Six Days, Seven Nights

I don’t like small sample sizes, much less making decisions based on them, but they are hilarious to look at.

A week ago, the Mets were riding high - 10-2, the best record in baseball, and the largest lead ever after 12 games (5).  And some claimed it was “quality of schedule”, but that’s mostly nonsense at this point because you don’t know who is going to be good, and who isn’t.  These are all major league teams and can win any game - any pitcher can throw a no-hitter, as long as he doesn’t play or the Mets at the time, and any team of hitters can be hot at any given time.

So what happened since? No one can hit the ball.  No one.  Okay, Delgado.  It’s amusing to look at the OPSes of the players up and down the lineup.  In the typical lineup, over the last week, here are the OPS marks by lineup slot:

0.339
0.345
0.968
0.628
0.408
0.683
0.448
0.765

How that hitting went 2-5 the last week is amazing.

Delgado is going to hit a lot of solo home runs.  Normally, I’m not a “shake up the lineup” kind of guy, but the lack of OBP, not just this season, but career-wise, at the top of the order needs to be addressed.  Unfortunately, as I complained in my rpeview, no one on the bench can hit/play either.  It’d be nice if we had Victor Diaz instead of Endy Chavez.

Keith Hernandez, for all his dumb comments (insert your recent column of choice), also makes smart hitting observations, and someone needs to work with Reyes on his swing.  I have never cared for having someone “who can handle the bat” hit second.  I want someone “who can get on base” hitting second.  LoDuca isn’t a #2 hitter - he’s a #8 hitter *when* he is throwing baserunners out.  His success rate for that is Piazza-ian thusfar.

So what should Willie do?  Get Beltran back in the lineup or on the DL.  Get a second baseman that has a history of being able to get on base, and have him hit leadoff until Reyes can understand his job is to get on base, not hit triples, and get Ramon Castro more PAs.  Okay, there is no one to bat leadoff on the team, so we’ll bite the bullet on that - Reyes, Beltran, Delgado, DWright, Floyd, Nady, Matsui, Catcher.

It’s a good team, with good hitters from 2-5, acceptable hitters at 1, 6-8.  The pitching staff has been excellent, with the one exception who shall not be named. 

After San Fran, it’s down to Atlanta for a series, so it’d be a good time to get off the schneid.