The Mets are presently an uninspiring 20-18, 3rd place in NL East and middle of the road or worse in pretty much all statistical categories. The question is, are they a solid team that is simply in a funk, or is this about all we can expect from this team?
The short (and bad news) answer is that this may not be a funk. Here are some interesting records:
2006 1st half: 53-36
2006 2nd half: 44-29
2007 1st half: 48-39
2007 2nd half: 40-35
2008: 20-18
While 20-18 is underwhelming, it is unfortunately the exact same winning percentage the Mets put up for the entire 2nd half of '07. Thus, they have been playing to the same level of mediocrity for 4 straight months now. To me, that is enough data to represent a solid baseline, not a fluke that they can just "shake off".
What's different from '06? It doesn't seem to be BA or OBP: .258 and .341 in '08 vs. .264 and .334 in '06. It's not SO or BB either: we're on track to have exact same # of Ks with more BBs. Fielding is about the same: 112 E in '06 vs. target of 119 in '08.
One answer seems to be clutch hitting: we were getting an extra RBI every 2-3 games in '06. What about pitching? ERA in '08 is actually slightly lower, while Ks are the same but BBs are up in '08 by 23%. Another answer might be luck: we won 6 more games than our pythagorean expected based on runs scored/given up.
My guess is this "luck" had more to do with a solid bullpen preserving leads. At the end of the day I think the reason we won slightly more games than expected in '06 and we're not doing it in '08 (or end of '07) is due to Darren Oliver, Duaner Sanchez, Guillermo Mota, Chad Bradford, Heilman, Feliciano, and Roberto Hernandez. Those guys were all lights out, and except for Feliciano they are no longer with us or not doing well this year.
So, the upshot is that if Omar wants to squeeze more wins out of this team, he better focus on bolstering the bullpen with some in-season acquisitions or trades.
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2 comments:
I think it's clear that this team is built such that we have just above average hitting and pitching, such that we will just barely score more runs than we concede on average. So what it comes down to is whether our bullpen will step up to preserve the win in 1-run games. If they do, we'll pick up an additional 5-8 games a year. If they don't we'll lose an additional 5-8 games a year. It's no coincidence that the team's absolute worst stretch (Sep '07) aligned with the bullpen meltdown
I think this post is dead-on, but the question remains, is the on-paper talent equivalent to a .500 or not?
If not, how do you get things moving in the right direction?
Fire the manager is certainly an easy and popular solution, but if the problem is the players themselves not playing to potential, changing the manager may not fix the problem.
Does the chemistry need to be altered in a big way, by changing personnel, for instance?
One could definitely make the argument that the right side of the infield needs to go, both for production and chemistry reasons.
Does Beltran need to go as well? You'd certainly get something for him.
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