We all love a good recovery story, don’t we? A week ago, the Mets were a pitiable giant lumbering about the 2016 season, large but powerless. They lost two-of-three to both the Phillies and Marlins, neither of whom would be considered challengers for the NL East crown. The Mets weren’t hitting, getting mowed down by the likes of Jeremy Hellickson, Vincent Velasquez and Jarred Cosart. Citi Field was cold and unfriendly in early April, host to but a single home run. The tonic has come on the road. In Cleveland and Philadelphia so far, the Mets have rediscovered their power stroke. In the first five games of this road trip, the Mets hit 17 homeruns and outscored their opponents 33 – 15. The Mets are a good recovery story.
But is the story so rosy? It’s become evident that the Mets have trouble scoring when they don’t hit homers — the lone exception being the finale in Cleveland, where they plated six runs with the help of a high sky and obviously defective sunglasses. We need look no further than new acquisition and new fan inamorata Neil Walker. Walker is leading the team in homers with six, but his slash line heading into the final game in Philly looks like a misprint: .245/.245/.585/.830. This is a microcosm of the Mets’ early season offense. If the opposition keeps ‘em in the park, it’ll stand a good chance of winning. This could be troubling down the line. There are 74 more road games remaining. Let’s face it: not all ballparks are as agreeable to power hitters as Citizens’ Bank. Heck, not even their own ballpark is all that conducive to the long ball. The homers are definitely fun and all, but the Mets have got to develop their “small ball” skills if they have any hope of reining in the Washington Nationals.
2015 is over. The Mets got hot just as the Nats started to stink and the New Yorkers rode the wave all the way into game five of the World Series. That happened. It would be foolish to count on it happening again. It will take every ounce of talent the Mets possess in order to repeat as division champs. Those talents have got to include hitting with runners in scoring position, and knocking home the men sitting on the base paths by means other than putting the ball over the fence. When ya got ducks on the pond, they’ve gotta be sent home to roost.
It’s what champions do.
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Yes. However, due to a lack of team speed and lack of table-setters at the top of the order, this will be our 2016 Mets!
Like it or not.
ummmmmmmmmm, yeah.
Some quick and dirty calculations:
The Mets have scored 57 runs and have hit 21 HR
They have 116 hits and 45 walks
Subtracting HR they have 36 runs
Subtracting HR they have 140 H + BB
So, they score a run with every 3.89 non-homer baserunners
Using the same calculations, the Royals score a run every 3.65 non-homer baserunners.
I’m not pretending that this is vigorous or even particularly meaningful. But it does point out that even for the Mets, last night was a little unusual. They had 2 non-homer runs and 14 non-homer baserunners.
According to B-R on 8/13/05 the Nationals had 13 H and 5 BB and didn’t score. So I guess last night could have been worse…
Edit: Fixed math error
Edit: Fixed grammar
Brian, I don’t think you can subtract HRs and magically still score 36 runs. The other night the Mets scored 11 runs off 6 HRs. By your method, they still score 5 runs. That’s doesn’t make sense to me. Lazy math.
Eric called it. This is the 2016 Mets. Speed & defense go together, and Sandy has shown a preference for power.
I am with Earl Weaver on this. Love the 3-run homer. You won’t hear me complaining about it.
It’s not a perfect team. But again, I think the offense is better than average and should in general score enough runs. Very possibly becoming one of the top run-scoring offenses in the NL. I don’t really care how the runs are scored.
Boy, David Wright looked bad last night. Where are the “loves to hit in Philly” articles today? Walker, Duda, d’Arnaud — encouraging!
I recognize that any response to this is going to sound to some like I’m digging in my heels to defend it. I hope I can say something in it’s defense without appearing to be ultra committed to it.
You have to credit the runs scored on homers because that’s what the Mets do. If they hit doubles or triples instead of the home run, there would be no complaint. We’re already taking away the homer itself, which is a penalty. You can say it’s not enough of a penalty, but to say that the other runs that scored on the homer shouldn’t count at all – well, that’s clearly too much of a penalty.
The Mets have hit more doubles than homers. If each of the 21 times they hit a homer, they hit a double instead, the offense in those homer innings wouldn’t be zero. It wouldn’t be the same as what they scored in real life, but it certainly wouldn’t be zero. And since batters generally hit better with runners on base than they do with the bases empty, it’s very likely that replacing homers with doubles would lead to runs counting that we wouldn’t count if they were homers with the possibility of more runs, too.
