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October 2, 2008
Its the offense
Yes the bullpen blew 29 saves. Yes Billy Wagner’s injury gave them zero decent options. And yes the bullpen needs to be improved. But it was how teams were able to shut down the offense for long chunks of time that cost the Mets a playoff birth in 2008. In particular a few streaks in May and June when the Mets could barely stay at .500 was the biggest reason the Mets did not win more games. Throw in the offensive weakness against the Marlins in September and I see the offense being shut down all at once. There were 35 games this year that the Mets scored 2 runs or less. half in May and June. Here are some bad spots. 20W-19L 22-24 30-33 37-39 39-41 It is Omar’s legacy that he did not recognize this and go after Bay or Manny when they were available. Lets hope Fernando Martinez turns out to be worth the wait. ben lomond, california 95005 12 Responses to “Its the offense”Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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A key pt is that Omar did not have the chips to get Manny or Bay.
The Sox wanted a ML ready OF. The Mets did not have one.
The Dodgers had prospects the Pirates wanted for Bay.
Its easy to point to the lack of a trade as a problem.
What’s harder is looking at why a trade was not made.
it’s the pen. The offense was 2nd in runs scored
Yeah, but with the seasons Wright, Reyes, Beltran, & Delgado had, they should have been 1st in runs by a healthy margin. Unfortunately, they got:
LF: .273/.334/.396/.730, 10hr, 68rbi
RF: .283/.347/.423/.770, 17hr, 80rbi
2B: .258/.339/.338/.677, 74 runs
And that’s with the contributions the Mets got from Tatis & Murphy.
it doesn’t matter. Iagree we got Zero production outta some spots but we got nothing out of ANY spots in the pen
Look, I agree the bullpen was by far the primary culprit. I’m not disputing that. And, overall, the offense had an excellent season. I still think there are plenty of times when the offense came up short, not only in that Marlins series (where they scored a total of 5 runs), but also in games (e.g. against the Braves, Cubs) where they failed to break the game open despite opportunities to do so.
Some of those games we could have won in spite of the bad bullpen.
all offenses slump at times.
The Padres with the lowest runs scored in the league had 55 losses where they scored 2 or less, and 62 total games with 2 or less.
So Mets clearly were not as bad.
I didn’t count Met wins with 2 runs or less above. They only won 3 such games. (3-35).
The phillies were 4-31 in games where they scored 2 or less.
Cubs (#1 in NL) were 3-31. Maybe this is all a wash.
So I am left wondering if there is something about how this lineup is constructed that makes them all shut down at the same time often by one pitcher. Are they all too similar in some way?
The Mets were definitely not going to be a play in a Manny/Bay scenario. What about Ibanez though? .321/.385/.536 during the 2nd half sure would have helped. I’ll be writing a piece about this at some point, but the Mets drafting of one reliever after the next put them in a position where they had no chips.
Diddn’t the Mariners want Niese for Ibanez?
That was the rumor Peter.
Ibanez is also 37 yrs old.
We need to stop getting older.
How many times do you expect the offense to overcome the deficiencies of the bullpen?
The Mets were in the top half or top third of the league in every meaningful stat. They were 3rd in blown saves, bottom 10%, that sums up the season. If a starter didn’t go deep in the game, it was russian roulette.
*Offensive stat that is.