Lets’ look at the 2011 season from a non-traditional statistical perspective, with some help from the resources of Baseball-Reference.com …
Team Year-in-Review
• The Mets went 77-85 in 2011. It’s the second time in team history that they won exactly 77 games, the first coming 20 years ago in a very disappointing 1991 season.
• These Mets scored 718 runs, 12th-most in team history, but second-most in a losing season. They scored 746 runs when they went 71-91 in 1996.
• The Mets had an-NL leading 309 doubles, second-most in team history, trailing only the 323 of the 2011 squad. It marked the second time the team led the league in doubles, the other coming in 1989.
• The Mets led the National League in walks drawn for the first time since 1992. It’s a category they also led in both 1962 (the lowest of lows) and 1986 (the highest of highs).
• The Mets finished second in the National League in on-base percentage (.335), their highest NL ranking since 1999, when they led the league. The only other seasons they were a top-two team were three pretty good years-- 1986 to 1988.
• This season marked the first 162-game season in which the Mets did not have a player play 130 games with the team. The Mets also were without 130-game players in 1972, 1981, and 1994. The 1972 season could also count- it was a 156-game season due to a player strike. No Met finished with more than 122 games.
Jose, Jose, Jose
• Jose Reyes is the second player in Mets history to lead the National League in most at-bats per strikeout (13.1). The only other player to do it was second baseman Felix Millan, who led the NL each season from 1973 to 1975.
Reyes also shared the NL lead in triples with Shane Victorino, despite not hitting any triples in his final 43 games. He stockpiled them early, setting a Mets record for multi-triple games in a season with three.
• Reyes was part of the second instance in Mets history in which they had the same pair of players steal at least 30 bases in back-to-back seasons. Angel Pagan and Reyes did so this season. Lee Mazzilli and Frank Taveras did it in 1979 and 1980.
Obscure Stat of the Season I
The most obscure stat on the offensive side was that Chin-Lung Hu went 1-for-20, finishing with an .050 batting average. Only two Mets position players had a worse batting average, with at least 20 at-bats in a season-- Sandy Alomar Sr. was 0-22 (.000) in 1966 and catcher Butch Benton was 1-for-21 (.048) in 1980.
The Best There Was
Chris Capuano’s 13-strikeout, two-hit shutout of the Braves on August 26 earned him a Bill James Game Score of 96, the highest in the major leagues all season.
Bill James Game Score ranks pitcher starts, usually on a scale from 0 to 100, with 49 to 50 being average. The rating is based on a pitchers innings pitched, hits allowed, runs allowed, strikeouts, and walks.
It marked the fourth time in Mets history that a Mets pitcher finished a season with the highest Bill James Game Score, the first since 1985 when Dwight Gooden’s Game Score of 92 against the Phillies on September 16 (a two-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts) tied him with Jimmy Key and Dennis Eckersley for best of the season.
Tom Seaver claimed top Game Score pitching honors in a season twice, in 1970 and 1974.
Dickey Deserved Better
R.A. Dickey’s season marked the 42nd time in Mets history that a pitcher finished with an ERA of 3.30 or better in 200 or more innings. However, Dickey’s 8-13 record and .381 winning percentage surpassed Jon Matlack’s .464 winning percentage in 1974 as the worst of those 42 seasons.
Golly Gee!
• Dillon Gee hit 14 batters with a pitch this season, two shy of the Mets record set by Pedro Astacio in 2002. Gee’s 14 hit-by-pitches rank fourth-best in Mets history, one shy of the three-way tie featuring Nolan Ryan (1971), Kevin Appier (2001), and Victor Zambrano (2005) for second-most.
• Gee won 13 games this season with a 4.43 ERA. That’s tied for the second-most wins by a Mets pitcher whose ERA was greater than 4.4 (tied with Orel Hershiser in 1999 and Tom Glavine, 2007). The only pitcher with more, Steve Trachsel, who had 15 wins and a 4.97 ERA in 2006.
Obscure Stat of the Season II
The Mets used 23 pitchers this season and every one of them recorded at least one decision. It’s the fifth time in Mets history in which every pitcher used in a season got at least one decision. The other occurrences were in 1970, 1979, 1983, and 1995.