What if Tom Seaver stayed with the Braves and never joined the Mets?

So, how’s the COVID-19 quarantine treating you? My time has been spent rather unproductively but what are you gonna do? There was a box of my stuff that was dived into and among other things, it included four 1969 Citgo Mets portraits that were purchased on ebay some 20 or so years ago. The lot [...]

Ranking Mets’ opponents with the B-R Play Index tool

The Baseball-Reference Play Index search function is free for the month of April. If you haven’t ever used the Play Index before, you owe it to yourself to check it out now. You can use it to answer all sorts of player and team-specific research question. Today, let’s look at the Mets’ opponents and see [...]

The roster and records of Mets teams five years after a World Series appearance

The Mets made the World Series in 2015, which isn’t that long ago but, in some respects, seems like it was a different lifetime. The average age of that World Series team was 28.8, perhaps slightly older than one might expect but it wasn’t exactly the 1980 Phillies “Wheeze Kids,” who averaged 30.9 years of [...]

The top five middle infield combos for the Mets

The Mets have always been known more for their pitching rather than their hitting. And nowhere has this lack of hitting been more pronounced throughout the years than with their middle infield combo. Fans have seen guys at these positions who struggled to hit their weight. We’ve watched guys like Roy McMillan, Bud Harrelson, Rafael [...]

Out of Position: From Keith Miller to Dominic Smith

The off season is chugging along at a pace. Here we are post-Holidays, still the first week of January, spring training a little more than a month away already. Heck, the Nationals’ victory champagne is barely dried on the carpet. The Mets, as we know, have made a few moves, mainly revamping their beleaguered bullpen. [...]

Tracking Mets players to lose their rookie status for the past decade

Last season the Mets used 53 different players and the year before that the number was 56. You can’t use that many players without adding new blood on a consistent basis. Some of these players come from outside of the organization, whether through trades or free agent signings or waiver pickups. And some make their [...]

Jacob deGrom’s place among the best pitchers of the 21st Century

Jacob deGrom has back-to-back Cy Young Awards and his 2017 wasn’t too shabby, either. But where does his three-year span stack up against other top hurlers of recent vintage? Let’s look at all of the pitchers of the 21st Century and see what the best consecutive three-year peak was for them. And a pitcher will [...]

Bing Devine was an unsung architect of the ‘69 Mets

Fifty years ago, Met fans were still celebrating the stunning World Series win over the mighty Baltimore Orioles. One of the key architects of that team and its triumphs was no longer employed by the team. That would be Bing Devine, a front office magician for the Mets from 1965 to 1967. Devine rose to [...]

Mets relievers that WHIP it good in the 21st Century

Relievers are fickle. For whatever reason, they were deemed at some point not to have the stuff to succeed as a starter, which certainly calls into question their ability to consistently pitch well. And then when they only pitch about one-third as much as a starter over a full season, it becomes easier to see [...]