Here it is Thursday, June 18 and the New York Mets find themselves in first place with a 36-31 record and a 1 1/2 game lead over the Washington Nationals. It feels good.
It’s amazing when you think about it. The Mets have played some exciting baseball this season and I couldn’t be happier with how things have transpired thus far.
Our starting pitching has been everything we could have hoped for and our young guns are the envy of all baseball. We’ve had some unexpected breakthrough seasons from many of our players, perhaps none more grander than our new closer Jeurys Familia.
Even all the acrimony over going into the season with Wilmer Flores at shortstop seems so silly now, or at the very least not the doomsday scenario so many envisioned.
However, if there’s one thing that the team certainly needs to improve on, it’s definitely their performance and production on the road.
The Mets are enjoying a remarkable 26-11 record at home, but once they hit the road the wheels fall off as indicated by their 10-20 win-loss.
While the offense has produced 160 runs scored at home, they’ve managed just an MLB-worst 94 runs on the road. Adding to the futility is a 3.23 ERA at Citi Field and a 4.06 ERA everywhere else.
Wouldn’t you know it… After years of suffering through some woeful seasons at Citi, the Mets are finally winning at home, but of course the bottom falls out on the road. Sometimes you just can’t win.
Here’s something for you big believers in run differential, the Mets are at +29 at home and -35 on the road. That’s about as stark a difference as one could get.
With the team having now lost 12 of their last 15 games away from home, it prompted Terry Collins to say, “We’ve got to start playing better on the road. We’ve got to start winning some games.”
Thank you Captain Obvious. I’m only kidding, but they say the first step to fixing a problem is to admit you have one, right?
Although I love where this team is at, can you imagine how much better we would be if we could just play .500 baseball on the road?
Take that 10-20 record for instance and replace it with a 15-15 showing and suddenly the Mets look like the Beasts of the East with a robust 41-26 record and a six game lead over the Nationals.
Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do to change the past, however we could certainly do something about the future. The question of course is how do the Mets change that dynamic? It’s quite a paradox in this tale of two Mets teams, but ultimately this falls on the players.
Why does Michael Cuddyer post a .795 OPS at home and just a .615 OPS on the road?
Why is Wilmer Flores slugging .468 at home and just .363 on the road?
Why does Jacob deGrom have a 1.33 ERA at home and a 4.06 ERA on the road?
These are just a few of the questions the Mets will have to solve if they want to turn things around on the road. And if they can figure this out, we go from a good team to a great team. We go from a contender to a National League powerhouse. Let’s fix this guys.
