’Arnaud 200, and Rene Rivera 100.

And as for the pitchers while Colon will finish with just one HR it is possible that Syndergaard could hit one or two more. My gut feeling is that someone like Harvey, deGrom, or Matz will run into one. So for my estimate I gave Harvey a homer. The way he’s pitching he’ll need all the help he can get. Also let’s give one to Matz.

Here’s the table that the estimates resulted in.

As you can see the total comes to 193 HRs which comes short of the franchise record. Certainly it is possible that as the weather heats up so will the power bats of Granderson and Duda.
Also David Wright might stay healthy and reach 500 at bats. Since he homers in about 4% of his career at bats then we could add four more dingers to our totals.

Since d’Arnaud has more power than Plawecki he would up the team total also should he get back on the field soon and somehow manage to stay on it.

My conclusion is that if the Mets reach a new franchise high in home runs it will be by a number less than five.