Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

One of the neat things about having a blog is that, in theory, anyone can read it, from anywhere. And they might not always be looking for your blog. The magic of the Google search has, for the most part, eluded this blog during its four years of existence. For the most part, when someone has found this blog via Google search it's because they knew of the blog, but didn't know the exact address, so they punched "Mets Walk Offs" into Google and got me. Most of those searches ended when the blog changed its URL to eliminate the "Blogspot" reference. And for the most part, so did the arrivals via Google search. That changed within the last 10 days however. On Friday, I got an e-mail from a reader who informed me he was looking for Brett Hinchliffe's whereabouts and stumbled upon my recent post. He thought I was being serious about Hinchliffe's return to the Mets (he wasn't the only one fooled by my Brett Favre parody) and was curious why he wasn'

The Mets won a game by the score of 10-3 on Thursday. I thought that was an unusual final score, but when I checked, I noticed that the Mets won by the score of 10-3 a month ago- July 25 in Houston. Then I checked a little further and noticed something really unusual. Here's a list of the last 10 times the Mets won a game by the final score of 10-3. 8/27/09 at Marlins 7/25/09 at Astros 6/25/05 at Yankees 8/19/04 at Rockies 6/12/01 at Orioles 8/10/00 at Astros 9/12/99 at Dodgers 8/3/99 at Brewers 4/9/99 at Expos 9/22/97 at Marlins Notice what they all have in common? They were all done on the road. The last time the Mets won a HOME GAME by a 10-3 final score, their starting shortstop was Manny Alexander and their starting moundsman was soon-to-be 4-0 Armando Reynoso, and we could rejoice in Carlos Baerga beating up the Phillies with four hits and four RBI. It was May 31, 1997. Since then, the Mets have scored 10 runs in a HOME GAME 24 times. They have excorcised every possible 10-ru

Thursday marks the anniversary of a game that might be confused for one that took place in 2009. This one occurred in 1963 in Forbes Field against the Pirates, a team that gave the Mets plenty of trouble in their early days. An Al Moran single gave the Mets a 1-0 lead in the second inning and Grover Powell, who pitched so well in his first big league start a week earlier, gave the visitors five very good scoreless innings. Powell's day ended prematurely when he was hit in the cheek by a line drive, which forced him to leave the game due to blurred vision. His replacement in the sixth, Galen Cisco, pitched credibly for three innings. In the home ninth, with the Mets still up, 1-0, Pirates shortstop Dick Schofield Sr. (father of the future Met) led off with a walk. The next batter, Manny Mota, bounced a game-ending single to centerfield. How can that be, you ask? A single with a man on first and nobody out. There should be two on, none out, but the Mets should still be ahead, 1-0, ri

* A belated happy birthday to Choo Choo Coleman, who celebrated on Tuesday. Coleman has the distinction of having the second-lowest batting average for any Met to hit a walk-off home run. Coleman's .205 batting average trails only Jim Tatum's .180 for worst by a Mets walk-off home run hitter. * Johan Santana's 13 wins, not the record for most by a Mets pitcher making 25 or fewer starts in a season. Dwight Gooden holds that mark, with 15 wins in his 25-start 1987 season. * Billy Wagner departs as one of 10 Mets pitchers to strike out better than 10 batters per 9 innings in his Mets career. The full list: 18.00- Kenny Greer (2 strikeouts, 1 inning) 18.00- Bob Gibson (not the Hall of Famer, 2 strikeouts, 1 inning) 15.43- Kane Davis (14 innings) 13.92- Jorge Julio (21 1/3 innings) 13.50- Matt Franco (2 strikeouts, 1 1/3 innings) 13.50- Jesse Hudson (3 strikeouts, 2 innings) 11.83- Armando Benitez 11.57- Joe Vitko (6 strikeouts, 4 2/3 innings) 10.91- Billy Wagner 10.80- Rich Sau

"And when you write the story of this game, where in the world do you begin??" -- Al Michaels, after John Shelby caught the final out of Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS (IE: The Mike Scioscia HR Game) * I begin at the beginning, or at least the third batter of the game...Jayson Werth homering on the 12th pitch of his at-bat against Oliver Perez. Baseball-Reference has pitch data dating back to 1988, and the only 12-pitch at-bat resulting in a home run against the Mets was hit by Jose Gonzalez of the Dodgers, against Wally Whitehurst, on May 21, 1990. I'm guessing not many remember that, since the score was 12-2 Mets at the time. * I could have begun with Oliver Perez and the disgustingness that was his unfinished, 47-pitch first inning. There are no examples, dating back to 1988, of a Mets starter throwing 47+ pitches, while failing to get out of the first inning. The closest example to be found was the grossness of a Ron Darling start in Cincinnati, on July 19, 1988, in which he