Despite the month of August being mostly horrific for the New York Mets — both on and off the field — a small surge at the end may give some fans hope for September.
After all, the Mets have won four games in a row, which is the first time they’ve done that since the end of May (this technically isn’t true because one counts for April since it was a suspended contest, but still, momentum is momentum, right?). New York limped through a gauntlet of games against the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, but seeing the Washington Nationals and Miami Marlins afterward certainly helps.
Through their last four victories, the Mets are averaging 5.75 runs per game, scoring at least five times on three different occasions. Is the offense finally waking up from its season-long slumber? This is a question we’ve been asking all year when they show signs of life, and then we eventually get disappointed again, so we’ll see if it can continue on Thursday against Miami.
Even if New York’s lineup goes on a ridiculous tear throughout September, it’ll be hard to erase the lack of performance from the five months prior. Entering play on Thursday, manager Luis Rojas‘ club has put together a collective line of .236/.313/.383 with 140 home runs, 473 RBI, and 497 runs scored, all of which susses out to a 94 wRC+.
That is the opposite of what we expected from these guys in 2021. Even with their struggles in last year’s truncated season, the Mets posted a 121 wRC+ in 2020, which was second in baseball to only the Dodgers. So, this year’s performance has been quite a major disappointment across the board, offensively speaking. While their team batting average and on-base percentage are among the middle-of-the-pack (ish), their team slugging percentage is firmly among the worst in baseball. The same can be said about where they rank as a team on the league’s homer, RBI, and runs scored leaderboards.
And, this doesn’t even take into account how their team .697 OPS is one of baseball’s lowest with runners in scoring position.
Depressed yet? Yea, me too. None of this information is new or groundbreaking — anyone that follows the Mets on a regular basis is aware of this. Even with one month left in the regular season, I’m curious as to how this year’s Mets offense compares to others in recent franchise history. We’ll use 2010 as the arbitrary cut-off because I can, so let’s look at each squad’s slugging percentage, OPS, home runs, RBI, runs scored, and wRC+ from each year and see how they compare to the current club.
Considering how much talent is on the offensive side of the Mets’ roster, this is quite disheartening. As we can see, New York’s offense has been trending in a better direction recently, especially when compared to the 2010-14 squads. But from where the 2021 team currently resides in these statistical departments, they resemble more of those early 2010s Mets teams, unfortunately.
If we take out the shortened season of 2020, the Mets have to score 122 runs over their final 31 games just to surpass the 2013 squad, whose 619 runs scored are the fewest in team history since 2010 (at the moment). That’s not an outrageous number to hit, but it’s also one the Mets have achieved just once all season (124 runs scored in July). So, unless the offense gets hot, it could be a “race” to the finish.
Another aspect of the offense that’s been frustrating is the general lack of individual power, which has been mostly a team effort outside of Pete Alonso. Only Alonso and Dominic Smith currently qualify for the batting title, so we’ll expand the following conversation to players with at least 250 plate appearances this season.
Through 506 plate appearances, Alonso has an outside shot of achieving his second season of 30-plus homers and 100-plus RBI, as he’s sitting at 29 and 76, respectively, heading into Thursday’s action. Outside of him, though, the rest of the picture looks kind of bleak. Smith is second on the club with 54 RBI, and nobody else has more than 40 right now. When looking at the team home run leaderboard, Jonathan Villar (16) and Kevin Pillar (12) are a distant second and third, respectively.
The -illar brothers have been important contributors to this year’s club, but if everything went how the Mets wanted, that wouldn’t have been the case. Again looking back to 2010, here’s a table that shows the number of Mets players with 20-plus homers, along with players who collected 90-plus RBI in a single year.
For 2021, Alonso already gives the Mets one hitter with 20-plus dingers, and if Villar can hit four more, he’ll double that number. The only legitimate shot New York has at a player collecting at least 90 RBI, though, is with Alonso. He’s collected nearly 50% of his season total over the past two months, so there’s a decent shot of him getting there.
The above table tells us a few things. They’ve certainly gone in the wrong direction from the 2019 campaign, and they’ve lacked a consistent run producer (by way of this old counting statistic) for quite a while. Alonso has proven to be the club’s one true run producer over his first two full seasons (’19 and ’21). Remember when projections were telling us to get ready for a powerful year in Queens? I’d like to go back to those times, too.
We all knew the Mets’ 2021 offensive output has been disappointing, but looking back at recent team results shows us just how bad it’s been. This should lead to some changes and potentially tough decisions this winter to continue progressing toward building a consistent winner. Unlike years past with the previous ownership group, we can at least be hopeful that things will actually change.
