A look at the Mets’ HR hitting here in early 2024

Baseball-Reference shows that so far here in 2024, the 30 MLB teams have combined to hit 1,620 HR in 1,564 games, which is a little over one per game. It rounds to 1.04 HR/G. The Yankees have hit the most homers in the league with 80 in 54 games, an average of 1.48 per game. The Mets are tied for 11th with 56 HR, which they’ve hit in 51 games, an average of 1.10 per game. They’ve really turned things on here the last four games, where they’ve homered 11 times.

But even before this recent streak, the Mets had 10 times where they had multi-homer games, including four times where they left the yard three times. And they were just 2-2 in those four games, making their record 2-5 the seven times this year when they homered three times in a game, where a team traditionally wins around 78% of the time.

Tim Britton of The Athletic had a note that the Mets became just the fifth team in MLB history to hit three or more homers in a game three straight times and lose all three games. Before yesterday’s action, FanGraphs had there being 475,276 games played in MLB history. What we witnessed wasn’t without precedent yet it was extremely rare. Perhaps the next time the club does something so unique, it will be for a good thing.

Getting back to homers, you’ll often hear fans lamenting that their favorite team hits too many solo shots. Of the 11 HR the Mets have hit in the past four games, nine were with the bases empty. And this is unusual, as typically about 58-59% of home runs only drive in one run. Here is the breakdown for homers this season:

926 – No one on base
460 – One man on
192 – Two men on
42 – Bases loaded

So far this year, a little over 57% of the homers hit in MLB have been solo shots, making what the Mets have done here recently even more unusual than normal. Here’s how the club has done with their home runs this season:

34 – No one on base
14 – One man on
7 – Two men on
1 – Bases loaded

That means that 61% of the team’s homers this year were solo shots. And given that we know that nine of their last 11 HR came with the bases empty, essentially what we saw was just a slight over-correction for what happened previously. If we subtract out the last 11 home runs, nine of which came with the bases empty, we get 25 solo homers out of 45 total, which is 56%.

It’s fair to wonder if the Mets’ offense is too HR-centric. A quick back-of-the-envelope look would tend to say yes. The Mets are tied for 11th in HR, putting them slightly above average in the category. As for runs, the team averages 4.27 runs per game, compared to the MLB average of 4.34 rpg. So, we have a touch more homers than average and a touch fewer runs scored overall.

But does the abundance of solo homers hit change the equation any?

Of the 218 runs scored by the Mets, 87 of those have come via the HR, or 40%. For MLB as a whole, 2,590 runs have scored due to a homer, compared to 6,782 runs overall, which is 38%. That doesn’t seem to be anything over which someone should be upset. Besides, doesn’t it seem … odd … to blame an offense for hitting too many homers? It seems akin to blaming the guy playing the best for the team having a losing record.

The Mets are 19th with 160 runs scored with batters in scoring position. And this cam be somewhat wonky, as teams have played unequal number of games. But the four teams directly ahead of them in this category have played 51 games, too. The first team ahead of them that has played more games are the Astros, who have eight more runs scored with one extra game played. The Mets are not likely to catch them.

On the flip side, the Nationals have played one fewer game than the Mets and have three fewer runs scored. The Mets score on average 3.13 rpg with RISP, while the Nats check in with a 3.14 average. While B-R doesn’t compute rpg with RISP, we can ballpark it that the Mets are 20th in this category.

It seems safe to me to say that the team’s offense is not too HR-centric but rather not as efficient in cashing in their chances with RISP as one might hope. But again, the team’s performance with RISP is not too far off from league average. As a team, they have a 96 sOPS+, meaning they’re about 4% worse. Harrison Bader (63 sOPS+) and Francisco Lindor (67) are the two worst offenders among the players with at least 20 PA with RISP.

Ultimately, the Mets are pretty close to being a league-average offense. The reason they rank 25th in the majors in winning percentage has more to do with their pitching than their hitting. In the month of May, which started out with the pitchers allowing just 1 ER in 9 IP, Mets’ pitchers have a 4.93 ERA and have allowed an average of 5.55 rpg.

Instead of complaining that the team hits too many solo homers or that the offense is too HR-centric, lay the blame where it belongs – on the pitching.