On July 3 the fat lady was warming up her boisterous pipes. Sporting an abysmal 37-48 record, the remaining 77 games in the New York Mets’s 2014 campaign were worthless wastes of time.
But the celebration of American Independence, defeating a disappointing powerhouse in the Texas Rangers on July 4 sparked an 8-2 run entering the All-Star Break that has fans in Queens talking about the “P word” again.
New York’s starting pitching has been solid for most of the season and the bullpen has vastly improved after weeks of suffering through Valverde, Farnsworth and Lannan. It’s actually been the offense that’s powered the winning streak.
Unsurprisingly, Mets batters are surpassing their 2014 rates in the last 10 games. Their slash of .274/.347/.455 is noticeably higher than .242/..316/.369. They’re scoring more than another run a game and picking up almost a full hit more per game. The rate the 8-2 Mets are hitting for extra bases is staggering at 3.7 per game, up from 2.7 per game for the 2014 Mets. One of the few stats the Johnny Come Lately boys from Flushing aren’t doing as well is stealing bases – .6 per game instead of .69 per game.
What’s more interesting is how the 8-2 Mets stack up against the premiere offenses of 2014. As of the All-Star Break, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim led the majors in runs per game with 5.09. The Oakland Athletics are second with 4.91, followed by the Detroit Tigers with 4.8 and the Colorado Rockies in fourth with 4.76 runs per game.
Oakland accumulates the fewest hits of the four, sporting a .251 batting average calculated from 8.8 hits per game. The other three all have averages at least .269 and 9.29 hits per game. However, the Athletics also hit the most triples with .202 per game, slightly higher than the Angels 2 per game. Colorado’s 112 homers power the highest home runs per game rate – 1.1667, compared to 1.057 blast per game from the other three. Detroit sports the highest extra base hit per game rate with 3.37, higher than the Rockies’ 3.27.
Throwing the 8-2 Mets in the mix, their 3.37 extra-base hits per game is easily higher than all four. Their 9.1 hits per game fits in on the lower side of these four, but their 2.5 doubles per game is more than the others and the 1.1 home run per game rate is second only to Colorado. As a result, the winning Mets are picking up 5.5 RBIs a game, with the others hovering around 4.6.
The recent emergence of super prospect Travis d’Arnaud and first baseman Lucas Duda lends some credibility to the Mets newfound offense. And with both hit and home run rates not out of the realm of realism in 2014, some of this success could stick around. But the red flag comes in terms of the superfluous extra base hits per game rate. New York is picking up almost half an extra-base hit than Detroit and nearly a full extra-base hit over Oakland. If both of these teams are among the most successful offenses for the first half, the Mets rate unfortunately appears unsustainable.
I’d trade Zack Wheeler for Javier Baez, fire Alderson and his entire goon squad for dereliction, then redefine “winning” as losing more games than winning them.
I assume you mean redefine winning as actually having a winning record. I was only referencing the last 10 games, when the offense came alive.
Do the Mets need a better shortstop? Yes. But I’m not talking about trades, the future, pitching or anything other than team trends at the plate.
Just my way of trying to respond to several articles at 1 time.
TRAID
Thanks for breaking down the winning stretch. It was interesting and appreciated.