Tracking the Offense

[Frayed Knot]

This might have been better had I started this right at the nadir of our season at the end of that 12-game losing streak (at least we hope that was the low point). But it didn’t occur to me until week or so ago so this is a ‘joined in progress’ project.

“It’s gotta get better” is a phrase we’ve used early in this season to describe the lack of hitting and scoring. Towards that end I’m going to try and check in on this on a semi-regular basis so we can see how much things are ‘regressing to the mean’ or if that actually happens at all.

So two charts here: one tracking our ranking among all 30 ML teams in the various offensive stats, and then the raw numbers in those same metrics compared to league average. The data shown is for the season-to-date games including those on the date listed. Not a lot of change so far but you don’t expect there to be much after only nine days.

I’m aiming to update this thing twice a month, hopefully on or around the 15th & 30th.

 

 

 

 

 

Dang it! The subject heading was supposed to read NOffense but it auto-corrected on me and now I can't edit. 

[Centerfield]

Despite the seeming resurgence we’ve had recently, the Mets remain last in MLB in OPS

[duan]

yes - but in terms of runs there's been a massive difference - our average run per game on 30th April was 3.4 and we were in 29th place - now it's 4.08 and in 23rd. 

and while we are still lowest in OPS that is now a .003 gap to 29th (SDP) .046 to 15th. Whereas on April 30th the gap to 29th (SFG) was .024 and .076 to 15th.  

(there were times then the gaps were bigger but 30th April felt like the right place) 

 

[Frayed Knot]

Yes, the RS/G figure took the biggest jump, even enough to counteract that pathetic three games/two runs combined series in Miami.

 

And some of the other raw numbers are up a shade too even if only enough to where they're now closer to jumping a rank or two if improvement continues. Until then, baby steps.

[Centerfield]

Still DFL in OPS in all of MLB.

 

[Frayed Knot]

Yup, although just 4 points behind the 29th place Padres and 19 in back of the surprisingly bad 28th place Phillies who have Harper, Schwarber and Marsh with OPS+'s of 137, 154 & 125, AND who have all played virtually every game this season [59, 56, 54]*.  Contrast that with Soto/Lindor who have combined to play a mere 66 including just nine games in which both appeared.

 

* But, man, the rest of that lineup is putrid. Get a load of Realmuto [OPS+ = 65], Stott [76], Trea Turner [71], and Alex Bohm [67]

Y'know, jus' sayin'

[Frayed Knot]

Two days late with this update -- HOW DID YOU GUYS ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN?!?!?! -- but here it is.

So we see some progress for the front half of June but still just in small increments. This pretty much synchs up with the one-step-forward/one-step-back nature we've seen from series to series for much of the season.

 

[Centerfield]

Still shitty. 

[Edgy MD]

Small increments are the only ones you are going to see at this juncture.

[Centerfield]

Yes. But the Mets have a .731 OPS for June. Good for 20th in  MLB. While that is better than dead Fucking last it’s no where near good enough for a sustained run. 

[Centerfield]

Deeper dive. The Mets OPS was .681 in May. Good for 19th in MLB. So the Mets haven’t been the worst scoring team in baseball for a while, it’s just that their performance in April was so bad (last by a lot) that they’ve remained at or near the cellar since. 

Let’s assume that Lindor returns and no one else gets hurt (a totally safe assumption, I know).  Maybe that boosts the offense to league average?  Couple that with a pitching staff ranked 9th in ERA and maybe you get a team that performs slightly better than .500.  And that’s not good enough to dig out of the hole they are in.  
 

Still.  Baseball is weird and you never know.  

 

 

 

[Benjamin Grimm]

12 minutes ago, Centerfield said:

Still.  Baseball is weird and you never know.  

 

 

 

That's what we have to hang our hats on.

[seawolf17]

And realistically, because almost everyone makes the playoffs, as putrid as this team has been, they're still only five and a half out of a spot. I mean, yes, they have to jump over a lot of teams, but it's not mathematically impossible.

[Edgy MD]

If they catch the Reds, it will feel to me like they caught the Braves.

If reach .500, it will feel like the pennant.

[MFS62]

Getting Lindor back at short and moving Bichette back to third will help both the offense and the defense. 

Later

[Frayed Knot]

Stepping aside from offensive woes for a moment to look at a pitching issue that's been in the back of my head for a while but am just now getting around to see if it holds up under scrutiny.

 

The season-to-date league-wide pct of PAs taken with 0 outs, with 1 out, and with 2 outs are: 34.5%, 33.2%, 32.3% and the numbers for NYM pitchers mimics those percentages with only minor differences: 34.1%, 32.9%, 33.0% (less than 1% variation in each case).

The overall pct of Runs Allowed with 0, 1, and 2 outs is 24.2% / 38.6%, 37.2%  -- that runs are scored at a lesser rate w/no outs is not surprising since a larger pct of those ABs take place with no one on (leadoff ABs) while RA rates with 1 out and 2 out occur at a roughly even frequency.  

Now look at how the NYM staff RA rates fare and we find just 20.8% w/0 outs (nearly 4 pct points lower than lg avg), 36.0% w/one out (also lower tho closer to the MLB pct), and then a whopping 43.3% with 2 outs, more than six pts above lg avg.

What this shows, or at least implies, is that our staff is often failing to get that 3rd out on the first or second opportunity to do so and so are almost-but-not-quite getting out of innings with at least lesser damage. Saturday's disaster is a perfect example as 10 of the 15 Philly runs, including the last 8 straight, came after two were out. Those include the Harper HR, the 2R Harper triple, and two of Schwarber HRs. That's eight runs from four ABs that coulda but weren't prevented.

