We gotta start hitting some starters

[Frayed Knot]

In what's looking like a complete turn-around from a couple years back when they were scoring all their runs early in games but rarely late*, this year's club has been basically putting the offense on hold the first time through the order.

Runs Scored by innings:
1st - 3rd = 24
4th - 6th = 48
7th - 9th = 23

That 7th thru 9th number is a bit misleading in that when you win every game at home you rarely wind up batting in inning #9 (never so far in our case, in fact Murph's HR the other night were our only three 9th inning runs of the year) so our 1st thru 3rd innings are by far our worst and the gap between them and innings 4-6 (4 thru 7 really) are stark. And while it's fun to win close games and all, I wouldn't mind seeing them jump out to big leads every once in a while either.

It's also not like they're being shut down by top-notch pitchers every night.
Eric Stults -- scoreless & hitless thru 3
Aaron Harang - scoreless on 1 hit thru 3
Jared Cosart - scoreless thru 4
David Phelps - scoreless thru 4
Tom Koehler - bombed him in the 4th but only after going hitless thru 3
Trevor Cahill - one hit thru 4 until they got to him in the 5th
Stults again - 1 run on 4 hits thru 6, won the game off the Atl pen
Coast again - 2 hits thru 8
Phelps again - scoreless thru 5 on some harmless 2-out singles

Not really sure there's a specific solution to this problem (aside from, y'know, hitting better) but ours is certainly not a good enough offense for each player to give away his first AB with the idea that it'll just come along later. They've ridden some nice timely hitting in the middle innings and a pretty good bullpen to this hot start -- keep in mind that we WON most of those games listed above -- but it's not like you can count on that happening every night. Walks and some sloppiness certainly had a big hand in last night's loss but so did going down meekly over the first half of the game to a spot starter. This all also doesn't bode well for when we start hitting some GOOD starters. The Nats may suck so far but we're still going to hit some combo of Strasberg/Zimmermann/Fister/Scherzer this weekend [scherzer? I barely know her!]



* 2008 (further back than I thought): Inn 1-3 = 342 runs scored; inn 4-6 = 253; inn 7-9 = 191

[Edgy MD]

Hitting some starters. Starting some hitters would be nice too.

[TransMonk]

BOC

[Edgy MD]

They're actually hitting starters harder, but that can be misleading, as every team hits starters harder, and the Mets probably haven't been doing so to the league-standard degree.

Vs Starters: .256 / .313 / .388 // .701
Vs. Relievers: .214 / .321 / .318 // .639

OE: League:

Vs Starters: .255 / .312 / .399 // .711
Vs. Relievers: .233 / .306 / .350 //.656

So the Mets have a .062 gap, and the NL has a .052 gap. Not so meaningful as all that. Best to just hit more, just to be safe.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I'll be honest, I think I prefer a club hitting later than hitting earlier if I can choose only one. One of the things that earlier-scoring club did was lose all its CAHNFIDENCE once the other team scored and this team doesn't seem to have... yet.

Mostly I think we need Travis & David back.

[Frayed Knot]

The biggest problem is that first trip through the lineup. Even on the nights where it's not 9-up/9-down it's often pretty close to it.
A lot of the fattening up on the starters comes during innings 4-7 which makes the vs-starters numbers look a lot better.

Looked at another way, NL stats for runs scored for innings 1-3 are just a shade lower as compared to innings 4-6 [421 vs 445] while Los Mets are scoring at exactly half the rate.
I assume that part or even most of that is flukey, but it would be nice to see them put up some crooked numbers early on one of these nights (one of these crazy old nights) or at least just not go down so meekly to middle/back of the rotation starters on a regular basis.

[Centerfield]

Frayed Knot wrote: The biggest problem is that first trip through the lineup. Even on the nights where it's not 9-up/9-down it's often pretty close to it. A lot of the fattening up on the starters comes during innings 4-7 which makes the vs-starters numbers look a lot better. Looked at another way, NL stats for runs scored for innings 1-3 are just a shade lower as compared to innings 4-6 [421 vs 445] while Los Mets are scoring at exactly half the rate. I assume that part or even most of that is flukey, but it would be nice to see them put up some crooked numbers early on one of these nights (one of these crazy old nights) or at least just not go down so meekly to middle/back of the rotation starters on a regular basis.

What he said. I feel like we look like we are going to get no-hit every game for the first 3 innings.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

1st inning runs! Woo