While the Mets are finally may have gotten back on the right track, their offense still has not been very good. In this past weekend’s three-game series in Chicago, the offense managed to put up only nine runs during their stay in the Windy City.

While it seems as if the entire offense has been asleep lately, there has been one solid contributor: Daniel Murphy. Murphy extended his current hitting streak to eight games on Sunday, with his eighth inning home run that gave the Mets the lead that they wouldn’t relinquish. Murphy has been scorching during his eight game streak, as he has an average of .468 over his last eight games. He now sits at a .301 batting average for 2013, with an impressive 13 doubles on the season.

Aside from Sunday’s game, the most impressive game from Murphy’s eight-game streak was Thursday afternoon’s series-ending contest in St. Louis, where Murphy went 4-4 and reached base five times. Another standout moment from Daniel Murphy’s week was Friday afternoon at Wrigley, when he hit a game-tying, opposite-field home run in the fourth inning of the series-opening win in Chicago. Murphy, who has hit safely in 14 of his last 28 at-bats , has really been the only consistent source of offense for the Mets during the past week or so aside from David Wright, but the starters during that time have been making their runs stand.

One of the more interesting moves regarding Daniel Murphy came on Sunday, when Manager Terry Collins batted the 28-year-old second baseman out of the lead-off spot. The move marked only the fifth time of Murph’s career that he has batted lead-off – and the first time since 2009. While Murphy is certainly not the prototypical lead-off hitter, something needed to be done by Terry Collins atop the Mets’ lineup.

Prior to Sunday’s game, Mets lead-off hitters had combined for a Major-League- worst .185 batting average, and an on-base percentage of just .250. The Mets simply have not gotten the production they needed from the top of the order, and Sunday was the day to make a change, according to manager Terry Collins, who wanted to get the red-hot Murphy as many at-bats as possible.

Murphy is  most likely not the Mets’ long-term solution batting out of the lead-off spot, but the Mets might as well leave him there until he cools off – it’s not like anyone else had been tearing it up. Daniel Murphy’s .301 average and surprisingly solid defense have arguably been the most consistent assets the Mets have had all season. However, as the trade deadline approaches, questions may arise as to whether or not the team should trade Murphy. The Mets do not have a ton of assets going into the deadline – and they certainly have some needs.

They could use a solid bullpen pitcher – because their relief has been anything but this season. They could use a middle-of-the-rotation starter also, because aside from Matt Harvey, the rotation has been questionable at best. Heading into the season, one would have thought any potential trades would have involved first baseman Ike Davis or outfielder Lucas Duda.

Well, that has not really gone according to plan. Davis’ season-long struggle has him batting .159 (as of Sunday) here in mid-May, with only nine RBI’s. Duda hasn’t been much better recently, as the 27-year-old outfielder is batting only .214. Duda and Davis haven’t exactly provided that one-two punch the Mets and their fans were hoping for thus far.

Now, if Murphy could maybe be moved for a pitcher or power hitter,  who would replace him?

Wilmer Flores, the 21-year-old prospect, has been working defensively at second base this season at AAA Las Vegas. He is currently hitting .270 on the season, with four home runs in 41 games. While he would most likely be a downgrade from Daniel Murphy short-term, getting Flores up and giving him some Major League experience may be a good idea if the Mets decide to trade Murphy. If the Mets can get enough back for him, Flores could be a viable replacement, and it could help to put some chips in place to build around the young core of prospects the Mets are going forward with.

Murphy is no doubt a fan-favorite, but fans react better to winning. For now, the Mets will continue to ride out his hot streak. It will be interesting to see whether or not Collins will leave the red-hot Murphy in the lead-off spot, or move him back down to his traditional 2-spot, or somewhere lower in the order.

Mets Tickets

In hindsight, the Mets rise back to the top of baseball was not so much miraculous (’69™) as meticulous and fortuitous. From the compost heap of the late-70′s, the blooms began to appear, one by one: Jesse Orosco in ’79, Mookie Wilson, Wally Backman, and Hubie Brooks in ’80, Darryl Strawberry and Keith Hernandez in ’83, Rafael Santana, Sid Fernandez, Ron Darling, and Dwight Gooden in ’84. To call the winter acquisition of Gary Carter “the missing piece of the puzzle” would be not only hackneyed, but grievously understated. In an Expos uniform, “Kid” was a Mets killer – getting him out of that line-up, period, would have been good for our collective self-esteem; but now our glittering young staff would be throwing to a Hall of Fame catcher.

April 9. Throwing Mets-centric caution to the wind, we threw an Opening Day party – brunch on the upper west side, then off to Shea, ten-strong, in a buddy’s van. Given that any fete built around a sporting event carries a decided risk – your team loses (the girl comes out of the cake feet first, the piñata is made of concrete) – this could have been, well, not a disaster (it’s the Mets), but… Happily, the Baseball Gods were feeling sentimental – batting with one out in the 10th, after a chess match with the Cardinals, Carter parked one in left for the delirious walk-off. For anyone out there who doesn’t believe April games count, sit still.

