The World's Worst Sports Blog

Five Mets To Keep Warm, and Run Scoring Into The Postseason October 5, 2015

Catcher Anthony Recker, infielder Eric Campbell, outfielder Eric Young, Jr., and pitchers Logan Verrett and Bobby Parnell will head to Port St Lucie for the fall instructional league, says ESPN. Kirk Nieuwenhuis will go to LA or to Port St Lucie, depending on whether Juan Uribe is healthy. That spot will likely be solely for pinch hitting, since Nieuwenhuis and Uribe aren’t interchangeable hitters at all.

Bartolo Colon and Jonathon Niese pitched from the bullpen in what appeared to be heavily planned outings.

It’s alarming that the Mets have scored only 2 runs in their last 4 games. However, they also scored 46 in their last 10; which of those figures tells us more about the postseason? Frankly, neither.

Looking at least year’s NLDS and NLCS, the correlations are extremely weak: runs scored over the last 10 games of the season predicted about 8% of runs scored in the NLDS, with the strongest explanatory power coming at 3 games (12.4%), closely followed by 8 games (12.3%). This is only based on last year’s numbers, but the correlations are mostly noise.

Even a simple model based on runs scored doesn’t work for last year – the Giants defeated the Nationals, who outscored them, and the Cardinals, who didn’t.

This year’s Mets have scored 683 runs and allowed 613. The Dodgers scored 667 and allowed 595. In their 7 games this year, the Mets won 4, and outscored them 33-19. The Mets were 2-2 in Citi Field and 2-1 in Dodger Stadium.