How bad were the Mets DHs in 2022?

Here’s a pretty awesome page on Baseball-Reference that isn’t always the easiest to find. It breaks down some interesting New York Mets splits from the 2022 season. From it, we see just how bad the team’s DHs were this past year.

Collectively, anyone who was labeled as the Mets DH this past year hit .218/.314/.371 with 18 home runs and 83 RBI. It’s actually quite surprising that the power numbers and RBI totals weren’t worse. We can thank Pete Alonso and Daniel Vogelbach’s hot streaks for saving the DH spot from being a complete disaster.

There was, however, one big problem for the team’s designated hitters this past year. Making contact was something they didn’t do nearly enough.

Where Mets DHs struggled the most in 2022

Although they did hit home runs and drove them in, nobody struck out more than the Mets DH in 2022. A total of 183 Ks from this spot in the lineup excessively took down the 149 runner-up total from third basemen on the team.

Half of the name of the position is “hitter.” Way too often, there was no actual hitting involved.

Pinch hitters for the DH weren’t much better. There were 28 times when Buck Showalter summoned someone from the bench to replace the DH. They would pick up only 2 hits in 19 total at-bats. The slash line for those players came out to an abysmal .105/.370/.263.

The Mets didn’t get much at all from their pinch hitters this past year. They hit .145/.268/.217 which begs a question of whether it was the wrong decision or worth it at all to replace the starter.

No position on the roster needs a bigger upgrade for 2023 than the DH. Only the team’s catchers produced worse numbers. At least they played on the other side of things. Mets DHs seemed to do nothing but drag the team down. The numbers confirm it.