Hello, and thanks for checking out my latest piece on my NYU WordPress, which I began as a hobby and as an effort to create content. While I have began this site by sharing some opinion pieces about recently published academic work, as well as by posting a policy memo I wrote during the semester as a participant in NYU’s Policy Case Competition, I have decided that I want to attempt to learn a bit more about statistics as well as exporting data onto my own website by focusing on what I believe to be somewhat interesting information. In order to do so, I started researching sports statistics by scraping data from sports-reference.com to help me learn how to actually produce material. I hope you enjoy!

In this latest posting, I will be doing some research about my favorite baseball team, the New York Mets. While New York City is home to the most successful baseball team, the New York Yankees, I was raised to cheer for their underdog cross-town rivals since my father grew up in the immediate vicinity of their Flushing, Queens based stadium. Since I was born in 1999, I have decided to first focus my attention on the amount of wins that the team has had each full season I have been a fan.

As you can see, since 1999 the New York Mets have been pretty dreadful, with no 100-win seasons, although they did have two 97-win seasons (one in 1999 and the other in 2006.) As a fan of the team, remaining loyal to the Mets comes with a certain tolerability toward losing and disappointment. In both of these aforementioned years, the Mets were eliminated during the National League Championship Series and the teams that they lost to went on to both compete in the World Series. In 1999, the Mets were defeated by the Atlanta Braves in a six game series, largely due to the heroism of Catcher and series MVP Eddie Perez. Although I was merely an infant at the time, my very first season as a Mets fan was ended by an extravagant offensive performance by Perez, as he proceeded to get 10 hits in 20 at-bats for an astonishing .500 series batting average. Here is the statistical breakdown of his 1999 NLCS Performance.

For a look at just how dominant Eddie Perez was in this series, just check out this monster home run in Game 2 of the series.

During this at bat, Eddie Perez faced Mets Pitcher Kenny Rogers. Rodgers began that sixth inning with a 2-0 lead in the game, but like Mets fans know very well, no lead matters until the last pitch is thrown. Needless to say, Rogers threw an abysmal inning in a crucial time for the team and practically lost the series himself. In order to understand just how bad this half inning was for the Mets, just check out a play-by-play description of the game with some advanced statistics to help illustrate the devastating nature of Rogers’s bad pitching.

Play by Play Table Inn

▲ Score Out RoB Pit(cnt) R/O @Bat Batter Pitcher wWPA wWE Play Description Bottom of the 6th, Braves Batting, Behind 0-2, Mets’ Kenny Rogers facing 2-3-4 b6 0-2 0 — O ATL Bret Boone Kenny Rogers -4% 24% Groundout: SS-1B b6 0-2 1 — ATL Chipper Jones Kenny Rogers 4% 28% Walk b6 0-2 1 1– RR ATL Brian Jordan Kenny Rogers 27% 54% Home Run; Jones Scores b6 2-2 1 — ATL Andruw Jones Kenny Rogers 4% 58% Single to LF b6 2-2 1 1– RR ATL Eddie Perez Kenny Rogers 25% 82% Home Run; Jones Scores Turk Wendell replaces Kenny Rogers pitching and batting 9th b6 4-2 1 — O ATL Brian Hunter Turk Wendell -1% 81% Flyball: CF b6 4-2 2 — ATL Walt Weiss Turk Wendell 1% 82% Reached on E4 (Ground Ball) b6 4-2 2 1– O ATL Kevin Millwood Turk Wendell -2% 81% Groundout: SS-1B 4 runs, 3 hits, 1 error, 1 LOB. Mets 2, Braves 4. View Original Table

Generated 5/5/2019. Provided by Baseball-Reference.com Generated 5/5/2019.

The statistic wWE is not exactly a shoutout to cage-match wrestling, but is actually the “Winning Team Win Expectancy”, and represents the percent chance that an average leading team has at any exact moment against an average opponent. Put simply, the Mets went from having a 76% chance of victory at the beginning of the inning to a 19% chance at the end of the inning.

When I think about what it means to be a fan of the New York Mets, no example of gameplay from the team during my lifetime matches my perceived experience as well as this atrocious inning of baseball. Who knows, maybe this year something will be different and I will get to experience my New York Mets win a World Series. Until then, however, I will stick to learning more about statistics and WordPress design by recalling failures I’ve endured as a fan, even if they occurred before I could formulate my first sentences.

If you enjoyed this, I hope you decide to check out some of my other work.