Right Off The Bat

Mets Home Runs As A Met, Leading Off the Game
Mookie Wilson/Jose Reyes 5
Lenny Dykstra/Kaz Matsui/Wayne Garrett 3


Over Mets history, 49 times a Mets batter has hit a home run leading off a (regular season) game, that is, in the first plate appearance in the top of the first inning. That’s 49 leadoff homers in 3,659 regular season away games the Mets have played (of course, a batter can only hit a homer leading off a game if he is the leadoff batter for the visiting team). So overall, Mets leadoff hitters have started a game with a homer about once in every 75 opportunities (3659/49=74.67).

How does that compare to the Mets’ overall home run percentage? Across all their regular season plate appearances, in all their games from 1962 though 2007 (that’s 278,183 PAs in total), the Mets have hit home runs on average about once every 48 PAs. So a Mets hitter leading off a game has been significantly less likely to hit a homer than the average Met hitter. that's perhaps what one would expect, give that leadoff hitters are not usually chosen for ther home run hitting prowess, although one would expect that leadoff hitters will be more capable of hitting homers than most eighth place hitters and almost every ninth place hitter. That would perhaps limit the degree to which leadoff hitters fall below team average in home run frequency.

Indeed, across the majors as a whole in 2007, the frequency of home runs in the first plate appearance of games was ver close to the frequency of homers in the average plate appearance overall. Of the 4,957 regular season games played in the majors in 2007, 59 began with a homer in the first plate appearnace -- that's once every 41.2 games. Overall, the 2007 regular season saw homers hit about once every 38.1 plate apearances. But because homers to lead off games can only be hit by the visting club, we shoul compare leadoff homer frequency to overall average homer frequency by visiting teams, which was once every 39.6 plate appearances. The difference in 2007 between the overall frequency of homers by visiting team players, one per 39.6 PAs, and the game-leadoff frequency, one per 41.2 leadoff PAs, was very small. Essentially, if major league batters leading off games had hit homers in 2007 with thes same frequency as players hit homers overall, it would only have increased game leadoff homers from 59 to 61.

More Mets game-leadoff home run facts:
-No Met had a game leadoff homer in 2007, this coming after Jose Reyes set a new team record in 2006 for game leadoff homers by hitting 4 of them. Reyes broke a record that had been held by Kaz Matsui (3 game leadoff homers in 2004) and Lenny Dykstra (3 game leadoff homers in 1986).
-The first game leadoff homer by a Met was Jim Hickman's blast on August 24, 1963 against Cubs pitcher and future Met Cal Koonce. Hickman's homer to start the game was all the Mets needed that day, as they won 5-0 on a complete game shutout by Carl Willey (whose 3.10 ERA that season was the lowest for a Met pitcher with enough innings to qualify for the ERA title until Tom Seaver came along).