The Mets’ offense: feast or famine on display

Remember when the Mets led baseball in home runs but were not so good at driving runs in otherwise? People weren’t concerned, then, of course, because the team had such a dominant rotation. We accepted that living with the long ball and dying with the long ball was a fact of life in this 2016 season. So young, so naive.

The team opened up the season sluggish (no pun intended), but turned on the power and clobbered baseballs seemingly at will. They ended April with 33 home runs, good for fifth in baseball. They were also tenth in runs scored with 107. This, along with allowing the third fewest runs in all of baseball, had them in prime position in second place in the NL East.

They carried that momentum in May and led the league in home runs for a bit, but have cooled off significantly as we head into the latter part of the month. While they’ve still hit enough home runs to be in the top half of the league (11th with 24), they’ve scored the fewest runs in baseball in May with 52. That’s quite a stark difference from the first month of the season. Additionally, while they still remain in the top ten in runs allowed in May, they’ve allowed only two fewer than in March/April with ten more games to play.

All of this is to say that, while the pitching hasn’t been quite as good though certainly not bad, it hasn’t been quite enough to stave off the 8-11 record the team has in May because of the general lack of offense.

It became clear that this was a feast or famine offense early, but that doesn’t mean we should have ignored the warning signs. One of those being the team’s inability to hit with runners in scoring position. It was easy to overlook when things were going well, but we really shouldn’t disregard it when considering the offense as a whole. The team is dead last in average with runners in scoring position at .207. They’re even worse with two outs and runners in scoring position, still dead least and hitting a paltry .161.

Now, that’s simply one component of an otherwise struggling offense, but it’s an important one. The team simply hasn’t been getting the job done at the plate in May. Let’s take a look at some key stats so far this month and where they stand within the MLB.

• Runs: 52 (last)
• K%: 25.2% (worst)
• OBP: .293 (26th)
• wOBA: .291 (26th)
• wRC+: 83 (25th)
• HR: 24 (11th)
• ISO: .162 (13th)

As you can see, they’re still hitting the ball with authority. That’s pretty much all they’re doing, however, and it’s not been enough. It’s been a team-wide struggle. Excepting Yoenis Cespedes, who continues to be phenomenal, nobody else is doing much of anything at the plate in May. Sure, David Wright and Eric Campbell have been above average in terms of wRC+ (110 and 109, respectively), but that’s purely based on higher-than-normal OBP.

Curtis Granderson has been absolutely dreadful in May, with a wRC+ of 37. He’s still hitting for power, of course, with three home runs and an ISO of .179, but his slash of .134/.194/.313 in May is horrid. His K% of 33.3% falls right in line with most of the rest of the team, which has five of its players with the most playing time striking out 25% or more of the time this month.

This is what an all-or-nothing offense looks like, folks. When it’s going good, it’s great. When it’s going bad, things aren’t pretty. The March/April offense versus the May offense has perfectly, if not dramatically, demonstrated this dynamic.

Although the first two months in the season seemed to be extremes on both sides of the spectrum, the hope is that the offense lands somewhere in the middle for the rest of the season. If not, hoping for more months like April than May may be an exercise in heartache.