Mets360 - What the Mets’ 2021 offense might do compared to previous years

 

By Brian Joura January 10, 2021

Everyone is excited for the offense that the Mets will feature in 2021. They already had a strong core and added two pieces that certainly look like upgrades here in the offseason. But what might we expect from the offense this coming year? We can use projections but let’s save that for another time and instead look at it in a different way.

First, it seems we need to have some historical perspective. They say a generation is 20 years long. Since the Mets started in 1962 – and there’s not a lot to be gained by looking at the offense of an expansion team – let’s take a generational view of how the starting eight did for the Mets in 1972, 1992 and 2012. The starters are taken from Baseball-Reference. These might not necessarily be the leaders in games played at each position but it’ll be close enough for our purposes. The number is their fWAR for the season.

1972		1992		2012
Duffy Dyer	1.9	Todd Hundley	-0.2	Josh Thole	0.9
Ed Kranepool	1	Eddie Murray	2	Ike Davis	1
Ken Boswell	-0.1	Willie Randolph	0.7	Daniel Murphy	1.6
Jim Fregosi	0.1	Dave Magadan	1.7	David Wright	6.6
Bud Harrelson	0.2	Dick Schofield	2	Ruben Tejada	1.7
John Milner	1.6	Daryl Boston	0.8	Jason Bay	-0.9
Tommie Agee	0.7	Howard Johnson	-1.2	Andres Torres	1.5
Rusty Staub	0.8	Bobby Bonilla	1.4	Lucas Duda	-0.7
Total	6.2		7.2		11.7

 Want to win a bet with your friend? Ask him which starter on the 1972 Mets led the team in fWAR. Take a hike, Jerry Grote! That team looks pretty bad – and it was without Staub in the lineup – but it’s not like it was a whole lot better 20 years later. Flash forward to 2012 and we finally see a good year from one player – Wright – but there’s still not a lot of offense going on. And, of course, fWAR takes more into account than just offense. Certainly 2012 Duda isn’t helping himself with either baserunning or defense. But we’re all familiar with what’s a good fWAR and it’s easier to add together than, say, wRC+.

Continue reading by clicking here.