Breaking the Mets doubles record?

Tonight David Wright got his 30th double of the season. With about 53 games left to play, can Wright reach 44 or more doubles this year? The most he’s gotten is 42 thrice in 2005, 2007, 2008. By getting more than 44 he can break the Mets record for most doubles in a season by Bernard Gilkey in 1996. Just going off Wright’s 3ABs so far, he has 30 2Bs in 402 ABs =  0.073. If he were to get another 200 ABs this season, at the rate he’s going he’d get 14.9 2Bs. That certainly makes it look good for him. But then again this is probably not the first time he’s been this close to getting 44-45 2Bs.

There was also talk in tonight’s broadcast about Wright potentially fighting for the Batting title as well. What do you guys think?

Hanley Ramirez .344
Pablo Sandoval .334
Joey Votto .328
David Wright .326

The Best Side

One of the many new items one can study on the extraordinary baseball-reference.com after its makeover this year (a deep site, getting ever deeper)  is team platoon advantage.  That is, one can see what percentage of each team’s plate appearances, by its hitters, are taken from the advantageous side of the plate (i.e., the hitter batting left-handed against right-handed pitchers or batting right-handed when a lefty is on the mound).

With Beltran, Reyes and Castillo all switch-hitters, and thus holding this ”platoon advantage” 100% of the time, the Mets as a team have been consistently high up in the ”platoon advantage” ranks for four years running now. Here are the top three teams in % of PAs with the platoon advantage for 2009 to date, and then for the past three full seasons.  Note that the major league average this season has been 55%,  and has been 54% each of the past three full seasons.  The lowest percentage each season by any team has been from 40% to 43%

Top Platoon Advantage Percentages — 2009
Yanks 70%
Mets 65%
Angels 63%

Top Platoon Advantage Percentages — 2008
Mets 71%
Rays 66%
Giants 65%

Top Platoon Advantage Percentages — 2007
Giants 67%
Yanks/Mets 64%

Top Platoon Advantage Percentages — 2006
Diamondbacks 65%
Mets 64%
Phils/Yanks 63%

Swing Time

The Mets just traded Ryan Church to Atlanta for Jeff Francoeur, who was a bit of a sensation when he first came up to the majors in 2005 and did quite well. But then he seems to have gone into a steep decline to the point where he’s not hitting well enough to justify a major league outfield position.  One odd aspect of his career is that on the one hand he has successfully reduced his strikeout rate every season he has been in the majors.

% of PAs ending in a K:
2005: 21.2%
2006: 19.2%
2007: 18.5%
2008: 17.0%
2009: 14.2%

But unfortunately he also successfully reduced his home rate every season he has been in the majors.
% of PAs ending in a home run:
2005: 5.1%
2006: 4.2%
2007: 2.7%
2008: 1.7%
2009: 1.5%

Perhaps the Mets can convince him to stop worrying about striking out and just let loose?

Mets Weakly

BP posted here lasted month about the Mets’ lack of power this season showing up primarily on the home run side, with strong performances in triples and doubles continuing to show up, and also speculated that the move from homers to other extra-base hits might be largely a function of Citi Field park effects.

In the last few weeks, as key injuries have continued to accumulate, the Mets overall power numbers have deteriorated further, and right now are looking like major league weaklings, both at home and on the road.

“Isolated Power” (ISO) is a statistic, first developed decades ago by Bill James, with a very simple formula: Slugging Percentage minus Batting Average. By deducting BA from SLG, ISO measures just that part of  SLG that is derived from extra-base power — the portion of SLG that measures the ability to hit for singles is extracted, leaving just extra-base power as the quality being measured.  The Mets right now are 30th, dead last, in the majors in team ISO for the 2009 season.  The bottom 5 teams in the majors right now in Isolated Power:

Mets .124
A’s .125
Giants .129
Dodgers .131
Pirates .132

The 2009 major league average is .155.  The current top three teams in 2009 ISO are the Rangers (.199), the Yanks (.198) and the Phils (.192)

The Mets weak performance in ISO is not limited to Citi Field. In fact, the Mets have the 28th lowest home game ISO in the majors  and the 28th lowest visiting game ISO in the majors.  They are the only team that is in the bottom three both home and away.  At Citi, the Mets’ ISO is .131, that’s .032 below the league average for teams playing at home.  Away from Citi, the Mets’ .117 ISO is .030 below the league average for teams playing on the road.

