I once read that the difference between a story-teller and a statistician is that a story-teller wants you to suspend your disbelief (you’re just not going to enjoy West Side Story unless you’re willing to believe that Puerto Rican gangs like to sing and dance), but a statistician wants you to suspend your belief (clutch hitting may “exist,” but if you can’t find it in the stats, so what?). - Dave Studeman

I spent a lot of time preparing to write this article, and I had a bunch of different ideas and observations that I thought might be confirmed by statistics. Most of my articles didn’t go anywhere. Let me run down some of what I did.

Hypothesis: While Met starting pitchers have thrived under the tutelage of Dan Warthen, Met relievers have struggled.

Background: At Geek Day, a few of us discussed how Mets’ starting pitchers have done significantly better since the arrival of Dan Warthen. I also thought about how bad Met relievers have been over the past couple of months.

So I came up with a grand, overarching theory. Met starting pitchers have great stuff, enough so that they would probably be best off if they were left to their own devices. With Santana’s stellar changeup, Maine’s moving fastball, and Pelfrey’s devastating sinker, the Mets have a collection of supremely talented starting pitchers. Rick Peterson appeared to be fairly systematic in his approach to pitchers, while Warthen seemed to let the pitchers be themselves on the mound. With great stuff guys like Perez and Pelfrey, this would seem to help.

The bullpen, though, is not full of “great stuff” guys. Heilman, Feliciano, and Sanchez, at this stage, don’t have overpowering stuff at all. Feliciano, if we remember, was something of a retread before he found himself as a Met. My thought was that Peterson’s tutelage helped get more out of what was really a subpar bullpen.

But the data don’t really bear that out.

I picked June 23 as my line of demarcation because Warthen had been with the big league club for a week, at that point. In the end, there’s no clear trend. Both Met starters and relievers have picked up the strikeouts. While the walks say something, a lot of the problems can be attributed to a fluctuation in BABIP. And can we really attribute fluctuations in BABIP to a pitching coach change?

Conclusion: There’s a bit of smoke here, but it’s not much. I’ll attribute Oliver Perez’s resurgence to the retooled wind-up and a bit of freedom from Warthen, but there’s not much else we can say.

Hypothesis: Duaner Sanchez’s performance has suffered dramatically since being hit on the knee on a line drive by Yadier Molina.

Background: On July 1, Duaner Sanchez was smacked in the knee by a line drive off the bat of Yadier Molina, who has made a living out of tormenting the Mets. After a few minutes of worrying, Met fans started breathing again after Sanchez walked off the field on his own power. Word was that he was fine.

Along with the rest of the bullpen, Duaner Sanchez has been quite bad over the past month and a half. I’ve noticed a drop in velocity the last thirty days, so I decided to take a look. His strikeouts have gone up, interestingly, over the past month-plus; he posted a 6.8 K/9 before the injury, and a 7.4 K/9 afterwards. Really, his control has deteriorated more than anything else, with the walks jumping from 3.3 BB/9 to 4.9 BB/9.

So, what could that mean? It’s possible that Sanchez hasn’t been able to plant on his leg, thus forcing him to nibble around the plate more, thus leading to more walks. But it’s also possible that Sanchez has tired after four months of high-leverage innings after missing a year-and-a-half of baseball.

Take a look at the Mets’ leverage chart:

So, high-leverage innings and a long season could also be wearing on a pitcher whose velocity is lower than it’s been in his entire career. It’s not the open-and-shut case I thought it would be.

Conclusion: Inconclusive, but I lean towards no real tangible effect. Sanchez just hasn’t been very good this year, as happy as I was to see him when he first returned.

Hypothesis: The Mets have scored dramatically fewer runs than they should have because of poor situational hitting.

Background: Have you watched the Mets this year? They have been enormously frustrating. They’re hitting .247/.341/.377 with runners in scoring position.

But it hasn’t really depressed run scoring. The Mets have scored 610 runs, and their “equivalent runs” from Baseball Prospectus is 611. They’re one run off the pace, in that sense.

I ran BaseRuns to check as well. BaseRuns is my run estimator of choice these days, using the formula A*(B/(B+C))+D, where:

A = H + BB + HBP - HR - .5*IBB (BASERUNNERS)

B = [1.4*TB -.6*H -3*HR +.1*(BB+HBP-IBB) +.9*(SB-CS-GDP)] *1.15 (ADVANCEMENT)

C = AB - H + CS + GDP (OUTS)

D = HR (HOME RUNS)

This is an accurate model of run-scoring, in that it simulates the process of run scoring better than anything I’ve seen. (For more on BsR, check it out on Wikipedia.)

In this stat, the Mets have produced the offensive equivalent of 614 runs. Again, they’re not too far off the pace at all. (The Phils, for the record, are significantly further off of their “run-scoring pace.”) The Mets are doing a good job of getting runners on (fourth in the NL in OBP), and they’re scoring about as many runs as you’d expect, based on their components. It’s an argument against using RISP statistics, certainly.

Conclusion: No dice, here. The Mets have caught up to the pace.

So, I spent a long time trying to find stories to write about. In the end, I didn’t find much. It’s possible that the Mets have been significantly hampered by poor situational hitting, or that Duaner Sanchez has suffered dramatically from his knee injury, or that Dan Warthen has had an odd effect on his pitching staff. But it’s just as likely that regression to the mean and Oliver Perez’s resurgence accounts for the entire change in pitching performance, and that Duaner Sanchez is just tiring, and that the Mets have scored as many runs as they should have.

The truth is, we just don’t know. As fans, we’re allowed to put forth interesting, provocative, insightful, unlikely, or just plain odd theories on why things happen the way they do. But in the end, sometimes the evidence is just inconclusive or not there at all, and I like to think that it’s quite all right to admit that.