IGT 9/14, Gnats at Mets

[Guest Rotblatt]

]And as long as one resolutely sticks to the narrowest possible interpretation of an "average offense," why bother?

So looking at RS (8th in the NL), OPS (10th in NL), HR (7th in NL), IsoP (7th in NL), SecA (6th in NL) AND EQA (8th in the NL) equals the narrowest definition?

I mean, I'm not making this shit up, JD. Please point me to the stats that show how our offense is crappy and I'll happily discuss them with you. The consistency argument was interesting (if ultimitely inconclusive) and I'm completely willing to entertain more ideas like that one.

Norrin's "your head is up your ass," someone else's "OBP is a better indicator than RS," and the "2B & 1B offense are more important than team totals" arguments haven't been convincing me, and I really do feel like I'm making valid points, which y'all keep ignoring.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

I'm not arguing that being 8th in RS is average overall. I'm saying most nights we're worse than average, which was demonstrated by showing we had a larger % of games below 4 and 3 runs than the other contenders, lower median RS than our average RS, 5 freaky games that pumped the total score up and almost completely account for RS-RA, 2 slots in the lineup going to the worst everyday players by position and an average of fewer than 3 runs a game since the AZ series. None of that should be inconclusive.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

I'm not arguing that being 8th in RS is average overall. I'm saying most nights we're worse than average, which was demonstrated by showing we had a larger % of games below 4 and 3 runs than the other contenders, lower median RS than our average RS, 5 freaky games that pumped the total score up and almost completely account for RS-RA, 2 slots in the lineup going to the worst everyday players by position and an average of fewer than 3 runs a game since the AZ series. None of that should be inconclusive.

[Guest Rotblatt]

="Johnny Dickshot"]I'm not arguing that being 8th in RS is average overall. I'm saying most nights we're worse than average, which was demonstrated by showing we had a larger % of games below 4 and 3 runs than the other contenders, lower median RS than our average RS, 5 freaky games that pumped the total score up and almost completely account for RS-RA, 2 slots in the lineup going to the worst everyday players by position and an average of fewer than 3 runs a game since the AZ series. None of that should be inconclusive.

Consistency in scoring did not correlate to winning more games, at least in the AL, which means it's probably also true in the NL. And even if it DID, the Mets didn't seem to be significantly worse than most of the teams ahead of us in the NL in terms of consistency.

Some other stats regarding consistency for you, based on handy new info from BP. I didn't break this out by AL/NL cause it was easier just to tally them all up. If you'd like to break it down, I'd be very interested. (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/team_game_results2005.php):

Mets record when scoring 0 runs
0-11
MLB average # of games: 8
Mets Cumulative W/L v. Average team: 0-11, 0-8

Mets record when scoring 1 run
4-12, .250 WP
MLB average winning percentage: .087
Average # of games: 14; Mets: 16
Mets Cumulative W/L v. Average team: 4-23 (.074), 1-21 (.045)

2 runs
4-15, .211 WP
MLB average winning percentage: .256
Average # of games: 19 G; Mets: 19
Mets Cumulative W/L v. Average team: 8-38 (.174), 6-35 (.154)

3 runs
6-17. .261 WP
MLB average WP: .337
Average # of games: 19 G; Mets: 23
Mets Cumulative W/L v. Average team: 14-55 (.203), 12-48 (.200)

4 runs
5-10, .333 WP
MLB average WP: .486
Average # of games: 19; Mets: 15
Mets Cumulative W/L v. Average team: 19-65 (.226), 21-58 (.266)

5 runs
9-4, .692 WP
MLB average WP: .619
Average # of games: 17; Mets: 13
Mets Cumulative W/L v. Average team: 28-69 (.289), 33-64 (.340)

6 runs or more
43-5, .896 WP
MLB Average: .833
Average # of games: 48; Mets: 48
Mets Cumulative W/L v. Average team: 71-74 (.490), 73-72 (.503)

The problem, as I see it, isn't that we didn't score enough runs consistently, it's that we won at a below average rate in games where we scored between 2 & 4 runs. If we had won at an average rate in those situations, we would have won 5 extra games, without scoring a single extra run.

So basically, our pitching, despite being well above average, didn't do as well in low-scoring games as the average MLB pitching staff.

At least, that's my conclusion. Whaddya think?