Mets need Travis d’Arnaud to get back on track

What’s on everyone’s mind right now is the turning point in Game 2 and the tackle of Ruben Tejada by Chase Utley. If that’s what you want to read about, please check out Dave Cameron’s piece and then come back and read this.

Welcome back!

The Mets’ offense has struggled to score runs lately. There’s no shame in that when you’re facing Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke on the road. However, the offense has been struggling for longer than the past two games. The team was firing on all eight cylinders for about six weeks but the last two weeks of the regular season was not quite the same.

There was the clinching-series in Cincinnati, where everyone knocked around their rookie pitchers and bullpen. But take out those games and the Mets scored 33 runs in their last 15 games. Sure, some of that was because once they clinched, the regulars got lots of rest. But some of that was because guys who were raking in August and September just stopped hitting.

Yoenis Cespedes gets a lot of credit, deservedly so, for the club’s offensive turnaround. But raking right there with him was Travis d’Arnaud. Then the two of them went into mini slumps at the same time. Cespedes provided a homer in Game 2 but we’re still waiting for d’Arnaud to contribute offensively. In the two playoff games so far, he’s 0-for-7 with 4 Ks.

From August 3 to September 15, d’Arnaud reached base safely in 26 of his 31 starts and posted a .319/.398/.612 line in 133 PA. And he did this with a not outrageous .326 BABIP. But in his final 14 games, he recorded just a .376 OPS and now is wearing the collar after two NLDS games.

Hey, it’s a slump and everyone has them. But what’s so alarming about this one is that it’s not just a case of the hits not falling in. While that’s certainly been true here – a .200 BABIP the last two weeks of the regular season and 0-for-3 when he’s made contact in the playoffs – the real concern is with the strikeouts.

D’Arnaud had a 30% strikeout rate the last two weeks of the regular season and a 57.1 rate against the two Dodger aces in the playoffs. The latter without the former would not be a huge concern. But as it is, it’s a continuation of a trend rather than merely running into two of the top five pitchers in the National League.

Texas Leaguers allows us to combine regular season and playoff stats. And we can see that since 9/16, d’Arnaud has had trouble with four-seam fastballs. He’s seen 80 of those in this time frame and he’s only managed to put eight of those in play, even though 56 of them have been strikes.

So, what’s the problem? There are at least two causes. One, he’s watching a lot of pitches that he ought to be swinging at. Here’s a visual representation of four-seamers he did not swing at:

This shows 19 pitches in the strike zone that he took and the vast majority of these were pitches in the middle of the plate. There’s no problem with taking a pitch on the black on the outside corner. But there are quite a few middle-middle pitches where the bat is wiggling around his head rather than being whipped through the zone.

The other problem for d’Arnaud is one of contact. There’s too many swing-and-misses (16.3%), too many fouls (23.8%) and not enough hard-hit balls. Of those 80 four-seamers, d’Arnaud has put the ball in play just eight times. Here’s the spray chart:

Perhaps one of these balls went 300 feet. Seven of the eight were outs and the one hit was a bloop down the right field line.

During his hot streak from 8/3 to 9/15, d’Arnaud whiffed on just 9% of four-seam fastballs and put 21% of them into play.

The 80 four-seamers that d’Arnaud has seen recently represents 36.2% of the pitches thrown to him, easily the top mark. Next is the 45 sliders he’s seen. By contrast, he’s putting twice as many sliders into play (20%) as he is four-seamers.

So, if we want to see a turnaround from d’Arnaud, he’s going to have to do a better job of both recognizing and punishing four-seamers. If and when he does, look for the Mets’ offense to return to being the top unit in the league.