Entering Thursday, the Mets were almost exactly league average in runs scored, with their 4.00 runs per game mark just one hundredth of a run below the NL average. Of course, someone watching the last seven games could be forgiven for thinking the offense was terrible. In a 10-game stretch at the beginning of the month, the Mets scored 50 runs. But in their last seven contests, they’ve managed just 17 runs. Not surprisingly, they are 1-6 in that stretch.
The Mets are now 5-14 in the month of May, even worse than they were a season ago in what was unquestionably one of the hardest months to watch in recent years. While their overall record in May 2013 of 12-15 wasn’t awful at all, a late surge got them to that level of respectability. From May 10-25 last year, the Mets were 3-12 and every bit as rotten as that record indicates. Will this year’s team sink to those depths?
While no area of the squad is above blame, the recent stumbles can largely be laid at the feet of the offense. Let’s take a look at the main hitters, see what they’ve been producing for the year and determine if we can draw any conclusions. Here are the nine hitters who’ve logged at least 100 PA for the team in (C) stands for Career and (P) stands for projected, taken from our preseason numbers:
| PA | OPS | (C) OPS | (P) OPS | BABIP | (C) BABIP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| David Wright | 206 | .717 | .882 | .893 | .378 | .342 |
| Daniel Murphy | 200 | .787 | .757 | .757 | .335 | .322 |
| Curtis Granderson | 177 | .661 | .823 | .790 | .255 | .303 |
| Eric Young Jr. | 164 | .616 | .657 | .678 | .286 | .309 |
| Lucas Duda | 138 | .737 | .763 | .769 | .306 | .297 |
| Ruben Tejada | 129 | .519 | .632 | .241 | .297 | |
| Juan Lagares | 121 | .842 | .680 | .680 | .393 | .328 |
| Travis d’Arnaud | 114 | .588 | .569 | .780 | .218 | .231 |
| Chris Young | 114 | .646 | .743 | .738 | .237 | .273 |
Typically a few people will overperform and a few will underperform. But the Mets have twice as many guys falling short of career OPS marks and most of them by significant amounts. By itself, Granderson’s .661 OPS would not be dreadful. But when he’s one of four guys underperforming by 90 points of OPS and there are four guys worse than him in overall OPS, it just goes to show the extent of the hitting woes.
Judging by BABIP, we would expect Granderson, Tejada and Young to pick up the pace but at the same time we would expect decreases from Lagares and Wright. What were the odds that Wright would have a .378 BABIP in the third week of May and we would be viewing his season to date as a big disappointment?
The problems with Wright mirror that of the rest of the team. He’s striking out way too much and he’s not delivering any power to counteract all of the whiffs. To a lesser extent, he’s not delivering with RISP, either. Wright’s .687 OPS in these situations is slightly below the .695 league average and considerably below is .862 career mark. However, the team has done well overall in the category, with a .717 OPS, if not particularly well in the last week.
On a team level, the Mets have the third-most strikeouts in the NL and they rank next-to-last in homers.
Strikeouts for power is a trade worth making. But tons of strikeouts with next to no power is no one’s idea of a good offense. Generally, a strikeout is not much different from any batted ball out but right now, having seven of the top nine hitters carrying a K% over 20 percent – with virtually no corresponding power – is hurting the team.
So, what’s the answer?
Unfortunately, the best answer might be – hope. We have to hope that Granderson and Young will regress to career averages and that Lagares won’t. We can hope that Wilmer Flores, who has looked at least adequate in the field, can build on last night’s three-hit game. We have to hope that d’Arnaud will start hitting like his minor league track record indicates he can.
While we’re doing all of this hoping on offense, maybe there is one thing that Terry Collins can do. Perhaps he can find it in his heart to give Wright a day off. The Mets have played 45 games this year and Wright has played in every single one. Perhaps if given a break, Wright can rediscover his power stroke. While that idea belongs in the hope paragraph above, something’s got to be attempted to fix his .089 ISO.
Here’s hoping.
I’m exhausted…This is grinding me down …inexorably to care less and less as I find other interests to supplant baseball. ..balloon animals…taxidermy. ..topiary gardening…base jumping…spelunking. ..Thank the almighty I’ve moved to Australia. ..at least there’s cricket and rugby. ..and drinking heavily!…let Oprah buy the team already and make Ellen Degeneres the manager…With arsenio the mascot…
I can’t wait for mid June. We will have gotten our additional player from the Pirates, our first round 2014 draft pick, and Noah in our rotation. Maybe too we make a deal and trade a pitcher for offense.
Resting Wright would be nice to not only help him, but to give Eric Campbell another day at the plate. He has been nothing but fantastic so far, and the Mets should ride that hot streak as long as they can, whether it be more ABs at 1B, a spell or two at 2B or 3B and even more time in the outfield. Maybe we should throw him some catching equipment while we’re at it.
How tradable is Bartolo Colon? It seems like half the league is desperate for pitching, what kind of player/prospect would he net us? At this point he is just blocking Montero and/or DeGrom
Right now it’s everyone’s seeming desire to trade Colon. But how much would you give up for a 41-year-old pitcher who was 3-5 with a 5.34 ERA who was owed around $17 million for the rest of this year and next?
The only way he’s tradeable is if he starts consistently pitching like he did last year. But if he does that, do you really want to trade him?
Yes, I would trade him. Four games below .500 allows the Mets to start using the minor league starters and Colon is in the way. If the Mets were competing for a playoff spot then of course the team would want his innings eating and good pitching but since the games will have little consequence for a 2014 playoff spot then let’s at least start hoping and preparing for 2015.
Chris:
If the Athletics came to you with Bartolo Colon and were wondering what you would give for taking on his $17MM obligation, what would you answer?
Now let’s flip this around. Say the Mets were freed of that $17MM obligation. Would that money flow into some other resource to improve the team? Like, say a SS that could field and hit? Or a 1B that hits both RHP and LHP? Since we didn’t do the former, its unlikely we’ll do the latter.
Colon isn’t worthless. He’s a good pitcher regardless of the outcomes that occurred mostly in Yankee stadium and Coors Field. It’s that we cannot or will not make use of the excess utility gained by freeing up the cash.
I realize that no GM has a crystal ball but this team offense was built on hope.
The reality of 2014 is that the Mets went into the season with two holes in the offensive lineup. Either Lagares or EY, and Tejada at SS. They have a rookie catcher that needed to establish himself, a first baseman that was demoted to the minors just last year, a free agent signing that is coming off a down year and a second free agent signing that is coming off an injury plagued year. There was no attempt at finding more stable solutions that had better track records in any of these offseason maneuvers. There are many things that have to go right for the Mets to improve. Hope apparently is paramount in building this team.