Now in a blow-out game like that one even theoretically turning around a couple of 'What if' ABs was unlikely to have changed the W/L outcome. But the overall numbers show that game to be not an isolated instance and more like part of a season long trend..

[seawolf17]

I was going to put this in the Devin thread, but it makes more sense here.

It can't be good when you're down 4-0 before you even turn over the lineup every night. It's demoralizing at minimum, and it leads to things like Soto, ordinarily a smart baserunner, getting thrown out by 30 feet trying to stretch a single. It's hard to get excited when you're getting your asses handed to you every night.

This is jarring. Look at the eighth and ninth innings! SOPS+ is "split relative to league split OPS."

Split	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	sOPS+
1st inning	.235	.281	.435	.716	88
2nd inning	.233	.275	.370	.645	88
3rd inning	.225	.302	.364	.667	87
4th inning	.236	.310	.363	.673	87
5th inning	.266	.325	.394	.719	93
6th inning	.229	.314	.421	.736	105
7th inning	.233	.308	.394	.702	99
8th inning	.223	.288	.312	.601	68
9th inning	.158	.209	.213	.421	22

[Edgy MD]

1 hour ago, seawolf17 said:

 

This is jarring. Look at the eighth and ninth innings! SOPS+ is "split relative to league split OPS."

And how much of that 22 was entirely contained within The Tyrone Taylor Game?

[seawolf17]

Crikey.

Removing that one inning brings their splits down to .149 / .197 / .191 in the 9th inning for an OPS of .388.

(edit - my math was wrong)

[MFS62]

Those 9th inning numbers are a pretty good reason why the Mets are last in 9th inning come-from-behind wins this year. And they were last in that category last year, too. 

In summary, they don't hit starters and they don't hit closers, and they aren't too good in between, either.

Later

[seawolf17]

ChatGPT is effing with me now.

If someone ran every team-season since 1901, I'd be surprised if .388 wasn't in the bottom handful of inning splits ever recorded for a team with 200+ plate appearances. It may not be the absolute worst, but it's in the neighborhood where you're competing with some truly infamous clubs.

This is actually a fun Stathead project. If you have access (or if you want me to help build the query), we could answer questions like:

• Lowest team OPS in the 9th inning since 1901.
• Lowest team OPS in any single inning (1st through 9th).
• Lowest team OPS in a split with at least 200 PA.

I'm genuinely curious whether your ".388 without that one inning" would end up as the all-time low. It has a real chance.

[MFS62]

That's a lot of time and CPU cycles to try to quantify the term "all-time pathetic offense".

But you have piqued our morbid curiosity, so I hope someone gives it a try.

Later

[seawolf17]

The Mets have four innings where their OPS is over .700, or as we call it, the Joe Torre Line. Their offense without Soto:

Inning    BA    OBP    SLG    OPS
1st    .228    .276    .409    .685
2nd    .234    .274    .373    .647
3rd    .213    .287    .325    .612
4th    .237    .300    .361    .661
5th    .256    .310    .390    .700
6th    .212    .294    .384    .678
7th    .224    .303    .352    .655
8th    .217    .279    .295    .574
9th    .156    .205    .209    .414

Overall, that's a .630 OPS, which means without him, they're collectively Jeff McKnight.

[Frayed Knot]

So the back half of June not only doesn't show any progress but there's actually some regression.  Wasn't sure that was possible.

 

[Centerfield]

The Mets best hitter outside of Soto is Alvarez. He has a .734 OPS. 
 

The Mets are doing something to these hitters. 

[The Hot Corner]

Swing hard and hope for contact seems to be the predominant methodology for Mets hitters.    Patience and pitch recognition seems to be lost on most of the hitters (outside of Soto and Ewing).

[smg58]

6 hours ago, Centerfield said:

The Mets best hitter outside of Soto is Alvarez. He has a .734 OPS. 
 

The Mets are doing something to these hitters. 

I'm not sure how many hitters have been healthy enough to get a fair sense of where they are (although I suppose that could also conceivably fall under the heading of "the Mets are doing something to these hitters"). 

Vientos appears to be healthy, which is... unfortunate.  But Vientos is hitting lefties decently, which leads me to think that righties have figured him out.  Like Luis Robert, he's only hit righthanded pitching well in basically one season, and I think you need to accept that's who he is.

Benge was not ready in April, and Ewing would still be in AAA if things went remotely right.  I don't think you can fault either, nor is there a point in demoting them or giving ABs to players who aren't better.

[The Hot Corner]

I am pleased with the adjustments and progress that Benge has made over the course of the season.  I expect Ewing to develop into a good top of the line up hitter.  He has good patience and awareness of the strike zone   Soto is elite.  Lindor should be okay longterm.  Baty and Vientos have had sufficient opportunities to show what they can and can't do.  I think they should not be counted on to be anything more than part-time backups.  Alvarez is faintly ahead of Baty and Vientos, but not by much.  Robert, Semien, and Taylor should not be counted on to fill major rolls moving forward.  Bichette will likely opt out and move on at the end of the season.  I think Jared Young can be a platoon player at DH/1st base.  

Then, of course, there is the mess that is the starting pitching.

The Mets have a major rebuild ahead of them this offseason.

[smg58]

If Bichette opts out of $84M over two years with a .679 OPS, it's a massive blessing in disguise.

That being said, he made a really nice play last inning.