The loss of Carlos Delgado has been especially tough on the Mets’ ISO.  Among over 1,700 players all-time who have accumulated at least 3,000 career MLB plate appearances, Delgado currently sits 15th in career Isolated Power, with a .266 career ISO, just behind Ralph Kiner at .269 and just ahead of David Ortiz at .262.  Babe Ruth is #1 on this list with a .348 ISO, ahead of #2 Mark McGwire at .325 and #3 Barry Bonds at .309.  Of the 229 players who have accumulated at least 3,000 career MLB PAs and debuted in the majors after 1991, Luis Castillo is 229th and last in career  ISO, with a career ISO of .063.  On that list of 229 players, Alex Cora is not far ahead of Luis, with a .100 ISO that sits 210th among those 229 players (Delgado’s .266 career ISO is 5th on this list, behind Albert Pujols at .297, Manny Ramirez at .279, and Adam Dunn and Alex Rodriguez ,each at  .272).

Short Production Chain

Continuing on the theme from the previous post, the Mets have now gone four straight games with fewer than six hits as a team in each game.  The Mets had not gone 4 games in a row with fewer than six hits in almost five years.  The last time was in September, 2004, when the streak actually reached five games, tying a franchise record set in 1963 and reached again in 1989.

Perhaps even more distressing,  the Mets have gone four straight games with fewer than seven total bases as a team in each game.  That is only the third time in franchise history the Mets have reached such a streak, and the first time in over 36 years.  The only other times the Mets had at least four consecutive games of no more than six TBs occurred way back in September, 1972, and before that in September 1963 when the  streak reached 5 games. Over the past six years, only two other teams in MLB have matched the Mets’ four game streak of fewer than seven team TBs: the Nats and Giants both did it in July last season (the Nats’ streak stretched to five games).  Prior to that no team had done it since the Tigers in 2002.

Hittin Em Where They Aint

Ben Shpigel of the NY Times has a good article today  , http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/sports/baseball/18wright.html?ref=baseball, that mentions among other things David’s crazy BABIP (batting average on balls in play) number so far in 2009. Shpigel points out that David’s BABIP through Tuesday’s game was at an all-time-major league-record-breaking level if sustained through a whole season (though don’t hold your breath for that).

Shpigel suggests David’s crazily high BABIP is likely a Citi Field generated phenomenon, and indeed it is surely partly that. But it should be noted that baseball-reference.com (which Shpigel cites elswhere in his article) shows David’s 2009 BABIP, though extremly high in Citi, has been even higher in away games in 2009. B-ref has him today at a BABIP of .443 in home games and .495 on the road. The 2009 league average for BABIP is .296 (the overall MLB average for plain old batting average in 2009 so far is .261).

By the way, Shpigel says that according to Elias Sports Bureau, David’s overall BABIP through Tuesday this week was .497.   I don’t know what formula Elias was using for BABIP to get to that number, but it seems a bit higher than the number that would have been produced by the standard formulas used by baseball-reference or ESPN. 

Good Eye

BP’s post below analyzed the interesting developments this season in the Mets’ power numbers, which are presumably being affected both by the new home ballpark and injury issues.  A further interesting aspect to the changing dimensions of the Mets offense this season is in the area of strikeouts and walks.  Most prominently, the Mets as a team are striking out less often than any other team in the major leagues, by a substantial amount.  This fact is all the more remarkable because AL teams have an inherent advantage in maintaining low team strikeout rates in that their pitchers bat in only a few games a year (interleague games in NL parks).  In 2009, MLB teams are striking out at a rate of about 7 K’s per game  —  6.85 Ks per game to be more precise.   The strikeout rate for Mets batters in 2009 has, in contrast, been only 5.42 Ks per game, the lowest K rate of the 30 MLB teams, and well below the rate even of the Mariners — Seattle’s rate of 5.72 Ks per game is the second lowest in the majors.

And at the same time Mets batters  are striking out less often than batters of any other team in the majors, Mets batters are also walking more often than any other team in the majors.  The Mets are walking at a rate of 4.32 per game just ahead of the Nats, who are second in the majors with a 4.27 rate per game.  The major league average is about 3.6 walks per game.

So Mets batters are both walking more and striking out less than any other team in baseball.  We can combine these two stats and get a batters’ strikeout to walk ratio, which clearly for the Mets in 2009 is at an unusually low level.  Mets batters in 2009 are racking up 1.25 Ks for every walk they take.  The major league average in 2009, in contrast, is  1.91 to be precise and the second lowest ratio in the majors is held by the Yankees at 1.49.  The Mets’ batters’ 1.25 K per walk ratio would, if the Mets were to sustain it over a full season, be the second lowest such ratio of the current decade.   Only the 2004 Giants, who had a 1.24 K per walk ratio, and that was all because of Barry Bonds’ all-time freakish number of walks that season.  Bonds had 232 walks in 2004, the only season any major leaguer has ever had with more than 200 walks in a season (the most walks in any season by any man other than Bonds is 170 by Babe Ruth in 1923).  The 2009  Mets of course have no one to compare to Barry Bonds, yet are maintaining a remarkably low K to BB ratio.  Thus far in 2009, the Mets hitters are maintaining a truly unusual profile.

