When looking at the Mets recent losing streak, and now win streak, I personally see it as three separate streaks. The losing steak started off due to ineffective pitching, but the bats were still there. It then morphed into effective pitching, but the bats went absent. Finally, the Mets are on a winning streak where both the bats and the pitching are evident (imagine that, winning when pitching and hitting), so I wondered where the Mets stood with respect to the league in hits, OBP, and runs (the league average is in parenthesis):
Hits: Mets – 196 (200), Rank: 8
OBP: Mets – .322 (.321), Rank: 9
Runs: Mets – 105 (100), Rank: 6
So the stat that surprised me was that the Mets are 6th in the league in Runs, when 9th in OBP. It always feels at least, to me, that the Mets were leaving a lot of runners on base. Since I'm human, I know that there is a difference between truth and perception. I could perceive something to be bad because of high expectations and that I tend to pay closer attention to the Mets when they are in scoring position. So like any good scientist, I decided to calculate a statistic that compares runs to hits, walks and HBP, after the rankings I'll discuss meaning:
1) Cincinnati .407
2) Arizona .402
3) Colorado .398
4) New York Mets .375
5) Houston .370
5) St. Louis .370
7) Philadelphia .362
8) Atlanta .358
9) San Francisco .357
10) Washington .355
11) Milwaukee .353
12) Florida .351
13) Los Angeles .329
14) Chicago .323
15) Pittsburgh .312
16) San Diego .259
Average .355
Median .357
Standard Deviation .037
First, what does this stat even mean? It is a reflection of the ratio of runs to runners. It is hard to derive a strong statement about the rankings other than the question the stat was designed to answer. For example, we would consider a team that gets a lot of runners on every game, and scores enough runs, as a good team, however teams like that could be burned in this stat if they leave runners on. Leaving runners on base drops this stat significantly. Also, if a team is just a slugging team, but has a low OBP, this stat makes the team look better than what they actually are. For example, if we make up a team that would only hit homers, then they would have a 1.000 ratio here, obviously be the best, but it doesn't really speak at all to the offense of the team.
However this stat answers the question. It is a perception that the Mets leave a proportionally high amount of runners on base, when compared runs scored. According to the ratios, they are forth in the league of runs to runners scored. So out of 16 teams, when we get runners on base, we are also bringing them home. The question is then how often are we getting runners on base, and then getting them home. (I admit there are some issues with this statistical calculation, which is why I am not using it to make any strong statements about the team).
