Where have you gone, Lucas Duda?

Lucas Duda doesn’t need anymore pressure on him. After all, he’s the sole remaining everyday-caliber player remaining on the Mets infield. Wilmer Flores is still on the cusp both offensively and defensively while everyone else are, well, backups. Meanwhile, Duda not only ripped the first base job from Ike Davis last year, but has entrenched himself as one of the better, under-the-radar ballplayers in the game today. He just hasn’t been acting like it recently.

From May 31st until June 7th, Duda’s batting line is .080/.258/.120, and he hasn’t driven in a run this month. That’s only a little more than a week, but it’s very impactful. He has one extra-base hit in that period, illustrated by his ISO of .040. There is light at the end of this tunnel of course. His BABIP is an extraordinarily low .118, and won’t stay that way forever. He’s just fallen into a funk, as players are known to do. It is just such a drastic departure from the absolutely torrid pace he was on from May 10th until May 30th, when he hit seven home runs, drove in 13 runners, and his batting line looked more Herculean at .348/.451/.754. The swing from success to struggle is so sudden I’m surprised the big man doesn’t have whiplash. (I take that back, we don’t need another injury.)

It was the highest-high to the lowest-low. And it came at a bad time, as seemingly everything has for the Mets this season. Quality pitching and power from unlikely sources helped make the recent West Coast trip not-so-terrible, but the team is still 10-19 on the road this year. Somehow, miraculously they have regained first place in the National League East. That’s thanks mainly to a Washington Nationals team that has won two of their last ten, but still, the Mets had to win some games too.

But back to Duda. This is not the first slump he’s had this season. From April 17th to May 10th, he hit one home run. During that span, his BABIP was .278, which is normal, but his slugging was just .315, very not normal. So Duda has become somewhat of a quandary to behold. He can absolutely carry this offense at times, while at points it seems like he forgets what a bat is for. Ok, that is overly harsh, but it drives home the point that the Mets need Duda now more than ever to be the man in charge of this lineup. But can he be?

He has had extended periods like this before. From April 13th until May 25th 2014, Duda had a .330 slugging and a .275 BABIP. For the entire month of May in 2013, his batting line was .219/.276/.396. It is easy to remember for those who watched the games that Duda struggled with consistency at times. That seemed to be fixed earlier this year with everyday playing time and rejuvenating success against lefties. Was it all a fluke? It can’t realistically be, as his peripheral numbers suggest he still has all the tools to smack another 30 home runs this year. But it is as maddeningly frustrating for the fans to watch as it likely is for the man himself to perform so.

As the Mets will hopefully have another big hitter back in Travis d’Arnaud, and Lord willing a replacement third baseman can be found somewhere, Duda shouldn’t have to do the heavy lifting alone. Flores, Michael Cuddyer and Curtis Granderson all have the power capacity to put the team on their backs for a game or three as well. But if the Mets are going to succeed, they are going to need two consistent things for the rest of 2015: quality starting pitching, and Lucas Duda. I know that’s the unneeded pressure I mentioned earlier, but it’s true. Duda, hitting only like Duda can, makes everyone else on this team better. Then, and only then, will things start to turn in the Mets’ favor.