Skip to main content

Houston, Me Have A Problem

I noticed an odd quirk in my database for which I don't really have a logical explanation and it pertains to the team the Mets are facing this weekend.

If you go back to the teams that existed when the Mets came into being in 1962, the team against whom they've struggled most at getting walk-off wins against is the Astros.

Consider this chart

Mets Walk-Off Wins vs Opponent
All-Time (including postseason)

Dodgers 29 (266 home games played)
Astros 19 (266 home games played)

and this one

Mets Walk-Off Wins vs Opponent
All-Time (includes postseason)

Astros 19 (266 home games played)
Padres 19 (203 home games played)

Does that make any sense to you?

What I find even odder is that the Mets have 35 walk-off losses against the Astros (in 268 road games). If you break it down even further, you could look at this chart

Mets vs Astros
Walk-Off Wins Compared

Mets 19 walk-off wins out of 139 home wins (1 out of every 7.3 wins is a walk-off)
Astros 36 walk-off wins out of 165 home wins (1 out of every 4.6 wins is a walk-off)

I don't really have any answers for the disparities and that's bothering me at the moment as I ponder the possibilities behind this.

Maybe this is what I get for seeing the thriller 1408 yesterday, a film in which the main character always has an explanation for the unexplainable, until he stays in a particularly frightening haunted hotel. I was planning on seeing Sicko in the next 24 hours. Perhaps Michael Moore has some sort of solution to fix the Mets injury woes.

True Metstronauts know...That there's another series of charts that strikes me as rather odd.

Mets Walk-Off Wins vs Opponents
All-Time, includes postseason

Diamondbacks 4 (out of 39 home games played, 20 Mets wins)
Rockies 4 (out of 63 home games played, 43 Mets wins)

Comments

Unknown said…
Wow. 1 out of every 4.7 Astros win is a walkoff? Unreal.
2:05 PM
metswalkoffs said…
In fact, I forgot to include a walk-off loss when the team was known as Colt 45s, so it's 1 every 4.6 (yes, that's just me being anal).

It is a very bizarre phenomenon though.

In my database, I have the Mets with an all-time walk-off record of 347-365, but if you take out the Astros, it's basically .500 at 328-329. Go figure.
2:22 PM
Anonymous said…
Picture the Astrodome. Picture Minute Maid Park/Astros Field/Enron Field. Picture a line drive just fair. Picture a hapless reliever trudging off. Picture (with your ears) way too much noise. Picture a jubilant congregation of anonymous Astros at home plate.

I don't have a problem picturing any of this. It seems the norm. Thus, the numbers make perfect, sad sense to me.

(Bless you Game Six.)
4:44 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mets Top 100 Home Runs: From No. 76 (Alex Ochoa) to No. 80 (Dom Smith)

In 2009, I did a project for my website, Mets Walk-Offs and Other Minutiae , celebrating the best home runs in Mets history. I selected the top 60 regular season home runs and the top 15 postseason home runs. The reason I picked 60 was because it represented the top 1% of home runs in Mets history (and 15 just felt right for postseason, giving us 75 overall). This was fun to do, but it was imperfect. I had one egregious omission. I tended to favor oddities. It’s time to give that project an update. And why not do it as a top 100? The Mets have hit 7,671 regular season home runs. The top 80 represent about the top 1%. And the top 20 postseason home runs get us to an even 100 to celebrate. Come along for the ride. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the reminiscing.  Hopefully you’ll find it Amazin’. 80. Dominic Smith’s season-ending walk-off  (Sept. 29, 2019 vs Braves) True story: I pulled into a parking spot right in front of my apartment as Dominic Smith came to bat. R
Post a Comment
Read more

Mets Top 100 Home Runs: From No. 16 (Carl Everett & Bernard Gilkey) to No. 20 (Tommie Agee)

In 2009, I did a project for my website, Mets Walk-Offs and Other Minutiae, celebrating the best home runs in Mets history. I selected the top 60 regular season home runs and the top 15 postseason home runs. The reason I picked 60 was because it represented the top 1% of home runs in Mets history (and 15 just felt right for postseason). This was fun to do, but it was imperfect. I had one egregious omission. I tended to favor oddities. It’s time to give that project an update. And why not do it as a top 100? The Mets have hit 7,671 regular season home runs. The top 80 represent about the top 1%. And the top 20 postseason home runs get us to an even 100 to celebrate. Come along for the ride. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the reminiscing. Hopefully you’ll find it Amazin’.  The rest of the list can be found  here . 20. Tommie Agee reaches new heights  (April 10, 1969 vs Expos) Tommie Agee set the tone for a new beginning in the first week of the 1969
Post a Comment
Read more

Cliff Notes

Alright, so it's 2 days later and the challenge for me now, after reading through about a dozen game stories and listening to talk radio, is to provide a fresh perspective on walk-off #324. If you're going to be a serious reader of this blog, you know what happened already, so let's look at what made this particular walk-off stand out. It would seem that the place to start is with the idea that everything broke just right on both sides of the ball. Particularly, I'm talking about Carlos Beltran's catch in the 7th inning, where he went over the center field fence to rob Jose Molina of a home run. Every no-hitter seems to have one defensive gem that makes it possible and perhaps that's true of great walk-off moments as well (We'll be looking into that!) Marlon Anderson's home run required a remarkable combination of events. It was only the sixth inside-the-park home run at Shea Stadium by a Met and the first since Darryl Strawberry in 1989. It required t
1 comment
Read more