Deuces wild

The Mets’ strong offensive performance with two outs to date this season comes up a lot, but the numbers are often presented without context. So here’s some:

The Mets have scored 67 of their 118 runs with two outs. That’s not typical, though I don’t know that it’s meaningful either.

Generally, the league as a whole scores just under 38 percent of its runs with two outs, about 38.5 percent with one out, and by far the fewest of its runs with no outs (which makes sense). There’s some variation every year, and the numbers are close enough that it’s not at all uncommon for a team to score more runs with two outs than it did with one out (the Mets did last year, for example, and the National League as a whole did in 2008).

It does seem weird for a team to score 56.8 percent of its runs with two outs, as the Mets have to date in 2012, but since it doesn’t appear the Mets are doing anything appreciably different with two outs than they are with one out or no outs, I’d guess it’s just a heaping helping of early-season randomness. And part of it certainly has to do with how bad they’ve been with one out — hitting to a .618 OPS, well below their .707 team rate. That’ll even out, and when it does, the two-out stats won’t seem so extraordinary.

Want more weirdness? The Braves have scored 50.6 percent of their runs with one out. Why? Randomness. Sorry, but it’s going to take a hell of an explanation to convince me otherwise.

But if the randomness thing doesn’t satisfy you as an explanation for the Mets’ two-out heroics, try spreading this around and hope it catches on: The Mets never attempt sacrifice bunts with two outs, so they score lots of runs.

 

Twitter Q&A

Yes, and I don’t think they’ll be far off. Presumably by the time the apocalypse rolls around, a good portion of the human population will indeed worship Giancarlo Stanton.

Seriously though, I think about what future civilizations will assume about us a lot, even though it’s utterly pointless because whatever they think will be filtered through their all their future-people frameworks and we have no idea what those will be. This especially happens whenever I go to DC and tour the monuments at night, since our memorials to great leaders look a bit like those from earlier civilizations that we assume and/or know to be temples to religious figures — at least in their stateliness.

And of course, the way future civilizations perceive us all has to do with how much of our information survives, and we’re documenting everything much more thoroughly (and archiving it all better) than we ever have before. Basically, as long as there’s no dark-ages stuff, some massive worldwide event or series of event that prevents the advancement and preservation of technology, future people are going to know more about us than we know about anyone from the past. But will the people of 3012 have a way to play Blu-ray? Will they even have the right cables? Because if there’s no way to watch Crank 2: High Voltage in stunning HD quality, the future sucks.

There were a couple of questions about Mejia, who’s set to make a 75-pitch rehab start today in St. Lucie. It’ll be interesting to see how the Mets handle him. For all the hype around him dating back a few years now, he’s still only 22 and he’s still only made six starts in Triple-A — he is younger than Matt Harvey with less experience starting at the highest level of the Minors.

Mejia’s got the Jerry Manuel-fueled taste of big-league mop-up duty under his belt, so it’s unfair to call him less experienced than Harvey. But it’s worth noting that he’s yet to throw more than 100 innings in a season at any level. I have to imagine the Mets will want to proceed cautiously with him for that reason, and he’ll wind up starting games in Buffalo. This article from the Daily News suggests Mejia could see a spot start at Citi at some point before Chris Young is ready, though.

Everything out of the Mets seems to suggest they’re bullish on the prospects of Young returning, which is weird since he’s coming off shoulder surgery and has spent most of his last three seasons on the disabled list. But I have not seen Young throw and presumably the Mets have, so maybe they’ve got good reasons. And ideally, they just need Young to stay healthy until one of Harvey, Familia and Mejia proves ready for the Major League rotation later in the summer.

Well I definitely don’t think the division is bad: There’s only one team in it below .500 (and it’s the Phillies, everybody! The Phillies!) and it has the best collective winning percentage in the National League. I do think many people underestimated the Mets before the season, what with the silly 60-win predictions and such.

But I wouldn’t read much into the Mets’ record against their division. It’s nice and it’s a great way to start the season, but it’s also a small sample. They happened to play the Braves before the Braves got hot and the Marlins before the Marlins got hot. All credit to the Mets for beating those teams when they did, but at some point they’re going to run into some divisional opponents playing at their best and their record against the NL East will balance out a bit. The good news is they probably won’t put up an ofer against the NL Central all season.

Josh Hamilton hits four home runs (and a double)

Presumably you know about this already, but last night Josh Hamilton went 5-for-5 with four home runs and a double. I’m posting it here for posterity: Four home runs in a game is easily my favorite single-game accomplishment, because it requires four home runs in a game.

Now you join the ranks of Mark Whiten!

Other awesome things include the Mets’ come-from-behind win over the Phillies last night. Here’s how this goes: When the Mets lose a series to the Phillies, I say, meh, just another series, sure it’s a division rival but it’s only a couple of games. When the Mets take a series from the Phillies, it represents not just a notch in the standings but a triumph of good over evil, a victory for the human spirit in the face of adversity.

A sweep would be the best thing.

Is it fair to make sweeping statements about fanbases?

Over at HardballTalk, Craig Calcaterra links to a series of Tweets from Giants beat writer Henry Schulman about the way Dodgers fans may or may not have treated the hobbled Matt Kemp during last night’s game.

I wasn’t watching the game and can’t speak to the particular incident in question, but at the single Dodgers home game I’ve attended in my life, Clayton Kershaw threw nine innings of two-run ball, struck out 11 Angels and walked none. He left on the short end after allowing a home run to Vernon Wells to put the Angels up 2-1 in the top of the ninth, but as he walked off the mound I stood up to applaud his effort anyway. And practically no one else did.

