Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

So I was in the midst of my first media-guide surfthrough of the season the other day and that's normally a rather pleasant experience. But then I came across something that really bothered me. It came to my attention that Luis Aguayo is now a Met. Just my luck. Aguayo the team's field coordinator, meaning that he oversees spring training for the Mets minor league teams, extended spring training, and the Mets instructional league team and for all I know, he may absolutely fantastic at handling the duties of that position. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. Luis Aguayo is a Mets fans source of absolute heartbreak, not quite on the scale of Yadier Molina, but close enough in my mind to warrant thoughts of disdain. It was the fall of 1987, some 20 years previous, when the Mets limped, stumbled and staggered their way to 92 victories despite a mess of injuries and the drug-related downfall of the Doctor. (Gooden). There were a lot of bad losses that season and though many

The post counter on my blogger page tells me that this is post #411 and I'll go with that, even though some of them consist of me merely saying "No post today, back tomorrow." With that in mind, my goal today is to be as informative as I was in post #410, which I'd have to rank among my all-time favorites (maybe at 500, we'll do a "best of"). So today, rather than pay tribute to Mets killers, I'm going to borrow an idea from Jerry Seinfeld and do the opposite. It's my little tribute to his tv show (and George's gym teacher, Mr. Heyman) that I'm going to refer to the players I write about today as "Metskilledya." Again, following the Q and A format, with mucho kudos to the Play Index section at Baseball-Reference.com Who holds the record for longest "hitless" streak against the Mets? Well, in order to do this, we have to adjust our criteria to suit what Baseball-Reference can handle, and as a result, there are several a

I'd been wanting to write something on Mets-killers and streakholders for quite some time and the news of Ryan Howard's accomplishment Monday struck me as a good chance to do so. For those unaware, Howard became the first player since Hank Aaron to homer in 5 consecutive games against the Mets. That's pretty impressive company, perhaps even more so considering that Aaron did it back in 1962-63. So, with the help of those new handy-dandy Retrosheet search engine tools on Baseball-Reference.com , I thought I'd take a look at other noteworthy streakholders against the Mets. To make it an easier read (and perhaps inspire a trivia question or two), we'll offer it up in a Q and A format. Who holds the record for the longest hitting streak against the Mets? Matty Alou, 22 games, spanning from 1971 to 1973. Steve Finley (1995-97) and Gary Templeton (1978-79) rank 2nd with 21-game streaks. Who holds the record for longest hitting streak against the Mets, at Shea Stadium? Lui

Have the Mets ever won a game via walk-off due to a shortstop's miscue? You betcha. In fact, we've written about it twice previously http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/06/fatherson-walk-off-memory.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/06/win-like-flynn_21.html Those two games represent half the number of times that the Mets have triumphed via the E6 and for the purpose of moving towards completing the set, we'll tell you about the most recent of this quartet of occurrences today. Even though the Mets home opener wasn't a walk-off win (and the E6 only tied the game), there is a parallel to what happened Monday at Shea (and if you couldn't tell, we love historical parallels) in that the game a)took place in April and b) was against a team from Pennsylvania, but we doubt that Pirates shortstop Kevin Polocovich made any comments about his squad being a team to beat. It's a good thing because the Pirates went on to finish 69-93 and games like this didn't

It's a beautiful day for baseball this Monday (more or less) as the game returns to Flushing for the first time this season and we're excited that there's finally a chance for walk-off wins again. That got us to doing some research into what we're calling HOTWOOD. No, that has nothing to do with the Mets bats from their first few games, nor is it the town in Indiana where (name that obscure Met) grew up. HOTWOOD stands for Home Openers That Weren't On Opening Day. And here's what we can tell you about them... * The Mets are 12-9 all-time in HOTWOOD, a good record, but far shy of their 29-17 Opening Day mark. *The Mets have won 5 HOTWOOD in a row, though that comes with an asterisk attached to the 2000 HOTWOOD win. When the Mets opened in Japan in 2000, they were technically the home team on Opening Day, but to call that game the "home opener" would be inappropriate, as it would also be to acknowledge the second "fake" Opening Day" that c