Thursday, September 13, 2012

Home Sweet Home?

"Ellie, what are we going to do about this offense?"  Kevin Burkhardt asked when he came to say at a Mets game about a month ago.  At that time I didn't know what to tell Kevin and now, a month later, I am utterly speechless.  The Mets offense has fallen asleep and it seems to be gone for the winter.  They haven't scored more than three runs in a home game in what seems like 12 years and in those 12 years they've had one multi-run inning.

The thing is, I don't have clue what the Mets can do to get out of this funk.  Individually, it doesn't feel like anybody is playing worse than usual.  Daniel Murphy is getting hits, David Wright is getting hits, Ike Davis is getting hits.  Scott Hairston continues to hit home runs, Lucas Duda has even gotten a few hits.

And to compound the feeling of the Mets offense being woefully poor, it seems to be 100x worse at home.  This season nobody can blame the fences being too far back.  But the numbers don't lie.

David Wright is hitting .331 on the road and .296 at home.  Ike Davis is hitting .259 on the road and .181 at home.  Mike Baxter is hitting .321 on the road and .208 at home.  Ronny Cedeno is hitting .316 on the road and .228 at home.  Ruben Tejada is hitting .313 on the road and .267 at home.

It is not as if the players feel more pressure at home, playing in front of not even half-full crowds.  The fans that are coming to games clearly aren't expecting much.

It's just so frustrating.  There just doesn't seem to be anything they can do with the lineup or pregame routine to jump-start things.  They've tried batting Mike Baxter first, they've tried batting Ronny Cedeno first.  They've tried playing Kelly Shoppach against a righty and Ike Davis and Lucas Duda against lefties.  They've hit Daniel Murphy second.  They've put Jason Bay in the lineup.  They tried having the starters take BP closer to game time.

Nothing has worked so far and I don't magically see anything working.  The Mets are in quite a funk and the only light at the end of the tunnel seems to be that they are starting a road trip.  However, ending the season on with this kind of home performance isn't going to put a good taste in fans mouths.

Hopefully they'll turn it around on the road and keep the momentum for the last homestand.  They desperately need it.

Let's Go Mets!

1 comment:

Paul Hadsall said...

At this point, I think the only thing to do is to try to bring in more good players for next year.