Last night in the fifth, Cespedes and Duda hit back-to-back homers. Let’s say they were doubles. Duda’s double would have driven in Cespedes and suddenly we have a run counted that we wouldn’t previously in this exercise. Then Walker followed with a single that would have scored Duda and now we have the same actual runs scored in the inning but two more than we would have in the exercise for subtracting out homers.
You’ll get closer to the “right” answer by just eliminating the HR rather than eliminating the HR and the runs that scored.
It’s not vigorous; that’s okay by me.
But is it rigorous? Somewhat more important, though I’m pretty sure the answer is “no.”
Thanks for the laugh!
This team has double digit home run hitters slotted from one through eighth in the order and one more on the bench with Flores. DeAza had 17 one year also. Four of the players are very capable of hitting 25+ home runs. Last night it was difficult to see Granderson stranded at second base when Conforto and Cespedes failed to make contact and struck out. It happens. There will also be some games when the Mets are losing 2-1 and Cabrera (for example) will hit a two run home run and win the game. This is the way Sandy constructed the team and I accept it, in fact, when everything is clicking it is darn good fun. You can’t always get what you want, but you can try sometimes, and you just might find, you get what you need.
Have to throw my two cents in, I guess.
Chicks dig the long ball and so do I. However, I don’t dig the strikeouts. I don’t dig the enormous amount of strikeouts when merely contact is needed and I don’t dig a “one size fits all” mentality. When they are late in the game and need one run, you play for one run. The Giants keep track of how many times players fail to advance a base runner or how many times a batter doesn’t bring a runner home with less than two outs.
There is no accountability on the Mets; hasn’t been in six years. Would the Mets have won three world championships with the Giants roster? LOLLLLLLL!
It’s all about maximizing your opportunities and while the homerun approach isn’t a bad one, it cannot be your only approach. Diversification is good, even without speed. Didn’t the Mets come out with this stat how a stolen base only scores 16% of the time? So, allowing for it to be truth, I can’t go crazy over not having base stealers because they have most good base runners in Granny, Captain, Cespy, Walker, Lagares and Cabrera, and TDA and Conforto seem like intelligent runners albeit a step slower than the others.
Gus,
The crazy number of strikeouts these days, and so many of them just looking at pitches seemingly down the middle, has driven me to distraction for years. I did find this article illuminating: http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/baseball-strikeouts-more-than-ever/
Now on the subject of the Mets and their homerun hitting I find it odd that a team that plays half of its games in a ballpark that makes it difficult to hit homers relies so much on the longball for its offense.
If a team plays in a bandbox like Yankee Stadium or in Philly or in the light air of Denver then glomming on to power hitters makes sense. But the Mets do not have the speedy athletic types to pull off small ball so we will just have to hope they can hit enough homers to get by. It will be a challenge.
I may be alone in this thinking, but I’ve actually always thought home runs were overrated. For one thing, not every home run hitter is Miguel Cabrera or Albert Pujols. Most strike out 150+ times a season and can go into prolonged slumps. Home run hitters are often slow footed players prone to hitting into double plays as well. Home runs are nice, but when most of them are solo shots because guys aren’t drawing walks and nobody has the legs to beat out an infield single, it takes 4 or 5 to win a game. That’s not sustainable. It will help when Grandy comes around, but Duda and Cespy especially are very streaky hitters.
In general, I’m not a fan of the Earl Weaver style of wait for the 3-run homer. Sometimes it doesn’t come. I know it’s Sandy’s AL style, but I wish we would have left the fences back and built the team around speed and defense a la the Royals. With our pitching, we’d have had an enormous home field advantage.
Fans were bitching at the 1-0 games. Fans want Coors Field scoring: more fun!
Therefore: If fans want scoring and fans’ $$$ is the goal, then the fences will come in. Alderson told us straight out why they were bringing them in. Our strikeout pitchers didn’t need the fences back as much as our hitters needed them in.
I feel like this topic was discussed at length, certainly over at “2 Guys,” concerning the transition from Omar’s “athletic” to the Sandy’s more “plate discipline” model.
The team got slower, which directly translates to defense. The first thing the old scouts used to do at tryouts is run from home to first. If you didn’t make the time cut, oh well, goodbye.
Anyway, the Mets moved to spacious Citi and it was strange to many of us that the Mets didn’t field a team suited to their ballpark. It seemed like an opportunity missed.
Time has passed. The modified park now plays far less extreme. And Sandy has built a slow, station-to-station, poor defensive team. That hits with a wallop.
The ship has sailed, folks. It will take a new GM, and maybe less of a SABR model, for a new emphasis on speed and athleticism.
Again, to me, I actually think the offense is pretty good, and maybe even very good. I just hope Wright holds up.