No way that happens at Citi Field, right? I have to figure if the Mets had a young, homegrown ace of Kershaw’s caliber, the fans that didn’t irrationally blame him for everything would harp on just about everything he did, and would certainly notice and appreciate a stellar outing like that one.

The Dodgers came back and won the game in the bottom of the 9th and the place went nuts. But am I wrong to say that, based on one game’s worth of evidence, most Dodgers fans are not like most Mets fans? Is Schulman wrong to suggest as much based on years of covering the beat in the NL West?

Because it sure seems like there are cultural differences: Mets fans are one way and Yankees fans are another way and Phillies fans are a whole different way, but there’s certainly a lot of confirmation bias in play, and obviously plenty of fans who don’t embody their team’s fanbase at large.

Well that was awesome

Not really much else to say. Beating Jonathan Papelbon while he’s on the Phillies is like sausage wrapped in bacon.

Here’s hoping Josh Thole is OK, or at least is OK soon. Wigginton’s slide looked clean and the collision unintentional to me: Wigginton is a big dude, and if he’s coming full-tilt there’s going to be a hell of a lot of momentum behind him. Thole’s face was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

About that

During the FOX broadcast of Saturday’s Mets-Diamondbacks game, Eric Karros said something along the lines of how David Wright is not the type of player who can carry a team.

About that: No such thing. There’s no player in baseball good enough to carry a team to contention on his own with a crappy cast around him, nor has there ever been. Obviously. The best hitters of all time fail in more than half their plate appearances, and they need guys on base in front of them to score more than one run at a time when they homer. Plus there’s all that pitching to be done.

But amounting that “carrying a team” is a part of the baseball lexicon that refers to a great player going on a torrid stretch, it’s frustrating in this particular instance because that’s pretty much exactly what Wright has been doing to date in the 2012 season.

Several other Mets have enjoyed hot streaks of up to a couple of weeks at a time, but by now, really only Wright has the type of stats that jump off the team’s baseball-reference page.

Check this out: The Mets have a collective .709 OPS for the season, tied for sixth in the National League and a tick above the league average .703 mark. But replace Wright’s 108 plate appearances with 108 plate appearances of the median production that National League teams have gotten from third basemen and the Mets’ team OPS falls to .674. It doesn’t look like a massive distinction, but Wright’s performance so far has been the difference between a slightly above-average offense and a well below-average offense.

Small samples abound, of course. And nothing about that should be particularly surprising: Wright had a fantastic first month. He’s fourth in the league in batting average, first in on-base percentage and third in OPS. And apparently nothing about that suggests he’s capable of carrying a team.

Meanwhile, in residual Cold War Era hostility

Chipper Jones exited Coors Field late Saturday night incensed that Jamie Moyer had accused him of relaying signs from second base. The Braves’ third baseman continued to talk about the incident when he returned early Sunday morning.

Jones said he believes Moyer is paranoid because he spent most of the past five years playing for the Phillies, a team the 40-year-old third baseman said is known for stealing signs….

Jones revealed on Sunday morning that his anger increased when he learned Moyer came to the plate in the bottom of the fifth and told McCann, “that’s how people get hurt” in reference to his belief that some Atlanta players were stealing signs.

“At that point, I told [Todd] Helton and Tulo to tell [Moyer], because he was already out of the game by then after those 900-foot homers with nobody on base,” Jones said. “I said he could meet me in the tunnel to discuss it and I never heard back.”

Mark Bowman, MLB.com.

Oh boy. There’s so much to chuckle at in this story, first and foremost 40-year-old Chipper Jones vaguely challenging 49-year-old Jamie Moyer to a showdown in the Coors Field tunnel.

Perhaps even funnier than that, though, is Chipper’s insistence throughout the story that he has never stolen signs, as if admitting to doing so would be a mark against his Hall of Fame candidacy. And maybe he really never has, but if not, why not? It’s not against the rules and it helps your team win. If they believe they can get away with it without earning themselves some beanballs, all players should try to steal signs. The goal is to win the game, not the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Moyer is probably especially vigilant about it because he doesn’t have much recourse. Though a 77-mph fastball to the ribs would sting the hell out of you and me, it’s probably not something Major League hitters live in fear of.

You know who probably hates sign stealing? Old-school baseball bro Cole Hamels.

“Of course he hit him on purpose!”

I was trying to hit him. I’m not going to deny it. That’s something I grew up watching, that’s kind of what happened. So I’m just trying to continue the old baseball because I think some people are kind of getting away from it. I remember when I was a rookie the strike zone was really, really small and you didn’t say anything because that’s the way baseball is. But I think unfortunately the league’s protecting certain players and making it not that old-school, prestigious way of baseball…. It’s just, `Welcome to the big leagues.’

Colbert M. Hamels.

Whoa, is it me or has there just been a lot of tough-guy posturing from Cole Hamels the last week or so? First he publicly shuns the strawberry drink he clearly wanted, now he plunks Bryce Harper then admits it — which no one ever does — in a bizarre and mostly nonsensical tirade about old-school baseball.

Which I guess makes sense, because I know when I think about contemporary players maintaining the gritty, old-school, bloody-uniform legacy of guys like Ty Cobb, Bob Gibson and Nolan Ryan, the first fella that comes to mind is this guy: