The days and nights of Carlos Delgado.

Delgado’s day/night splits this season are now at a point where there is enough of a sample to derive data from, since the Mets have now played 81 games this season.

And the differences are… day and night. Overwhelmingly.

Delgado’s numbers during day games - .295/.352/.616 (.969 OPS)
Delgado’s numbers during night games - .190/.283/.291 (.573 OPS)

He now has 10 HRs in 30 Day Games (116 ABs), compared to 4 HRs in 49 Night Games (179 ABs).

Over the last 2 seasons, Delgado’s numbers during day games were better than night games, but not substantially enough to raise a red flag. Over the course of his career, he’s been pretty even, with a slight skew towards better performance during day games than night games.

This season, it’s a huge difference.

Then it got me wondering... Of those 4 HRs in 49 night games, when during the game did it take place? Was there natural light in the sky? Was the sun on its way down? Or was it truly "night"? So, I did a little more researching and looked at the video replays of those HRs.

Delgado's 4 HRs during night games came...
May 22nd vs Atlanta (7:10pm start) - 2nd inning - natural daylight
May 23rd vs Colorado (7:05pm start) - 6th inning - dark night sky, zero natural daylight
June 18th vs Angels (7:05pm start) - 4th inning - This one was hard to tell. Even though I was there, I don't remember the amount of light in the sky when the HR was hit. The video clip of the HR doesn't give you a good idea either. Sunset that night was 8:08pm, which is probably around the same time of the 4th inning. I did see natural daylight in the sky in the video clip of Marlon Anderson's sac fly that scored Reyes the previous inning, so my best guess is that there was indeed still a fair amount of natural daylight in the sky.
June 20th vs Colorado (7:05 start) - 2nd inning - natural daylight

So basically, when it's really dark out, you know "nighttime," Carlos Delgado only has 1 HR in 2008.