THE MIGHTY METS' CUMULATIVE HITTING EFFECT

THE CUMULATIVE EFFECT

Hitting begets hitting.  One plus one plus one = 5.

Hitting (or lack thereof) can be cumulative...and contagious.

When several guys don't hit, an offense can grind to a halt.

We've seen that all too often with the Mets over the years.

This current team?  The opposite.  They hit!!!  All of them.

180 runs in a stretch of 33 games (Aug/Sep) thru last Friday. 

That's 5.5 runs per game.

And through Tuesday, they now have 211 homers in 145 games, juice or no juice, on pace for 236.  Very un-Met-like. 

And it ought to get better, because with with Nimmo and Cano back up and humming, and Lowrie back and hopefully soon to make real contributions, the small holes in the line up prior to their returns (filled by sub-Mendoza at bats from fill ins for much of the season) have been essentially eliminated.

There is almost no reason for Mickey to put a weak or mediocre bat in the line up now.

Every hitter in the line up can and should HIT ROBUSTLY.

Heck, even the pitchers hit (through last Friday, Matz 265, Wheeler .229, deGrom .218, Thor lower but dangerous).

The cumulative effect of that sort of constant hitting pressure has to wear on opposing pitchers.  

It leads to getting in to their weak bullpens.

It then leads to wins.  

Like on last Friday night.

It can even overcome some Edwin Diaz mistakes.  

Like happened on last Friday night.

Many former Mets teams, tied from behind like that in the 9th, as happened in that game, would have folded like a tent.

Not this team - too much heart - too much hitting.

I was going to recommend a line up tweak: 

Don't sit JD Davis...sit Todd Frazier.  

Lose a little D, add a lot of bat.  Make the offense lethal.

But Todd streaky Todd is HOT HOT HOT.  Last 15 games, .311 with 4 homers, and now has 20 HRs and 65 RBIs in 406 at bats, quite solid.  And he is .314/.385/.543 with runners in scoring position through Wednesday - and former slap hitter Jeff McNeil? After 2 Wednesday upper deck bombs, a .536 slugging %.  Incredible.

Whoever plays now - don't matter - EVERYBODY HITS!

All this hitting without Dom Smith and Yoenis Cespedes - simply amazing.

I hoped to issue this earlier in the week, but didn't. Wednesday and Thursday's games, after I wrote this, are an exclamation point on this article - this team is getting close to the point where it can hit with ANY team out there.

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