Are the Mets powerless?

Someone recently asked how many HRs the Mets might hit this year because it seems their power is gone.

Last year they hit 172 HRs in 162 games. I believe had the Mets been playing in Shea this year they’d be on about the same rate. There have been way too many fly balls out there that just die or bounce off the wall at CitiField. I think the lack of HRs from the team this year will be more due to CitiField than anything else. On the flip side you might also see more 2Bs and 3Bs than last year. To sort of show what I mean, if you take the SLG of just 2B and 3B (no HRs), you can see how the Mets rank against other teams.

2009				2008
Rank	Team	SLG		Rank	TEAM	SLG
1	Pittsburgh	0.146		1	Arizona	0.144
2	NY Mets	0.140		2	Milwaukee	0.136
3	Philadelphia	0.140		3	San Francisco	0.132
4	Arizona	0.139		4	Atlanta	0.130
5	Colorado	0.136		5	Chicago Cubs	0.129
6	San Francisco	0.131		6	Colorado	0.127
7	St. Louis	0.130		7	Philadelphia	0.125
8	LA Dodgers	0.127		8	Florida	0.125
9	Atlanta	0.127		9	Pittsburgh	0.123
10	Houston	0.126		10	NY Mets	0.118
11	Milwaukee	0.115		11	Houston	0.116
12	Washington	0.115		12	St. Louis	0.114
13	Chicago Cubs	0.112		13	LA Dodgers	0.114
14	Cincinnati	0.109		14	Washington	0.112
15	San Diego	0.108		15	Cincinnati	0.112
16	Florida	0.101		16	San Diego	0.109

.

As you can see, last year the Mets were 10th in the same statistic. More importantly, there is a .022 difference between this year and last year which is pretty significant considering the range between the worst and best team. I don’t know how many home runs that means the Mets will hit this year, but as far as their ‘power’ being gone, I don’t think that’s the case as much as it is the fault of the park they play in. The interesting thing about home parks also is that players naturally tend to do better at home, but more importantly they also adjust their hitting to their home park which sometimes can affect them on the road (positively or negatively).

My estimate is that the Mets will hit 115 HRs, and end up in the top 5 in 2Bs and lead the league in 3Bs.

Big Bang, Little Buck

The Mets’ 6 to 5 victory over the Phillies last night was the 43rd time in  franchise history that Mets hitters combined at least three homers and at least four doubles in a single game.  In only one of the previous 42 such games before last night did the Mets score only 6 runs.  That only other time was Opening Day 2005, Willie Randolph’s first regular season game as manager.  In that game the Mets rode homers by Floyd, Beltran and Matsui and doubles by Beltran, Piazza, Wright and Reyes (2  by Jose) to a 6-4 lead going into the bottom of the ninth but Braden Looper faced three Reds batters in the 9th, surrendering a single to Austin Kearns, a homer to Adam Dunn and then a walkoff  homer to Joe Randa.

Homers Come Home

In the Mets past two games against the Phillies, last night and May 7, the two teams have combined for 12 homers, an average of 6 homers per game.  In the other 25 regular season games that have been played at Citifield to day, there have been 33 homers (combined between the Mets and the visiting teams), an average of 1.3 homers per game.  Across the majors as a whole in 2009 so far, the average number of combined homers per game is about 2.0.

End of Act One

The Mets have completed 54 games of the 2009 regular season — exactly one-third of the 162 game schedule.  At their current pace, Carlos Beltran and David Wright would both break the Mets franchise record for doubles in a season.  Beltran has 17 doubles in 2009 and Wright has 15.  Extended over a full season that would produce 51 doubles for Carlos and 45 for David — the Mets’ franchise record is 44, set by Bernard Gilkey in 1996 (Wright had 42 doubles in 2005, 2007 and 2008 and thus all by himself enjoys a three-way tie for the second highest doubles-in-a-season total in Mets history.

Only one Met player has ever topped 100 walks in a season — John Olerud walked 125 times in 1999, but the second highest walks-in-a-season total for the Mets is 97, accomplished by both Keith Hernandez (in 1984) and Darryl Strawbwerry ( in 1987).  David Wright has 35 walks so far in 2009, a pace of 105 per 162-game season.

