Before the season started, Joeadig and I had a point/counterpoint on the Mets front office, specifically Omar Minaya. I probably came off as more of an Omar Minaya fan than I truly am, more because I felt that Joeadig was leveling some unfair accusations towards Omar. Signing Carlos Beltran and trading for Johan Santana were both two absolutely huge moves made by Omar, for which he deserves praise, and I felt that Joe was overlooking them while making a larger point that I do agree with, that Omar Minaya has done a pretty terrible job at building a championship baseball team given the great core that the Mets possess, two of which were players directly acquired by Omar himself.
Now we are almost three months into the season, and it’s become clear that for a third straight season, this team is woefully ill-equipped to make the postseason, despite once again having a terrific core of players to build this team around. What’s more, the disease isn’t limited to the front office. The field manager and his staff have done a terrible job running the day to day operations of the team. The medical and training staff appear to be showing a blatant disregard for the players for which they are so handsomely paid to attend. Nothing appears to be running the way a smart baseball team operates.
The most recent, and perhaps the best example, revolves Carlos Beltran. Beltran is having another wonderful season; there is no player, perhaps no two players who could replace his combination of excellent defense and superb offense. With Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, John Maine, Oliver Perez, and JJ Putz all on the disabled list, and all players that this team could ill afford to lose to begin with, Beltran ranks as a precious commodity. Without Beltran, this team is royally screwed, even if all of those guys came back tomorrow.
Yet Beltran is hurting. Read this quote from yesterday:
“I don’t feel I can play a lot of games the way it felt today. I’m a little bit worried, to be honest.”
Yet Beltran was allowed to take the field yesterday. Does that sound like a guy who should be allowed to play? I mean, this could be Luis Castillo and I’d still say that is a pretty reckless thing to do. But this is Carlos Beltran; we need Beltran to remain healthy if this team is going to do anything this season. Yet the field manager somehow thought that one game against the Tampa Bay Rays was worth risking the team’s first or second best everyday player, on advice of a training staff that has already proven itself woefully inept at what they do, and nobody from the front office bothered to say “Whoa, wait a minute – this guy is scheduled for an MRI on Monday, maybe we should have him sit this one out.”
The handling of Beltran was just another misstep by this franchise this season. JJ Putz was clearly not his best; Dave Cameron from Fangraphs speculated this back in late-April based on looking at his average fastball and strikeout rates. Yet the team didn’t think then to investigate if Putz was truly injured, kept running him out there for a month, during which he gave the Mets several ineffective innings of relief, and only shut him down a few weeks ago for him to have surgery. Dave Cameron is a baseball writer for a pretty good stats website; he is not a member of the Mets front office, and does not follow the team on a daily basis. If he was able to figure out in late-April that something is wrong with JJ Putz, why did it take the team a full month for them to figure this out?
Then there are the other issues, such as the length of time it took the team to put Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes on the disabled list, during a West Coast road trip, leaving the bench way too thin. There was the DFA of Darren O’Day, who has since taken his power sinker to Texas, where he has a 1.23 ERA and 0.91 WHIP for the Rangers, while the Mets continue to stretch their bullpen arms too thin. The bench actually looked good until Reyes and Delgado got hurt, where it was exposed that Triple-A Buffalo is secretly a barren wasteland of suck. The team is currently getting below league average production at catcher, first base, second base, and right field on a daily basis, and Alex Cora really isn’t any great shakes at shortstop either.
It has become apparent that the Wilpons made a mistake similar to the one that Omar Minaya seems to make all the time; they gave him about one too many years on his latest contract extension. I agreed that he had probably done enough to deserve an extension, but not a four year extension; they probably should have only extended him 2-3 years. Now they are stuck with Omar for at least another season, probably two, and while they might be willing to eat Jerry’s last year after the season (should they even see fit to fire him, and I’m not convinced that they will be), they will not be willing to eat 3 years of Omar Minaya’s contract as well as one year of Jerry’s.
As we get further and further from 2006, it becomes apparent that Omar Minaya really just got lucky that year with some of his smaller moves, rather than acquiring guys like Chad Bradford, Darren Oliver, and Endy Chavez through a smart process. Minaya just is not capable of building a great baseball team, even given a tremendous core with which to work in the Wright/Reyes/Beltran/Santana nucleus.
What I’d like to see out of the Wilpons after the season is just a wholesale cleansing of this team, from the front office to the training staff to the field management staff. Other than Howard Johnson, I don’t think I can name a single member of those groups whom I would like to see keep their job after this disaster. Let a new front office come in, figure out how to ship Luis Castillo out of town no matter what they have to do to get it done, figure out that Ryan Church is not more than a good platoon player despite a strong arm in right field, figure out what exactly is the best use of Daniel Murphy, and figure out how to build a good championship support group around the core.
