Mets starting rotation has found its groove despite a shared weakness

The New York Mets rotation hasn’t been the killer of the team holding them back. Sure, there have been bad days. For a long period of time, we couldn’t count on anyone to even dip into the seventh inning. The starters have been pushed a little harder and further. All seems well in the world of the starting staff regardless of who steps on the mound to begin the game.

With the success has come one shared weakness. Luis Severino, Jose Quintana, and David Peterson all share an identical 6.6 strikeouts per 9 innings. A below average rate for a starting pitcher, these three and even Christian Scott who is at just 6.9 per 9 are trusting their stuff enough to get batters out with contact rather than blowing them away.

Sean Manaea stands above the rest. He is just shy of a strikeout per inning with 96 through 96.1 innings.

Does it even matter that Mets starting pitchers aren’t striking batters out?

As technology improves and humanity does amazing things like cures diseases, explores new worlds, and understands the true purpose of life, we also have better ways of tracking the effectiveness of a pitcher. Measuring how hard a ball is hit or the quality of contact tells much more than the umpire saying “strike three.”

Mets pitchers aren’t excelling in this department either. Here’s where the starters rank in average exit velocity from the fastest to slowest:

David Peterson – 56
Jose Quintana – 113
Christian Scott – 151
Sean Manaea – 166
Luis Severino 313

A bit arbitrary in the fact that the miles per hour off the bat between Peterson and Severino is about 3, the real strength comes more from the poor quality of these sometimes hard-hit balls are.

Looking at barrel percentage per plate appearance, the rankings are much better. This is where they rank among MLB pitchers from highest to lowest:

Christian Scott – 139
David Peterson – 173
Jose Quintana – 207
Sean Manaea – 215
Luis Severino – 289

Analytics like this fail to tell the whole story of any pitcher. Austin Adams, for instance, has the fourth-lowest exit velocity against him and is 12th in baseball in barrel percentage per plate appearance. Yet his 4.55 ERA, 4.40 FIP, and several other numbers trounce these numbers.

It would certainly be nice for the Mets starting pitchers to get more outs with strikeouts. But hey, whatever works.