Wright is also on pace for  a couple of negative records.  Tommie Agee (in 1970) and Dave Kingman (in 1982) hold the Mets franchise record for strikeouts in a season with 156 Ks.  David has 54 Ks through 54 games in 2009, which obviously is a 162 K pace over 162 games.

And the Mets record for the number of times in a season thrown out trying to steal a base (CS, for caught stealing) is 21, set by Lenny Randle (1977) and tied by Jose Reyes (30 years later, in 2007).  Wright already has 8 CSs in 2009, a 24 CS pase over the full season.  Cool it, David — I know the Mets are suffered some injuries, but you can’t win baseball games through force of will – one still has to play the percentages, play smart.

On the pitching side, the Mets record for saves in a season is 43, set by Armando Benitez in 2001.  Frankie Rodrgiuez has 15 saves in 15 save opportunities in 2009, a 45 save pace if extended over a full season.  Johan Santana has 7 wins and 89 Ks so far – if extended over a full season that pace would produce 21 wins and 267 Ks.  No Mets pitcher has had that many wins or Ks since the historic 1985 season of “Dr. K” himself, Dwight Gooden.

Last season, Pedro Feliciano led the major leagues by appearing in 86 games (Will Ohman then of the Braves was second with 83 appearances) and also set the Mets record for appearances in a season (again,  83 is the second-place number, Mike Stanton appeared in 83 games for the Mets in 2004).  Pedro is at it again, with 29 appearances already in 2009, which comes out to an 87 game pace over the 162-game season. J.J Putz also has 29 appearances for the Mets this season, but he’s now injured and out for much or all the rest of the season, so his pace is moot. Despite his Mets franchise record-breaking pace, Feliciano is not currently leading the NL in appearances  — Kiko Calero and Leo Nunez, both of the Marlins, already have 32 and 30 appearances respectively.  In 1974, Mike Marshall (who later ended his career as a Met), pitching for the Dodgers, appeared in 106 games to set the all-time season record  by a wide margin (the second highest number ever is 94).  Marshall subsequently received a doctorate in kinesiology, the science of human movement.

Order in the Middle

David Wright was 4 for 5 in the clean-up spot for the Mets last night, and had the big, extra-iinning hit.  That was just one more game in a trend of impressive clean-up spot performances for the Mets this season.  So far in 2009, the Mets have had a spectacular .997 OPS from the clean-up spot in their batting order.  That is third highest 4th-spot OPS in the majors, just a little behind the Brewers (.998) and Red Sox (1.009).  The overall MLB average for OPS from the clean-up spot this season is .832.  The Mets’ starters at cleanup have been Delgado (25 games), Sheffield (20 games), Wright (4 games), Beltran (3 games) and Tatis (1 game).

The Mets have received almost as impressive a performance out of their 5th spot.  Their .918 fifth-spot OPS is second in the majors, behind only the Angels, and compares to the 2009 MLB average .782 OPS from the fifth spot.  David Wright (30 starts in the #5 spot) and Carlos Beltran (15 games) each have an OPS of exactly .975 hitting in the fifth spot. Murphy (6 games), Church and Tatis (1 game each) have the other 5th spot starts.

So the 4 and 5 spots in the order have been terrific.  The sixth spot is another story altogether.  With a horrible .576 OPS from their sixth spot batters, the Mets are ahead of only San Diego (.548 OPS from the sixth spot) among the 30 MLB teams in this category. The average 6th-spot OPS in the majors this season is .759.  The Mets have tried 9 different players in the sixth spot this season, and the only one with a decent OPS when batting sixth is the traded-away Ramon Castro, who started in the sixth spot once this season for the Mets and ended up with a .750 OPS for that game. Church (21 starts in the #6 spot, with a .668 OPS from that position in the batting order) and Tatis (10 starts/.497 OPS) have started the most games in the 6th spot, but even Gary Sheffield, who has done so well after moving out of the sixth spot, had a poor .539 OPS in his seven starts from the sixth spot in the batting order.  Pagan, Santos and Ramon Martinez have combined for 13 PAs, and 13 outs, while batting sixth. Murphy (5 starts/.628), F-Mart (2 starts/.619) and Reed (4 starts/.706) have not exactly cooked on gas when hitting out of the sixth spot, either.

Double Down

It was appropriate that the Mets big hit to take the lead in extra-innings last night was a double.  The Mets had five doubles in this game but only 8 total hits.  The last time the Mets had at least five doubles in a game but fewer than nine total hits was more than 17 years ago — April 14, 1992, when the Mets actually had 6 doubles and only eight total hits.  That was an Anthony Young start just a few weeks before the start of his infamous and almost incomprehensible streak of 27 losses credited without a single credited win.  This game, against Philadelphia, was a hint of the bad luck that was to come for A.Y., as Young got a no-decision despite leaving the game after the 6th inning with the Mets in the lead.  Paul Gibson began the 7th on the mound for the Mets and let the Phillies tie the game, but the Mets came back in the bottom of the 7th to regain the lead for good. Eddie Murray had two doubles in this game for the Mets, and Willie Randolph, Charlie O’Brien, Dick Schofield and Dave Gallagher each had one double for the Mets.

