The narrative that has developed around the New York Mets' National League East title goes something like this: The Washington Nationals underachieved, the Mets took advantage of a horrible division and couldn't beat anyone else and if it hadn't been for Yoenis Cespedes, they may never have caught Washington. (Incredible fact about Cespedes: The three teams that traded him in the past 15 months all finished in last place this year.)
If you buy into that narrative, this fact may surprise you. In the second half of the season, the second highest-scoring team was the New York Mets (behind the Toronto Blue Jays). Despite the advantage of using a designated hitter, no other team in the American League scored more runs over their last 81 games than the Mets. Cespedes surely helped -- he hit .287/.337/.604 in 57 of those games -- but this isn't a case of Barry Bonds or George Brett accounting for some ridiculous percentage of a team's runs created. There were a few teams that had a player with an OPS over .900 for 162 games (the Reds, Diamondbacks and Nationals come to mind) and they didn't come close to leading the league in scoring over that time.