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From Abbott to Zeile

I'm very excited to announce a new project that I've put together.

With the Mets on the verge of reaching 6,000 regular season home runs, I've put together a Mets home run encyclopedia of sorts. Thanks to the research tools at Baseball-Reference.com, I was able to assemble data for every Mets regular season and postseason home run in one place.

I haven't yet fully figured out how to make the best use of this data, but you'll surely see it sprinkled into my work in the future.

I'm currently working on a series of pieces in which I will rank the most notable (I suppose you can call it greatest) Mets home runs of all-time. That will probably debut in the next week or so.

For now, I leave you with some minutiae to show off the extent of what I can do...

* The Mets have hit 6,055 home runs, if you combine regular season and postseason. They've hit 5,992 in the regular season and 63 in the postseason. The first was hit by Gil Hodges on April 11, 1962. The most recent was hit by Angel Pagan on August 27, 2009.

* The first Met to hit a go-ahead home run was Felix Mantilla against the Pirates on April 15, 1962. The first Met to hit a go-ahead grand slam was Jim Hickman on April 21, 1963.


* The deepest into an at-bat that a Met has been documented to hit a HR: 12 pitches, by Roberto Alomar against Tony Armas on April 14, 2002. (We don't have full data on this stat).

* The biggest deficit at the time of a Mets home run? This one's stood for 47 years. On July 24, 1962, Richie Ashburn hit a two-run homer off Stan Williams, cutting into a 17-0 Dodgers lead.


* The biggest lead at the time of a Mets home run? 16 runs...David Wright's home run against Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon Lyon built on a 16-0 Mets lead.


* By my count, the 500th home run in Mets history was hit by Eddie Bressoud against Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, on July 14, 1966.


* Pedros the Mets have homered against: Ramos, Borbon (Sr. and Jr.), Astacio, and Martinez

* Two Mets have hit a game-tying grand slam in their careers- Todd Hundley and Carl Everett.

* Alphabetically speaking, Kurt Abbott ranks first on the Mets homer list. Todd Zeile rates last.

* The Mets have homered off 3 pitchers with the last name starting with Z this season: Clay Zavada, Jordan Zimmermann, and Barry Zito.

Comments

Stormy said…
Very cool! I'm looking forward to more nuggets!
11:52 AM
Anonymous said…
Wow. The 500th HR on the day my parents were married! Too cool!
-- BF
3:01 AM
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