Most of you can probably put a name/event to dates pretty easily in Mets’ history. 9/24/69 – Mets win first World Series 6/15/77 – Mets trade Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman 1/24/80 – Nelson Doubleday buys the Mets 6/15/83 – Mets trade for Keith Hernandez You can probably cite half a dozen more, too. But [...]
Back in 1970, the Mets were the darlings of New York and the sports world. They had just come off the miracle championship season. I was 13 and my father took me to see them play at Shea Stadium. Jerry Koosman was the starter. I had gotten a Polaroid camera for Christmas that year and [...]
After a rough stretch in the early 1990s, the 1996 season was a transitional season for the New York Mets. The team finished with a dreadful 71-91 record, good for fourth-place in the NL East, but gave fans a foreshadowing of the success which followed in the later part of the decade. Generation K was [...]
On July 22, 1986, the New York Mets played a road game against the Cincinnati Reds. Bobby Ojeda started against rookie Scott Terry. The Red led 3-1 with two outs in the 9th inning when Dave Parker dropped what should have been the final out of the game. In the 10th inning, pinch-runner Eric Davis [...]
Could we put together a division made up of the different Mets eras? Who would be victorious? What team would finish in last? How competitive would the different eras be? Let’s start with developing the 25-man roster for the Mets teams prior to the Gil Hodges era that began in 1968. The New York Mets [...]
The Mets historical performance defensively has been, in a word, bad. As we have examined the best and worst fielders in Mets history, it was evident identifying bad players was a little easier than identifying outstanding players. At second base, the answer was largely “no one.” It is never easy to explain *why* the Mets [...]
The 1986 team is now a cherished memory among New York Met fans. Many players on that roster still rank high on any all-time favorite Mets list. There was one player who was released though who caused some controversy prior to his departure. That player was none other than George Foster; he wore number 15 [...]
Back in the day we were constantly told how journeyman Tom Hutton did great against Tom Seaver. And Hutton did begin his career against Seaver off strong, going 9-22 against him in his first three years. But by the end of his career, things had turned the opposite way. In his last 11 trips to [...]
Ever since David Wright retired, there has been a feeling that he is the best Mets position player of all time. Looking at Baseball-Reference’s Mets team page, Wright is #1 in At-Bats, WAR, oWAR, Hits, Singles, Doubles, Runs, RBIs, Total Bases, Walks, Extra Base Hits, Runs Created, Sacrifice Flies, Times on Base, Double Plays Grounded [...]
Recently Rob left a comment on the site repeating a thing that’s been said by many people over the years – that the Mets traded Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Jon Matlack and Jerry Koosman and the only player of note that they received in return was Jesse Orosco. For a brief time it looked like [...]
It is always interesting and exciting to hear about the best fielders. Rarely do we get a good look at the terribly bad fielders. Derek Jeter is always mentioned as a terrible fielder and having the worst negative performance of any fielder. This has some bias toward the good hitters, like Jeter. In looking at [...]
The very first Mets season, 1962, was a dreadful one. That team, which lost 120 games, is sometimes cited as the worst team ever in modern baseball history. But there is a case to be made for a different team to be the worst, specifically the 1945 Philadelphia NL franchise, which actually used the nickname [...]