They need to figure out that between Oliver Perez, Mike Pelfrey, and John Maine, they really have 3 #4 starters, and that the team needs a stronger pitcher behind Johan Santana. They need figure out that sending Livan Hernandez out to pitch every fifth day is not very smart, even if he has gotten insanely lucky so far. They need to figure out that using Bobby Parnell and Pedro Feliciano every day is not a good way to keep them fresh through the end of the season, let alone the end of June. This is a team that has so much to figure out, and the people making those decisions right now are woefully ill-equipped to make figure these decisions out.
Los Angeles Dodgers
But this right here probably ranks as the best part-time season by a Mets player in history. Mets fans ultimately won’t remember Moises Alou fondly, I suspect. If he had made it onto the field even a little bit more in 2008, the story might be different. Then again, we may not have seen Fernando Tatis’ excellent season, either – or at the very least, there would have been a logjam when Ryan Church came back. Anyway, in a little more than half a season, Alou hit over 30 extra base hits, hit for a high average (which propped up his OBP) and gave the Mets their longest hitting streak in team history to close the season and, along with David Wright and Carlos Beltran, helped keep the Mets from being finished off before the last day of the season and gave them hope. You can’t blame the collapse on Alou, because he was at his absolute best during that period.
I don’t know much about Tommy Davis. He only spent one season with the Mets, after which he was traded to the White Sox for Tommie Agee. Can’t really complain about that one, as we’ll be seeing Tommie Agee on lists to come. But I do know that 48 extra base hits during the dead ball era is really good, particularly playing half his games at Shea. He didn’t walk much, wasn’t much of a base-stealer, but he gave the Mets solid power, leading the 61-win Mets in both home runs and doubles. Since he played on a terrible Mets team over 40 years ago, and only played one season at that, he is a prime candidate to get forgotten by most Mets fans, which is why I’m happy to shine a bit of a light on a player who kept that year’s Mets team from being significantly worse.
With apologies to Jose Reyes, this stands as the best season by a Mets leadoff hitter in history. Eighty-two walks! A .423 on base percentage! If Jose Reyes did that today, people wouldn’t give him crap over his celebrations because he’d be the MVP of the league. But Rickey wasn’t particularly loved for his time in New York (which seems to be a recurring theme here). Maybe it has to do with his playing cards with Bobby Bonilla as the Mets were playing the Braves in a do or die NLCS game against the Atlanta Braves? But Rickey’s year was pretty great, although he was another player who didn’t stay on the field enough (then again, he was 42). You’ll hear more great stories about Rickey next week, after he is inducted into the Hall of Fame, but Mets fans should remember him for the season where he played cards with Bobby Bonilla in the clubhouse, and simultaneously was the best leadoff hitter the Mets would ever know.
Milner always seemed like a sad case to me. He was a pretty solid hitter who had good patience and decent power for the time. Surely, he was a better hitter than Ed Kranepool. Yet the Mets never really gave him a shot. Whenever Kranepool would go down, or one of their corner outfielders would go down, Milner would step in, hit double digit homers and doubles, walk once every 8-10 plate appearances, and then go right back to the bench. Alas, Milner came up in the 70’s, where things like walking were not as appreciated, and the things Milner didn’t do (like hit .300 or avoid strikeouts) were held against him. If Milner had come up today, he’d be seen as a good starter; instead, he was seen as a good fill-in, but nothing more. Still, this season represents his peak as a Met, and it was a good one; 44 extra base hits in 511 plate appearances is nothing to sneeze at.
Cliff Floyd, when he was healthy, was a dangerous hitter. This 2005 proves it; I mean, he even stole 17 bases! You forget that Floyd was not a one-dimensional slugger. This was the one year that Floyd managed to stay on the field enough to play a full season, and he delivered in spades, with 34 homers, 22 doubles, a .505 slugging percentage, the aforementioned steals, and 63 walks. This was Floyd’s last truly good season, as injuries would keep him off the field in 2006 (fortunately, the Mets didn’t miss him too much) and he became a part-time player the past two seasons. It’s a shame that he was a guy who could never stay healthy; the 2006 Mets might have vanquished the Cardinals if Floyd had more than three at-bats (when he could barely move, no less).
This season stood as the gold standard for Mets shortstops for almost thirty years. Take a look at that beauty. The only thing Buddy did this year was walk; those 63 walks were good to pump that OBP up to .351. Of course, 17 extra base hits are nothing to write home about, which is the only reason this season won’t be ranked higher. He also played a good defensive shortstop, so I don’t mean to hate…but when from 1962 to 2004, this season ranks as the #1 best season ever by a shortstop in franchise history…well, that doesn’t speak to well for the franchise’s shortstops.
Here is your #1 proof that the New York Mets have failed to employ even passable hitting shortstops for the franchise’s entire history between 1962 and 2004; Kaz Matsui had the best offensive season in Mets history in 2004. Matsui was positively HATED his entire time in New York, yet compared to other Mets he was positively terrific, thanks mostly to those 32 doubles and going 14 of 17 on stolen base attempts. Of course, Matsui also wasn’t nearly as good as these other guys defensively, making his bad hitting stick out…but you can’t win ‘em all.
