Comparing the Mets' starters to the league
And versus the team's relievers, too
Days off are a good thing and today’s break in the schedule comes at a pretty good time for the Mets. They used seven relievers on Wednesday, so the bullpen arms all get a day off. They travel from Miami – distance 1,097 miles from Miami International to LaGuardia – so it’s nice not to have to play after traveling that far. And there are a bunch of hitters who could benefit from a day to reflect how they’re playing and what they could do better.
If you polled most Mets fans before the start of the year and asked what they were worried most about – SP, RP, offense or defense – my opinion is that most people would have said the starting pitching. So, six games into the season for the Mets, let’s see how the SP stack up against the other 29 teams:
With teams not playing the same number of games, this chart is sorted by average innings per game, which you can see by using the slider at the bottom. It’s a big table. And in this category, the spread is a full two innings per game from top to bottom, with the Mets being right in the middle. While the IP category goes by one-third of an inning, the AVG IP goes by Base 10, because it’s easier. The extra precision to make the AVG IP be the same as IP isn’t worth the extra effort.
While the Mets are tied for 14th in AVG IP, they’re eighth with a 2.90 ERA from their starters. Walks are hurting the starters, as they rank 22nd with a 3.8 BB/9. But they rank 2nd in MLB with a 10.7 K/9. The Mets are middle of the pack in HR/9 but they’ve been a bit unlucky with HR/FB, with a 21.1% rate, the fourth-highest mark in the majors.
Now let’s compare the Mets’ starters to their relievers:
Another long table with a slider on the bottom. Even with relievers providing 6.1 IP on Wednesday, the starters have still thrown nine more innings over six games. After the first six games in 2024, starters threw just 4.1 IP more than the relievers. While we shouldn’t read a ton into that, we can say that the starters are providing more than they did at an equivalent time a season ago.
By ERA, the relievers are pitching much better than the starters. Yet when we look at FIP, the gap closes and when we look at xFIP, which normalizes HR rate, the starters have a better mark than the relievers. The Mets’ pen has yet to give up a homer, which we know won’t last. The relievers’ walk rate is barely better than the starters and their strikeout rate is significantly worse.
It’s impossible to make any judgments after six games. But if the SP was supposed to be the team’s weak point, it has done just fine after the first two series. A whole lot can and will change the final 156 games of the season. Hopefully the starters can give up fewer walks and homers, while giving more innings pitched. But so far, the quantity provided by the starters in middle of the pack, while the quality has been top-10.
Thanks for letting me know about the slider. There's nothing I can do to make it work but I'll try not to make large tables going forward.
I certainly agree that the starters have done their part and they were certainly my biggest concern going into the season. It is clearly the offense that has napped in each of their losses. That is not something we believed would be an issue this year, and there have been some good signs of offense (Alonso, Torrens, Marte, Soto and Nimmo). There are still too many other starters stinking up the joint but with only six games in the book I can show some patience.