Mets offense at the break

Remember what is was like to watch the Mets the last few years? Any game they were down after the 5th inning you just knew they were going to lose. No late inning comebacks, no rallies in the ninth, no walk offs it was beyond depressing to watch. Say what you want about these Mets but won they have done is play dramatic baseball. 2 out rallies, grand slam comebacks, they were everything they recent Mets were not. But overall how has the offense been?

The answer: pretty average. Right now the Mets are16th in hits, 23rd in homers, 8th in runs scored, 25th in stolen bases, 14th in BA, 9th in OBP and 20th in SLG. The Mets have been a very hot and cold team and have benefited from getting a lot of hits with RISP and making the offensive plays when they count. This is both sustainable and not. One thing you do see is that the Mets have a top ten OBP. The more men we have on base the more likely it is for our hits to generate runs. The downside is, some of this is just luck. The Mets don't actually have an ability to hit better with two outs or with RISP, a portion of it is high OBP and a portion is just circumstance, which we can't expect to continue.

Next let's look at the top 5 offensive Mets according to fWAR:

Player	fWAR
Wright	4.9
Tejada	1.3
Nieuwenhuis	1.3
Hairston	1.1
Murphy	0.8

The last time I ran this list Thole and Torres were on it but have now been replaced by Hairston and Murph. Frankly I don't love these numbers. The drop offs are pretty far and I hate having a sub 1 WAR guy on my top 5 list. On the opposite end both Ike and Duda are not only on the bottom end of the Mets WAR list but in the bottom 10 of WAR in all MLB, ironically these two are tied for most homers on the team. Both of them are having sub par years and 12 home runs is not enough to make up for the poor performance. Obviously Wright Tejada and Hairston are having career years. Kirk is playing fine for a rookie albeit very streaky and Murph is playing like, well, Murph. Here is the stat though that will be keeping me up nights.

Player	BABIP
Wright	.385
Tejada	.393
Nieuwenhuis	.372
Hairston	.262
Murphy	.328

The Mets BABIP numbers are outrageously inflated, with the exception of Hairston who has actually been unlucky at the plate  In fact three of them, Wright, Tejada and Kirk are among the top 20 highest in all baseball. Murphy's is a decent bit above league average but Kirk, Wright and Tejada are so high that one of two things is all but assured to happen: the numbers will begin to regress to the mean and we will see a precipitous drop in hitting OR the luck will hold out and they will have career years. Players last year who finished the season with BABIP's close to the Wright and Ruben include: A-Gon, Matt Kemp, Miguel Cabrera and Michael Bourn. Only two players with a BABIP over .340 finished the year with a BA under .300 (Avila, Fowler and Ethier, all who had fantastic years).

We always knew that for the Mets to succeed this year it would take a combination of people having career years and good luck, in the first half, we had both. If our combination of good fortune and skill continues, this should be an October team.