With his second-inning two-run homer and fifth-inning two-RBI base hit, Lucas Duda raised his Saturday totals for this season — covering four games, through Saturday night in Denver — to the following:
• .500 batting average
• .500 on-base percentage
• 1.429 slugging percentage
• 1.929 OPS
• 4 home runs
• 8 runs batted in
• 5 runs scored
In games played on the other six days of the week, encompassing 17 games thus far, Lucas Duda’s 2012 looks like this:
• .203 batting average
• .284 on-base percentage
• .220 slugging percentage
• .504 OPS
• 0 home runs
• 5 runs batted in
• 5 runs scored
The Mets are 4-0 on Saturdays this year, including their most recent 7-5 victory at Coors Field; Lucas has now driven in 38.1% of all his team’s runs on that day to date. The Mets are 8-9 the rest of the time, when Duda — presciently dubbed “Saturday’s Child” by Josh Lewin on the season’s second Saturday — is doing not so much.
And the reason for this dichotomy between Lucas’s Saturdays and Lucas’s Sundays through Fridays is…
Well, I have no idea. I’m guessing Lucas has no idea. A Mets fan would wish for Saturday Lucas to be everyday Lucas, but a baseball fan would have to be satisfied that in an age when there’s a solid statistical explanation for almost everything, there is no earthly reason for this phenomenon to be occurring.
If our right fielder doesn’t pull out of his six-day-a-week funk, it will be alarming in the long run if it isn’t already. But for now, once a week, when we win and he hits as if by appointment no matter what might go wrong along the way (or, for that matter, the night before), isn’t it — at least in the abstract — mystifyingly beautiful the way Lucas Duda is in bloom on Saturdays and only Saturdays?
On Sunday morning, it is.
***
The preceding three days at Hofstra were much like a Lucas Duda Saturday: powerful, productive and a Met joy to behold. I’ll share further thoughts soon when I’m again as alert as I felt from the first pitch to the last out of the conference. But for the moment, if you were there, please know you have my deepest appreciation for being an intrinsic part of the teamwork that made the dream work.
Duda’s breakout game was the Saturday game in Texas last June. Prior to the game, the scoreboard mentioned how the previous night he had tied his record of two hits in a game. He and his bat were insulted by the backhanded compliment, and were an integral part of the Mets’ 14-5 victory that day.
He also hit a mammoth shot in the general direction of Bayside on the final Saturday of the 2010 season, so this may be more of a long-term trend than just April. Good thing he’s not orthodox.
I loved the Hofstra event, too, and feel like it opened up a community of people to me that I didn’t really know was there. The academic angles were so interesting, I learned so much about the earlier teams that I didnt know, and some of the presentations just took my breath away! So many people who seemed to be there as father and son. I was there with my mom, and we had a really great time.
Count me in as a new follower of your blog!! I’m looking forward to reading your recap and reflections on the conference!
Rebecca G
Greatly appreciated, Rebecca. Welcome to our humble abode.
And, I’m reading the book you signed for me. Literally, laughing out loud on the plane. Can’t wait to finish it, but sadly, then I’ll be done.