Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

A hearty welcome to Sandy Alomar Jr. with the hopes that he fares better than his namesakes did in Mets jerseys. You may just think I'm referring to Roberto, but keep in mind that Sandy Sr. went 0-22 with the 1967 Mets. If Sandy Jr. makes the team (which would require something happening to Ramon Castro) he would have the distinction of becoming the first person to play for the Mets who had a walk-off RBI in an American League Championship Series. Chris Chambliss had one too, but he was only a Mets coach. You may think that we're talking about Sandy's home run off Mariano Rivera but that wasn't a walk-off (it was a game-tying shot in the 8th inning) and it wasn't the ALCS (it was Game 4 of the ALDS). Our reference is to Game 4 of the series that followed- the ALCS against the Orioles. There's a nice Mets twist to this game in that it featured six one-time players, including a couple who played a prominent role in the game's outcome, and a significant former ...

Now that camp has begun, I've decided to unveil my slogan for the season. In the recent past I've gone with Ya Gotta Deceive (1991-93), Ya Gotta Make Believe (2005) and I Wanna Believe (2006) and looking back, I can come up with variations on the theme such as Ya Gotta Conceive (1962), and Ya Gotta Achieve (1969 and 1986). This year, my philosophy is a simple one: Ya Gotta Get Worse. The reasoning for this is easy to explain and I could probably even persuade Willie and Omar of its validity. In 2005, the Cardinals won 100 games. In 2006, they won 83. The 17-game decline from '05 to '06 was the biggest in the majors. And yet, the Cardinals emerged as champions. I'm all for copycatting what worked in previous instances, so let's take that same approach as the folks from St. Louis. So it doesn't really bother me that the Mets don't really have any established answers in spots three through five in the pitching rotation. It doen't worry me that the leftf...

By now you've probably heard about the miracle of birth that is Ty Wigginton's son , Cannon (yes, that's the name), delivered by the ex-Met by hand. On MetsBlog, they referred to it as one of Wigginton's finest defensive plays. My joke was going to be that it's the most clutch Wigginton has been since July 15, 2004, the date of his only walk-off hit as a Met. I liked Ty Wigginton as a player, but I never felt like he was clutch. The numbers bear that out for his second season, when Wigginton hit only .190 with runners in scoring position before being traded to the Pirates (he hit .288 with RISP the season before, but there weren't many notable Mets hits in 2003). The closest thing Ty Wigginton got to a big Mets hit was in this game, against the Phillies, an 11th-inning triumph that moved the Flushing False Hopes to 45-43 and within a game of first place. The story of this game, prior to its conclusion, was the performance of the Mets bullpen in relief of Steve T...