As of the writing of this article, the Mets are 26-11 at home. That’s a welcome change over the last few seasons, as they’ve struggled to win at Citi Field. In fact, they haven’t finished over .500 at home since 2010. In contrast, they’re just 10-22 on the road. Not only is that the worst road record of all teams leading their divisions, that’s second worst in all of baseball. The only team with a worse record on the road is the Phillies.
In terms of series, they’ve won only two of their 11 series on the road: the season-opening series in Washington and the series in Philadelphia at the beginning of May. They split the four-game series with Arizona, but otherwise they lost every other one. Of the seven they lost they were swept in three of them. Their run differential is +29 at home and an amazingly awful -42 on the road. Why have they struggled so mightily as the away team?
We’ll do a quick, high-level review of some stats for both the pitching staff and the offense at home and away to see if we can get an idea of just what the heck is going on here. First up, the table below includes some home/away splits for the pitching staff as a whole.
| Split | ERA | R | WHIP | SO9 | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | HR | BB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home | 3.23 | 131 | 1.178 | 8.2 | .252 | .296 | .380 | .677 | 33 | 78 |
| Away | 4.09 | 138 | 1.239 | 8.1 | .247 | .302 | .397 | .699 | 30 | 78 |
Well, the pitching is performing worse on the road. However, it’s not a severe drop in performance and is along the lines of what you would expect from a team versus their numbers at home. Granted, the staff as a whole has given up more runs than any division leader in baseball. Still, they’ve given up a similar number of runs away as they have at home. There are no key indicators, at least in this set of stats, that points to the reason the team has such a poor road record. Next up, the offense:
| Split | G | R | HR | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | BAbip |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home | 37 | 160 | 33 | 114 | 259 | .247 | .318 | .389 | .707 | .287 |
| Away | 32 | 96 | 26 | 70 | 270 | .232 | .286 | .351 | .637 | .286 |
Like the pitching, while the offense has clearly been performing worse on the road than at home, overall it hasn’t been dramatically worse. They’ve been walking much less, hitting for a bit less power, and just generally getting on base at a worse rate on the road. Interestingly, their BABIP is almost identical, so we can probably factor out any significant swings in luck. The disparity in runs obviously sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s actually incredible how large the gap is here and how it contrasts with the relative consistency in runs given up by the pitching staff.
Unlike the pitching, there is very clearly a candidate that may be contributing to the poor performance in general and the lack of runs specifically: walks. For whatever reason the team has almost one walk less per game on the road than at home. Is it a change in approach away from their home park? Does the pressure of the away crowd somehow affect their patience at the plate? Are they trying too hard?
Of course there could be other contributing factors here that we haven’t really delved into in this exercise. Maybe the offense as a whole has just been coming up short with runners in scoring position on the road, for example. Perhaps they just aren’t “getting it done.” It’s hard to knock teammates in when they don’t get on base ahead of you, though.
It would also be nice if the pitching would, you know, allow less runs in general.
Always comes back to run support with this team. Or lack thereof. Losing those games with just a run on the board… Come on, man
I think you’re underestimating the pitching here. They’ve given up seven more runs on the road despite playing five more games at home. Here’s the runs allowed per game:
H – 3.54
R – 4.31
Here’s the numbers for the batters:
H – 4.32
R – 3.00
It’s more the fault of the offense, but I wouldn’t let the pitching off so easy. As for the offense, along with the walks, I’d look at power. The offense has 102 XBH at home and 72 XBH on the road
Excellent points, Brian. The pitching is definitely not blameless here, and they’ve definitely performed more poorly on the road. But I think the bigger indicator you pointed out here is the XBH. They have hit 23 less doubles on the road in 5 less games. That’s crazy. That’ll sure reduce the number of runners you knock in.
All of these numbers you just put up are the perfect example of why they are losing. Letting up more than a run above your offensive output is a recipe for awfulness. And boy are these Mets cooking up something awful.
I’ll throw in something real quick qnd come back for more later. Without looking, we all realize the Mets manipulate their pitching staff to have the better pitchers at home more, for ticket sales. I would expect a direct correlation of away starts to how many of them are Niese, Gee, Colon as opposed to how many home starts are the phenoms. I may not be explaining it well, but I assume you all get my point.
For years I have been pounding on the Mets for being so bad at home.Now they finally have something at home and they implode on the road.
BABIP is almost identical so luck has little to do with it. Have they made more errors on the road?
Hi, Matt. Good question. You know, it seems almost impossible to find team fielding home/away splits. But I took a quick look at game summaries and the team has committed 28 of their 46 errors in road games. That’s a pretty significant split, especially considering the team has played 4 fewer games on the road. Additionally, they committed errors in 14 of their 33 road games. These numbers are….not good.
Awesome stuff Rob.
Rob, interesting articles like this enhances this site. Thanks and nice job.
Thanks, Metsense! Appreciate the kind words and thanks for reading and commenting.