June, July, August. I was working in Maine that summer, more or less off the grid at a canoe camp, and so followed the Boys via box score in the Bangor Daily News. The wins were becoming pro forma – a pair of 9-game streaks! – the losses, insupportable. For a Mets fan, it was like going from the dole (make that prison) to Lottery winner; after years of Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese, this was Fettucini Alfredo (insert your pasta metaphor HERE): the blood gets fatter, expectations preposterous.

September. I stayed on after camp ended, to write a script in a cabin on the pond. My D-cell transistor radio could bring in a scratchy WFAN feed, then, miraculously, at 9 o’clock the airwaves would clear out and there was Bob Murphy and Gary Thorne, clear as Queens. So I’d write ’til about six, eat supper through the static, then join the games in-progress. So accustomed to a pure audio baseball diet that when I got away on a rare Sunday to find a TV (they were on The Game of the Week), it was almost disorienting, like a Japanese soldier coming out of an Iwo Jima cave, blinking, twenty years after the war. Gooden won – again – and clocked his first ML home run (his line on the day: 3-4, 2 runs, 4 rbi’s, 8 innings, one run, 22-4 with the W).

October 1. We lurked in striking distance of the Cards until the penultimate series of the season – in St. Louis, three back with three to play. Game One was Darling V. Tudor, who combined for 19 innings of scoreless, excruciating ball. I’d taken the radio to bed after the 9th, and had scarcely touched the pillow when Strawberry launched one off the Busch clock in right center for the only run of the game. Nobody around for miles to hear my hollering, or watch me do the horizontal wave.

October 2. Gooden all the way, beating Andujar for his 24th win. Nail-biting moment: bases loaded with Redbirds late, Tommy Herr scorches one, right at Wally Backman.

October 3. Aguilera V. Cox. We out hit them 13-9 (Keith Hernandez was 5-5, with zero runs), lost 4-3, and with that our chance to go home all square.

October 6. The Cards would take their final weekend series against the Cubs, while we lost two of three to the Expos. I drove nine hours straight to Queens, in time to catch the last game in the flesh, and cheer sideways for Hubie Brooks – sent to Montreal in the Gary Carter trade – as he reached the 100 RBI mark against his original club. The mood at Shea was surprisingly upbeat, the Boys had given us all they had. It’s all a fan asks. And when the last out of the year came, we rose as one to say Hell Yeah! In ’84, we finished six back of the Cubs, ’85, 3 down to the Cardinals. ’86? Do the math.

Dwight Gooden’s triple crown (24-4, 1.53, 268) would earn him a unanimous Cy Young Award, but it was some clubhouse clown who had the last laugh, noting the Cards 3-game margin in the standings: “If only Dwight hadn’t lost those four games.”

Mets Tickets

This past home stand, the Mets played six games – two against the Chicago White Sox, and four against the Pittsburgh Pirates. In those six games, they managed to put up only 14 runs – an average of 2.3 runs per contest. They went two and four on the home stand, and wasted a solid pitching performance on Sunday.

Matt Harvey, while not his usual dominant self, pitched seven innings and allowed only two runs to Pittsburgh on Sunday. He did not take the loss, but one would hope seven innings and two runs would be enough to get a win. Not quite.

The biggest problem for the Mets (against Pittsburgh, at least) was the strikeout. Between Saturday and Sunday, the Mets struck out 28 times. Nope, don’t rub your eyes or clean your glasses. 16 strikeouts on Saturday, 12 on Sunday. Their inability to even make contact presented itself in the eighth inning on Sunday, when the slumping (like, seriously slumping) Ike Davis stepped to the plate with runners at the corners and one man out. In such a situation, the batter’s job is one thing: put the ball in the air, and drive in that runner from third base. Unfortunately, the big first baseman continued to struggle, and struck out against setup man Mark Melancon. The boo birds were out at Citi Field, and Lucas Duda (who homered earlier in the game) grounded out to end the inning. They went quietly in the ninth, and that was that.

So, what is the cause behind this increase in strikeouts? Not scoring a lot of runs is one thing, but the inability to get runners over and get them in is quite another. A lot has been made of the team’s “wait-it-out” approach, where the batter looks for a specific pitch in a specific spot, and will try to waste all other pitches in the at-bat. While “waiting for your pitch” is good in theory, this type of approach can work against a batter. If that pitch they are looking for never comes, they will be at two strikes before they know it, and be forced to expand their strike zone. On the flip-side, if a batter is more aggressive early in the count, they can jump at the first good pitch they see. Maybe not their perfect pitch, but good pitches will almost always come early in an at-bat.

