Last night, Rod Barajas hit a homer in the bottom of the top of the ninth to give the Mets a 5–4 win over the Reds, the first Mets victory this month. It turned out to be a relatively important homer in the grand scheme of matters; had the Mets lost, blowing a late lead in the process, it would have been the fourth loss in a row and everyone’s hair would be standing on end. Instead: still just a half-game out of first!
As we prep for today’s 12:35 first pitch in Cincinnati — Jon Niese versus Johnny Cueto — we thought we’d look through five random observations we noticed about the Mets while sifting through the box score this morning.
1. Barajas’s homer was his seventh of the season, which leads all catchers in Major League Baseball. That’s particularly impressive considering Barajas has a .253 on-base percentage. (He has only walked twice all year, as many times as Mike Pelfrey.) It is not wise to ever throw Barajas a strike.
2. The Mets are tied for the MLB lead in triples with Washington.
3. The Mets don’t have a single batter hitting over .300. The closest is Ike Davis, at .295. To be fair, Raul Valdes and Hisanori Takahashi are both one-for-three.
4. Remember how Jeff Francoeur had the new approach at the plate, with the sharper batting eye? Well, he has walked twice since the twenty-inning game against the Cardinals, and his average is down to .263.
5. When you play around with Baseball Prospectus’s Playoff Odds Report — which uses three different permutations to determine a team’s postseason chances — you see the Mets having the following percentages:
Regular Postseason Odds: 24.28 percent.
PECOTA: 16.90 percent.
ELO: 45.42 percent.
You have to think any Mets fan would take any of those odds preseason, and they’d certainly take them now.