The Mets simply need more offense

Last week I commented on one of our articles that the upcoming series against the Dodgers was the key to whether we were going to be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline. The key was and has been to put more runs up on the board while containing the opposition’s scoring. Hardly a controversial supposition. With Justin Verlander, Kodai Senga and Max Scherzer taking the mound, the thought was that we had the run containment in hand. As has been reported, Verlander gave us a good start giving up only two hits to go with six walks, unfortunately three of those walks were issued consecutively when the wheels came off in the fifth inning. It did not help that a potentially catchable ball to left field was not caught. We also managed all of one hit and one walk against their starter and nothing at all in three innings against their relievers. We also had to suffer with another flubbed catch in right. Game two wasted a great effort by Senga, who lowered his ERA to 3.20 as we managed three hits and three walks, and our only scoring came on a bases empty home run. We also dropped two fly balls. Sunday, we got vintage Scherzer and eked out an extra inning win after the pen, not surprisingly, failed to hold a one run lead. Our anemic scoring produced three runs in 28 innings. There are some hopefuls who believe that Sunday’s win will be a launching point to getting back into the playoff race, especially with what looks like a pretty soft 12 game schedule leading up to the trade deadline. This writer is not one of them.

Here is one more attempt at analyzing why the Mets are where they are in the standings. In plain terms they continue to have an obvious lack of hitting, starters that don’t go long enough and a mediocre overworked bull pen. Many Mets360 articles have brought those facts to light more often than we had ever expected for a team with great expectations. The sign of a good team is the ability to score and shut down the opposition in their next at bat, and also to come back and score after being scored on. That in essence has been a glaring problem all year.

Below are the offensive numbers for the Mets usual first five batters that we will compare with the usual first five of the Braves, Marlins and Phillies, the teams that are in front of us in our own division. We will skip the Nationals because it would serve no purpose except to make us feel better for not being in last place. The Mets first five are Brandon Nimmo, Starling Marte, Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil.

Player	HR	RBI	Runs	OPS	WAR
Nimmo	14	42	53	.803	2.3
Marte	5	28	37	.640	-.4
Lindor	19	60	56	.780	3.4
Alonso	26	61	50	.800	1.6
McNeil	3	26	37	.647	.8

Now let’s look at a comparison of the Mets first five batters with usual first five of the Braves, Marlins and Phillies.

Team	HR	RBI	Runs	Avg OPS	WAR
Braves	105	289	302	.903	16.2
Marlins	57	207	178	.806	7.2
Phillies	58	206	211	.763	5.0
Mets	67	217	233	.734	7.7

With the exception of the out-of-sight Braves our number are fairly comparable to the Marlins and Phillies. In fact, our HR, RBI and runs scored should have us in a better place in the standings. But the numbers are deceiving because we tend to score large numbers of runs in limited bunches and then small amounts of runs the vast majority of the time. The OPS of our top five continues to sink, as does the OPS for the rest of the team. Let’s expand the stats a bit and use the entire offense for comparison purposes. For this we dropped WAR and added hits, OBP and batting average.

Team	Hits	Runs	RBI	OBP	OPS	Avg
Braves	850	514	495	.339	.829	.270
Marlins	851	397	377	.323	.723	.264
Phillies	833	426	409	.322	.745	.259
Mets	730	408	397	.317	.715	.237

Of the 408 runs scored in the first 93 games, 157 runs were scored in just 18 games. That represents a little more that 38% of the total runs scored and averages out to nearly nine runs a game. The remaining 251 runs were scored in the other 75 games that represents 62% of total runs and averages out to not quite three runs per game. We are well behind the competition in team OBP, OPS and batting average, and our embarrassing total hits says a lot about our offense. There is clearly not enough consistent offense to move forward in this division.

Let’s take a quick statistical look back to comparing the first five batters in each order on the basis of batting averages. Yes, there are other that better capture offensive contribution, but for comparison purposes it reveals an obvious shortcoming.

Braves	.329	.266	.264	.254	.301
Marlins	.380	.254.	.279	.246	.258
Phillies	.186	.244	.300	.290	.249
Mets	.263	.254	.232	.207	.248

The Mets have no one hitting well enough above the league average to help take the pressure off the others. And, despite Lindor and Alonso’s power numbers, when you compare their batting averages to the other number three and four hitters, their lack of hits and getting on base means less runners advanced into scoring position and a lack of small ball to manufacture runs. You can’t win by home runs alone. If our top five players were each hitting 30-40 points over their anemic batting averages, it would translate into 3-4 more hits a game as a team, more runs and more wins.

Therefore, it is with sadness, but conviction, that in my opinion, despite what might happen in the next 12 games, the Mets should be sellers in two weeks. With Edwin Diaz expected to return to form after a year off, David Robertson, working off a one-year expiring contract, would attract a lot of attention and likely return a good prospect. The same for Tommy Pham, our best hitter of late, who would make a great trade deadline addition to any number of teams. Eating some of Marte’s salary seems likely in order to move him, but he can still be productive player who at this point likely needs a change of scenery. Then there are teams at or near the top of their divisions who need a big arm to throw them over the top or separate them from the competition. The Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Reds and Orioles are four teams who could take it up another level by adding Scherzer or Verlander. Both did well enough this weekend to garner interest and Scherzer was in vintage form mowing down the Dodgers. With the financial plusses that a title brings to a franchise, teams would make great strides in affording those huge salaries and if we had to kick in and pay some of the salary that might be the lynch pin in getting it done. And there really is no more to say about Daniel Vogelbach except he simply has to go.

With trade deadline deals likely bringing only prospects, it means the starting nine will need to be revamped. It’s time to call up Ronny Mauricio and Mark Vientos and give them some extended playing time to see what they can do. How else will the Mets be able to create an off-season plan for targeting free agents or striking deals at the winter meetings?

August 1, 2023, the new lineup, with tinkering of who plays where and who serves at DH, would be Nimmo CF, McNeil RF, Lindor SS, Alonso 1B, Francisco Alvarez C, Mauricio 2B, Mark Canha LF, Vientos DH, and Brett Baty 3B. The Mets defensive metrics are fairly close to the competition, and while this lineup will sacrifice some defense, we simply need to score more runs and win more games.