It’s a question of philosophy when it comes to batting. Early in the season, Hitting Coach Dave Hudgens looked like a genius during the first three weeks of the regular season when the Mets were averaging more than six runs per game. That pace waned quickly, however, as the Mets are now ninth in the National League with 149 total runs through 33 games. While that still works out to a 4.5 run/game pace, that number has been on the decline for the past few weeks.

Coming off the four game set with Pittsburgh, the task gets no easier for the offensively-challenged Mets. They are headed to St. Louis, where they start a four game series on Monday. The Cardinals currently boast the best team ERA in the National League, with a 2.89 ERA. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, the numbers get even better when they are narrowed down to just starters. The St. Louis starting rotation has a combined ERA of 2.22. Bottom line – the Mets have their work cut out for them if they plan on getting themselves out of their offensive rut this week.

Mets Tickets

Bax is a hometown kid. He was born in Whitestone, Queens, and grew up being a Mets fan! Right off the bat, you have to love him because he has something in common with us fans.

Secondly, and probably most importantly, was Baxter’s amazing catch to save Johan’s no hitter last year. I don’t think there was a single Mets fan who didn’t let themselves think “this time it’s real” after Baxter made that catch. Mike was so dedicated to the game and the no-hitter that he literally sacrificed his body and ended up breaking his clavicle to make the amazing play.

In the past week, Mike has had two walk off hits as a pinch-hitter. Considering that the Mets have only won 4 of their last 8 games, it’s quite impressive that Baxter can claim 2 of those wins as his own.

I know Mike’s .269 average and three RBI’s don’t seem super impressive, but in a season that hasn’t given us Mets fans a whole lout to be proud of or brag about- I feel like Mike Baxter is a name that Mets fans can be proud to throw around.

Mets Tickets

Due to warm, dry climates, high altitudes, and close fences, The Pacific Coast League is a hitters paradise. Now normally, this would play a role in overall stats, as David Wright would undoubtedly have more home runs playing in Yankee Stadium and Padres pitchers will have much better stats then Rockies pitchers. Unfortunately, the extent at which runs are inflated render virtually all stats accumulated in the Pacific Coast League meaningless. Not only that, but runs are accrued at such a high rate that it can affect player performance, as pitchers may lose confidence or hitters could start to develop bad habits trying to produce better numbers when they should really be finishing off their development. From an organizational viewpoint, while winning games is an added bonus, the purpose of the minor leagues are to develop players into the best possible big-leaguers they can become.

While loads of examples of Pacific Coast League aberrations exist, one great illustration is Brett Wallace, a former first round pick of the St. Louis Cardinals. In almost 1200 plate appearances in the Pacific Coast League spread across five seasons, Wallace has smacked 50 home runs, a rate of more then 1 of every 24 plate appearances (for context, David Wright has homered once every 26 plate appearances in his major league career). In all other professional plate appearances, Wallace has homered on average once every 44 times (in his renowned Mets career, Jason Bay homered on average once every 43 times). Now Wallace is struggling to stick as a member of the Houston Astros, who are not exactly far away from a Triple-A team as constructed. The difference here is substantial, at least if you think David Wrights’ power as a Met was different than Jason Bay’s.

So what does this mean? From an organization point of view, it may suggest that the best course of action is to leave prospects in Double-A Binghamton until they have completely mastered that level, and then skip them over Triple-A straight to the big leagues. It was too late to implement this strategy for guys who were already in Triple-A last year like Travis D’Arnaud, Wilmer Flores and Zach Wheeler, but do not be surprised if you see Rafael Montero or Jacob DeGrom skip the trip to Las Vegas and come directly to Citi Field.

From a fans perspective, it is essential to take all stats with a grain of salt. We should not be overly excited about fringe prospects putting up great numbers (cough…Josh Satin…cough) and we should not panic when pitchers are not pitching to their capabilities. Take Wheeler for instance. As of May 9th, Wheeler had a 4.00 and a 1.42 in 36 innings, which would definitely be a cause for concern for the best pitching prospect under regular circumstances. Taking more information into consideration, however, allows us to realize that these numbers are actually quite good. Only five of the sixteen teams in the PCL have ERA’s under 4.00 and only one of these teams plays in the western divisions, which are the notoriously hitters parks (the 51’s play in the west). Additionally, despite admitting to struggling with his grip (maybe he needs some sun screen, right Clay Buchholz?) due to the dry air and high altitude, Wheeler actually has the second lowest ERA (behind Collin McHugh, who has been pitching really well himself) and the most strikeouts of anyone who has pitched at least ten innings for the 51′s. So while he still has a few adjustments to make, nothing has happened over the first month of the season that has indicated that Wheeler is off the Matt Harvey path to the major leagues from last season.

The switch from Buffalo to Las Vegas deserved more coverage then it received. It has a real effect on the numbers and is yet another reason the early panic about Zack Wheeler is unwarranted.

Mets Tickets