Last night was only the fourth game in Mets history in which the Mets had at least 5 doubles but fewer than 9 total hits. It was the third game in the major leagues this season with that odd combination, though all of them have occurred in the last 12 days.

Multi-Tasking

Gary Sheffield at 40 years old has had a couple of stolen bases this season  for the Mets in addition to his solid hitting, and the steals seem to have caught some people by surprise.  But Sheffield, though better known for his hitting  (and his sometimes bizarre comments), has long been a guy who steals a substantial number of bases.   Indeed, he now has 252 stolen bases in his career to go along with the 500+ homers.

Bill James years ago invented a fun stat, which he called “Power-Speed Number”, to identify guys who both hit a lot of homers and stole a lot of bases.  For his new stat, James used the formula (2*HR*SB)/(HR+SB), which is an application of the ”harmonic mean of two numbers” in mathematics.  The idea is that to look for a guy who is good at both homers and steals, you want a formula that gives some credit for getting a lot of homers or a lot of steals but much more credit for getting a lot of both.  The harmonic mean of two numbers formula  gives some credit for every increase in either homers or steals but always limits the result to double the lower of the two numbers.  So a guy who hits 200 homers but only steals one base gets a Power-Speed Number of 1.99o, a guy who hits 500 homers but only steals one base gets a Power-Speeed Number of 1.996,  a tiny increase.  But a guy who hits ten homers and ten stolen bases gets a much higher Power-Speed Number of  10.000. You need to score high with both homers and steals to get a high  Power-Speed Number.

Sheffield now has the 11th highest Power-Speed Number in major league hstory, and with just two more career steals, or one more steal and two more homers, or six more homers, he will pass Sammy Sosa and move into the top ten all-time.  Here are the top 11 career Power-Speed Numbers of all-time, thanks to the miraculous baseball-reference.com (which provides the source database for most of  my research here at MetStats):

1. Barry Bonds 613.9
2. Rickey Henderson 490.4
3. Willie Mays 447.1
4. Bobby Bonds 386.0
5. Joe Morgan 385.9
6. Alex Rodriguez 376.0
7. Andre Dawson 365.8
8. Hank Aaron 364.2
9. Craig Biggio 341.8
10. Sammy Sosa 338.1
11. Gary Sheffield 336.9

–Notice that a son, and both his father and his godfather take three of the top four spots all-time in this stat.
–Carlos Beltran currently has the 33rd highest Power-Speed Number of all-time, and is moving up the list swiftly.

The top 5 Power-Speed Numbers in a Mets career:
1. Darryl Strawberry 217.3
2. Howard Johnson 196.9
3. David Wright 116.7
4. Jose Reyes 104.2
5. Carlos Beltran 103.9

Beltran passed Mookie Wilson earlier this season to join this top 5 list.

Baby on Board

• Fernando Martinez made his Mets and major lague debut last night to much fanfare — he becomes as of now the youngest player in the NL and the second youngest in the majors (Detroit pitcher Rick Porcello is a few months younger) .  In his debut game, Martinez was 0 for 3, struck out twice, and got hit by a pitch — welcome to the big leagues, kid.  But he did eke out an RBI on a ground out. 

• When Darryl Strawberry made his major league debut as Met (26 years ago this month), he was about six months older than Fernando is now. Darryl struck out 3 times in his first game, three times in his second game, twice in each of his third and fourth games and once in his fifth game for a total of 11 Ks in his first five games (a 300+ K pace over a full season). After his first 8 games, Darryl had a .138 BA, a .219 OBP and a .276 SLG, for a .495 OPS. After his first 40 games, he was only up to a .180 BA, .245 OBP and .317 SLG for a .562 OPS. But then over the rest of his 1983 season, 82 games worth, Darryl’s numbers were .295 BA, .379 OBP and .609 SLG for a .987 OPS (and this in a year when the major league leader in SLG and OPS, George Brett, finished with a .562 SLG and a .947 OPS).
   
• After Darryl, who would one pick as the Mets outfielder who came out of  the Mets’ own minor league system and produced the most for the Mets big league team?  Probably Cleon Jones or Mookie Wilson, though Mazzilli, Dykstra and Swoboda also came out of the Mets’ system and played well for the Mets.