If there is one thing this first week taught us about the current Mets lineup, they tend to strikeout a lot. Granted in the first six games of the season they faced some tough pitching, but there was not a lot of contact out there.
Now I’m not a coach, so I’m not really sure how you teach guys to not strikeout. Therefore I can’t address that.
I am starting to wonder though if the Mets should experiment with the idea of not following a traditional batting lineup with a fast leadoff hitter and move towards the idea that the best hitters go early in the lineup. For the Mets this would mean starting the lineup with Murphy and moving everybody up:
- Murphy
- Wright
- Granderson
- Davis/Duda
- Lagares
- E Young / C Young
- d’Arnaud / Recker
- Tejada
- Pitcher
The only time you are guaranteed to have your lead off hitter start off the inning is in the first. After that you hope it doesn’t come around again in the 4th because that means you did squat on offense. Moving Murphy and Wright up increases the amount of AB’s they will see throughout the season (marginally). The draw back is this means less players are on base for Wright when he gets up to base. In this case you could shift everyone down again if the Mets could find someone this season with a relatively high OBP, otherwise let our best hitters get more AB’s.
I’ll admit this isn’t as much of a problem this year compared to last year when TC kept trying to make Turner early in the batting order happen.
