A Deep Dive into the Mets’ Offensive Struggles
The Mets are currently 26th in runs scored. They are 28th in OPS, 24th in AVG, 27th in OBP, and 24th in home runs. They are 10th in strikeout rate which is the closest to a results based positive there is. Across this seven game losing streak the Mets have slashed .182/.215/.262/.477 scoring only ten runs.
So what is the cause of this team wide slump? Let’s take a deeper dive.
Zone Contact
Making contact on pitches in the zone is a large part of success. It is as simple as it sounds. Brett Baty and Carson Benge are both in the bottom 29% in zone contact. Mark Vientos is in the 15th percentile. Jorge Polanco is currently the only player on the team with a plus zone contact rate in the 88th percentile, followed by Bo Bichette in the 76th percentile. Almost every player is playing below their career average in zone contact so there should be some optimism of an improvement here.
Photo Credit: John Jones-Imagn Images
Struggles With Velocity
A big reason the Mets are struggling to make contact in the zone is because they are struggling with velocity. Bo Bichette, Luis Robert Jr., Marcus Semien, Carson Benge, and Luis Torrens all have a whiff rate over 25% against pitches 95+ miles per hour. This means that pitchers can attack these players with heat to beat them.
Struggles With Secondary Pitches
Francisco Lindor, Francisco Alvarez, Bo Bichette, Marcus Semien, Brett Baty, Mark Vientos, and Luis Robert Jr. all have a whiff rate over 30% against secondary pitches. So while a large portion of the team is struggling with velocity, the rest of the team largely is struggling with breaking and off-speed pitches. The team as a whole seems to be in-between.
Pulling the Ball
Bo Bichette, Mark Vientos, Luis Robert Jr., Brett Baty, Carson Benge and Jared Young are all pulling the ball in the air less than 8.7% putting them all below 20th percentile. Francisco Lindor, Francisco Alvarez, and Luis Torrens are also below average.
Pulling the ball in the air is one of the easiest ways to access power so it should not be a shock that a team that is not pulling the ball in the air at a high rate is struggling to hit home runs.
Hitting the Ball Hard
The Mets as a whole are not hitting the ball hard enough. Francisco Lindor, Bo Bichette, Jorge Polanco, Brett Baty, and Luis Robert Jr. have all been below average in hard-hit rate. Torrens, Bichette, Semien, Polanco, Vientos, Benge, Baty, Taylor, and Robert Jr. have been below average in barrel rate. Torrens, Lindor, Bichette, Taylor, Polanco, Semien, Vientos and Baty have been below average in 90% exit velocity.
So, the Mets aren’t hitting many home runs solely because they aren’t pulling the ball, but because they also aren’t consistently hitting the ball hard.
Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
Walk Rate
The Mets as a team are not walking. They are 27th overall in walk percent, and that is with Luis Robert Jr. walking 18.2% of the time. Brett Baty, Bo Bichette, Mark Vientos, Tyrone Taylor, Marcus Semien, and Jared Young are all in the bottom 25% in walks, with none of them walking more than 6.2%. Their aggression is allowing starters to go deeper into games.
Selectivity
Brett Baty, Mark Vientos, Carson Benge, Tyrone Taylor, Bo Bichette, and Marcus Semien all rate below 50% in selectivity%. Baty, Vientos, Alvarez, Bichette, Semien, are taking more than 30% of hittable pitches. Torrens, Bichette, Polanco, Vientos, Baty and Taylor are all in the bottom third in chase rate. This means that these players are not swinging at the pitches they should be.
Conclusion
While there is some bad luck involved here – at least half the team is very clearly underperforming their peripherals – it does not seem to be purely bad luck but some team wide issues. The Mets consistently seem to be in-between when at the plate. They don’t know whether to sit fastball, breaking, or off-speed and they end up getting consistently beat. They aren’t swinging at the right pitches and are not making enough contact in the zone. When they are making contact, they are not hitting the ball hard or pulling it in the air at a consistent enough rate.
The good news is that for many hitters on the team do not typically have these issues so there should be some expectation that over a larger sample size these will improve. When you take data from a team wide slump, you are going to typically see these exact issues. But this data does show that there are legitimate issues that need to be cleaned up for this team to come out of this slump.
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