Let’s start with the obvious.  In each and every at bat, the optimal result is the home run.  One through nine, you want each and every one of your batters to hit a home run each and every time at the plate.  That’s not always going to happen.  As a result, you are going to have to build runs through basehits, walks, and effective at bats with runners in scoring position.  The best offensive teams are able to score runs and win games even when they are not hitting home runs.  Accordingly, the Mets are not a good offensive team as they are overly reliant upon hitting home runs.

No matter how you slice or dice it, the Mets offense is entirely dependent on hitting a home run.  Here is the breakdown:

In essence, if the Mets don’t hit any home runs, they are not scoring runs, and they are not winning games.  Why?

First and foremost, the Mets just don’t get on base that frequently enough to score runs without hitting homeruns.  The Mets team batting average is .233 which ranks 27th in the majors.  The team OBP is .309 which ranks 23rd in the majors.  In order to score runs by something other than the homerun, you need to get people on base.  In that respect, the Mets are one of the worst in the game right now.

The Mets next problem is that even when there are runners on base, they do nothing with the baserunners.  The Mets are the worst team in baseball with a .226 batting average with runners on base.  Their .303 OBP with runners on base is 28th.  When you look at stats like this, the answer most people advocate is the Mets should start playing some good old fashioned small ball.  The problem with that is the Mets are really bad at playing small ball.

The Mets rank 24th in the majors in productive outs.  A productive out is an out that moves over a baserunner with no outs, when a pitcher lays down a successful sacrifice bunt with one out, or when an out scores a runner.  The Mets have had 613 such opportunities this season, and they have been successful only 29.4% of the time.  A large part of that is, as a team, the Mets have struck out 563 times this year which is the fifth most in the majors.  With the Mets being ineffective in getting people on base, they cannot afford to be this ineffective in moving runners over when they make those outs.

When baserunners take matters into their own hands, the results are just as poor.  This Mets team has not been blessed with much team speed, and as a result, the Mets do not try to steal many bases.  In fact, the Mets rank second to last in stolen base attempts (22) and stolen bases (13).  When the Mets do attempt stolen bases, they are successful only 59.09% of the time.  Now, it has been espoused in order for stealing bases to be an effective tactic, the baserunner needs to be safe 75% of the time.  Therefore, in the rare occasions the baserunners try to take matters into their own hands, they are hurting the team with a poor percentage play.

The Mets not only have trouble getting runner on base and into scoring position, but they also have problems getting those runners home.  The Mets rank DEAD LAST in the majors with a .214 batting average with runners in scoring position.  The Mets 129 RBI with runners in scoring position ranks is tied for last place with the Philadelphia Phillies.  It’s even worse with two outs.  With runners in scoring position with two outs, the Mets are again DEAD LAST in team batting average (.163) and RBI (43).  The Mets are last in the majors with nine sacrifice flys.  In fact, when the Mets have a runner on third with less than two outs, the baserunner only scores 42% of the time.  Again, that’s last in the majors.  Overall, when the Mets can a baserunner, that baserunner only scores a league worst 23% of the time.  The end result is the Mets having one of the worst offenses in all of baseball.

Simply put, the Mets are not scoring runs unless they hit a homerun.  When they don’t hit homeruns, they don’t win many games.  There have been many discussions about whether the Mets hit too many homeruns.  As it turns out, the answer is they don’t hit enough of them.  With that said, it’s time for Yoenis Cespedes, Michael Conforto, Curtis Granderson, and Neil Walker to get to work hitting homeruns because if they don’t, the Mets aren’t going to score any runs.

Editor’s Note: this was first published on metsmerizedonline.com