Jose Reyes is, by far, the best hitting shortstop in Mets history. In 2007, when it was all said and done anybody could talk about was what was wrong with Reyes. The guy just had the second-best season by a Mets shortstop in team history, and the story was what was wrong with him? If there was something wrong with Reyes in 2007, then there must have been something seriously wrong with Mets shortstops for the first 35 years of the team’s existence, because none of those seasons could hold a candle to Reyes in 2007, other than Reyes in 2006.
Kevin Elster was generally not a good hitter. He didn’t draw walks. He didn’t hit for power. He didn’t hit for average. This season really isn’t good at all by any objective measure. I have nothing good to say about Kevin Elster in 1989, no fond remembrances, nothing notable at all, other than the ten homers he hit here were only the second time in team history where a Mets shortstop hit ten or more home runs. Actually amend that statement – it was only the second time in team history where a Mets shortstop hit ten home runs, because neither hit more than ten. It would remain the second time in team history where a Mets shortstop hit ten home runs for another 17 years.
You know what makes Eddie Bressoud’s 1966 season notable? He hit ten home runs this season, the first time in Mets history a shortstop hit ten home runs. Elster would become the second man 23 years later. Jose Reyes would become the third man 17 years after that (and he actually hit MORE than ten homers!). He also drew a decent number of walks. Other than that, I can’t think of a single thing to say about Eddie Bressoud and his 1966 season.
Kevin Elster makes the list twice! Just think of all the greats that didn’t make the list if not one, but TWO Kevin Elster seasons made the cut. And this is before Kevin Elster suddenly and inexplicably developed power in his early to mid 30’s, to boot. Do you see why I waited a week to post the shortstops list now? I’d almost rather talk about Mets rumors that surely will never come to pass than talk about this awful list of shortstops. Seriously, two Kevin Elster seasons! How did that happen?
You want to know how utterly unnotable Jose Vizcaino’s stay with the Mets was? As you can tell, I have tried to include images with each of these columns, ways to remember the greats that have played with the Mets. When I tried a Google Image Search for “Jose Vizcaino, Mets,” this was the only image that came up with Jose Vizcaino in Mets gear. This was it! Vizcaino hit a fluky .287, which helped cover for his lousy walk rate somewhat, and added an impressive 21 doubles. Other than that, awful season. #6 in Mets history.
Howard Johnson, like Bret Saberhagen, had a weird even year/odd year thing going. Every other year, he would have a great season, followed by a down season. It continued in 1991, following a disappointing 1990 season, HoJo bounced back with a huge 38 homer/34 double/30 steal season. Call it the 30/30/30 club, the second time he pulled off such a feat. Throw in a career-high 117 RBIs, and you’re left with a damned fine season on a team that went nowhere.
David Wright’s first full season in the big leagues…and it’s the 4th best offensive season at third base in Mets history. I’d say that’s pretty good. In fact, in 2005 this season would have ranked second in Mets history. You could start to see the traits that would make David Wright great develop in this first season. High number of walks, 40+ doubles, 27 homers, 100+ RBIs…there is a lot to love here.
Here is where I suspect a lot of folks will be surprised. 
Howard Johnson set a Mets record in 1989; most extra base hits in a season. How can a season where a man hits 80 extra base hits not rank #1? Throw in 41 steals, and you have a hell of a season. Howard Johnson was really underrated, mostly because he played on teams that had Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter, and other big hitters, and by the time HoJo became a regular, the Mets had already peaked and were settled into a series of second place finishes.
A lot was written about Gregg Jefferies in the late 80’s and early 90’s. With the way the Mets farm system had pumped out homegrown star players like Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden, Jefferies was supposed to be the next star player in the system. A second baseman with 20 homer potential, if the New York hype machine was any indication, Jefferies was to dominate this very list you are reading for years and years to come.
I have to admit – I’m not thrilled that Jeff Kent made the list twice. The biggest reason for that is because the Mets traded a guy who is going to the Hall of Fame, probably first ballot, for a guy who was essentially finished as an everyday player at the age of 27, only the Mets were forced to trot him out every day for the next 2 and a half years regardless. Part of it is that he seems like kind of a jerk. While I try not to rush to judgment on players, the fact is Kent has feuded publicly with teammates in every city in which he has played. I can infer from this that if he is willing to publicly air his grievances with his teammates instead of handling them like men in the locker room, that he is probably a jerk.
The first player from the 60’s makes one of these lists! If you look at Ron Hunt’s numbers, they don’t necessarily scream “great hitter,” but remember that the 1960’s were a different era. This was fresh in the middle of the “dead ball” era, where power numbers had taken a giant dive downward. So yes, a player with only 31 extra base hits is #3 on the list, because power numbers across the board were depressed. Hunt is also the first player on this list to hit .300 over a full season, which also helps give him that OBP over .350, also a first on this list. Hunt’s numbers were even good enough to get him some MVP votes – he finished 25th in 1964, the first Met to ever receive an MVP vote.
