Playing to the Average

id you know that the start of the baseball season is only two weeks away? Yeah, me neither. With March Madness, the Devils march to the playoffs (which is now dead), the lead-up to Wrestlemania and of course the start of the Sounders season going on over the past two weeks, I have almost forgotten about the Mets. Ok, maybe that's not the entire truth - I do still read metsblog.com on a daily basis - but it definitely hasn't been my #1 focus.

I do plan on putting my thoughts on the upcoming season into a post...however, I am going to let that wait a bit. What I want to do now is go over something Terry Collins said a week or so ago. When asked about his offense, he basically said that if the offense can play to the average on the back of their baseball cards then they are going to be a powerhouse. It's an interesting concept, especially since we have seen some of the best years (2006 - Wright, Reyes, Beltran) as well as some of the worst years (2009 - Wright, 2010- Beltran, Reyes) for our core guys. It's easy to say how good we will be if they have monster years, but what about just average years? Well, in terms of runs scored, here is what I found, starting with the number of games for each player:

• For the ironman David Wright, I assume 155 games.
• For Jason Bay, Ike Davis and Angel Pagan I assume 150 games.
• For Jose Reyes I assume 130 games.
• For Daniel Murphy I assume he wins the 2b job and plays in 130 games.
• For Josh Thole I assume 100 games; Ronnie Paulino 50 games.
• For Carlos Beltran, I assume only 90 games.
• For reserves Scott Hairston and Willie Harris I assume 80 games .
  

I think all of the estimates are appropriate. Wright is going to go 155 and I expect Jason Bay to be back to his normal durable self. I am not naive enough to think Reyes goes 150 but he should get 130. Beltran is the wild card so I went conservative. I think Murphy plays well enough in the field to warrant 130 games.

With the above averages, we estimate 636 total runs amongst the 11 players, broken down in the following way:
Wright (99), Bay (93), Reyes (89), Davis (74), Pagan (70), Beltran (61), Murphy (54), Hairston (29), Harris (29), Thole (21), Paulino (17)

Now looking at the past five years, outside of the top 11 hitters, the Mets reserves have scored an average of 120 runs. If you add that to the 636, you get 756 runs, which is higher than the past two years. When examination the association between runs and wins for the Mets over the past 20 years it predicts about 84 wins on the year.

I think that the numbers for Thole and Murphy are probably a little conservative but they probably will cancel out the number for Beltran who I really expect nothing from. So overall, yeah, if they play to their average they will be much better on offense than last year. However, they will still be well below the 2006 squad who scored 839 runs. Average will be nice, but above-average will be needed to contend.