…The Mets are at 74.2%; easily dead last. That’s one of their problems. There are other issues, but their subpar infield defense is definitely — without a doubt — hurting them. However, their OF defense is tied for third best at catching flyballs; only the Giants and Padres are better.

I was glad to see this reference here (as i only comment here). It is really hard to believe that STAT and obviously with an infield of Reyes, Wright and Castillo the GLARING weakness is Delgado. My knee jerk reaction is to call Seattle and ask for a trade of Sexson for Del. at least THEY can DH him.

Personally, I’ve modified my original prediction: that this team would win 92 games in 2008.

I now feel that this team is going to finish somewhere close to .500. (I’m guessing their max win total is around 85 or so.)

Two unrelated points:

1. I’ve noticed that Jose Reyes seems to be much (and I mean, considerably) less patient when he bats with runners in scoring position.

Today I decided to look it up. Because — who knows, maybe it was just my imagination?

Here are his pitches seen per plate appearance:

¨ Bases empty: 3.9

¨ Runners in scoring position: 3.6

¨ Bases loaded: 2.6

Put it this way, when Jose comes up with the bags full - it’s a very bad time to get up and take a leak…..you’re definitely going to miss the at-bat.

His mindset with the bases loaded seems to be: “Good, bad or ugly, let’s just get this over with as quickly as we possibly can”.

His BAVG with the bases loaded is .143 (2 for 14)……my God!

2. The Hardball Times website tracks team defensive stats.

According to their data, the average NL team turns a groundball into an out 78.4% of the time. It’s not a number which is arguable, or even debatable by stat-heads.

Either the grounder becomes an out or it doesn’t. In the NL, groundballs become hits (or errors) 21.6% of the time. The top three NL teams at turning grounders into outs are SD, STL, and Houston. They are each a bit above 81%.

Care to guess which team is “rock bottom” at converting grounders into outs?

You got that right:

Los Metropolitans of Nueva York; and it’s not even close — or funny, for that matter.

The Mets are at 74.2%; easily dead last. That’s one of their problems. There are other issues, but their subpar infield defense is definitely — without a doubt — hurting them.

However, their OF defense is tied for third best at catching flyballs; only the Giants and Padres are better.

Can you win anyway with a porous infield? Sure, but it would help if their pitchers had more strikeouts (they’re only 7th best in the NL) and more importantly issued fewer walks; only three teams have allowed more walks than the Mets. Not good.

Needless to say, I’m not exactly optimistic this team is poised for a white hot second half of the season……but I won’t stop watching, boring as they may be on any given night.

Let’s Go Mets, baby…..please give us something interesting to watch in the 2nd half!