The Mets offense has been a drag for most of the season, but it seemed in the midst of the Mets deepest struggles Lucas Duda offered stability and served as a force against both left-handed and right-handed pitching.
Sure, his power was inconsistent, but he was still pacing for 29 home runs through his first 50 games and had posted a .946 OPS through his first 49 games through May 30 while hitting .303 with a .397 OBP.
And from April 6 to May 30, the Mets went 27-23 and scored an average of nearly 3,8 runs per game.
In other words, Duda was the Mets offense. The problem was, the Mets were riding Duda’s production for the first two months of the season – their offense was non-existent when he didn’t play or took an 0-fer in any single game.
And now, Duda is in a prolonged slump, and his lack of production has only further deepened the woes of the Mets offense as a result. Duda has posted a .183/.314/.282 line in 20 games with only four doubles and one home run with five RBI and 19 strikeouts in 86 plate appearances from May 31-June 23.
In that same span (22 games), the club has gone 9-13 and have averaged 3.4 runs per game.
As Duda has gone, so has the Mets. At the very least, the absence of Duda’s bat has badly exposed their already depleted and wounded offense.
In the last month, Duda has started to see a ton of breaking balls away to the point they’re dominating his plate appearances. That’s partly due to the fact there’s just no real protection around him, so the opposition essentially isn’t giving Duda anything to hit right now.
However, while his swing rate at pitches outside the zone this month is modestly lower than his season mark, he’s making a a lot less contact on pitches outside the strike zone this month. That of course means he’s not wasting pitches or putting as many of those bad balls he is offering at in play as he was earlier in the season.
What’s worse, while Duda continues to try and attack strikes inside the zone, he he’s been connecting on a fewer number of those pitches during this funk.
Still, Duda has been the club’s most productive and most consistent hitter this year. It’s his first legitimate and prolonged slump of the year, and eventually he should come out of it.
Besides, given the load Duda was towing over the first two months of the season, it’s hard to knock his overall body of work.
Just Mets 