The Mets Were Amazin' In 1969-Amazin' In High Leverage Situations, That Is

Using the Baseball Reference Play Index, I found the OPS for all teams since 1960 in High, Medium, and Low Leverage situations (and also what their pitchers allowed in all three cases). Then I found each team's differential in High, Medium, and Low Leverage situations.

In the table below, High Diff is their OPS differential in High Leverage situations. Then there is a column for Medium and Low Leverage situations.

Then I calculated how their OPS differential in High Leverage situations differed from their OPS differentials in Medium and Low Leverage situations. HMD is High Leverage OPS differential minus Medium Leverage OPS differential. HLD is the same thing but the High differential minus the Low differential.

I averaged HMD and HLD (just a simple average, maybe some kind of weighted average would have been better). The table below shows the top 20 in that average. The 1969 Mets are 18th, putting them in the top 2% of the 1,432 teams.

The only other teams in the top 20 here to make it to the World Series besides the 1969 Mets were the 1965 Dodgers and the 1961 Reds. But of these three teams, only the Mets had a negative OPS differential in BOTH Medium and Low Leverage cases but positive when it was High Leverage.

In fact, there were only 10 teams to have an OPS differential of at least .100 in High Leverage cases while having a negative one in BOTH Medium and Low Leverage situations. Of those 10, only the 1969 Mets made it to the World Series.

One other note, the 1962 Mets had the worst OPS differential in High Leverage cases: -.266. Next worst were the 2003 Tigers with -.226 (unfortunately for the Tigers, their 2002 team was next worst after that with -.204). The 1962 Mets were also bad in Medium and Low Leverage situations, but nothing like -.266. There they had -0.089 & -0.071.

Team	Year	High Diff	Med Diff	Low Diff	HMD	HLD	AVG
LAA	2008	0.159	0.028	-0.072	0.131	0.231	0.181
BAL	1960	0.158	-0.059	0.027	0.217	0.131	0.174
KCR	1971	0.146	-0.024	-0.027	0.170	0.173	0.1715
LAD	1965	0.155	0.015	-0.047	0.140	0.202	0.171
CIN	1980	0.151	-0.050	0.013	0.201	0.138	0.1695
SDP	1989	0.137	-0.025	-0.038	0.162	0.175	0.1685
CIN	2004	0.058	-0.070	-0.151	0.128	0.209	0.1685
ARI	2007	0.114	-0.027	-0.071	0.141	0.185	0.163
CIN	1961	0.174	0.054	-0.029	0.120	0.203	0.1615
ARI	2011	0.139	-0.052	0.009	0.191	0.130	0.1605
LAD	1961	0.136	-0.016	-0.030	0.152	0.166	0.159
CHW	1972	0.124	-0.031	-0.030	0.155	0.154	0.1545
HOU	2008	0.095	-0.063	-0.055	0.158	0.150	0.154
MIL	1981	0.122	-0.024	-0.028	0.146	0.150	0.148
SFG	1997	0.117	-0.025	-0.036	0.142	0.153	0.1475
WSA	1967	0.060	-0.112	-0.055	0.172	0.115	0.1435
NYY	2004	0.171	0.056	-0.001	0.115	0.172	0.1435
NYM	1969	0.130	-0.009	-0.017	0.139	0.147	0.143
CHW	1998	0.100	-0.017	-0.069	0.117	0.169	0.143
BAL	2012	0.123	-0.014	-0.017	0.137	0.140	0.1385