Skip to main content

Darryl

This is for all those who wonder what could have been.

Let's play a game of make believe, just for a moment.

Let's pretend Darryl Strawberry had, instead of signing with the Dodgers, re-signed with the Mets.

Let's pretend that all the issues he dealt with- marital, financial, drug and alcohol related, didn't exist.

Let's say he played six more seasons with the Mets at a Darryl Strawberry level. We can say they went something like this.

.253 BA, 36 HR, 104 RBI
.277 BA, 27 HR, 91 RBI
.286 BA, 32 HR, 110 RBI
.274 BA, 27 HR, 97 RBI
.297 BA, 29 HR, 89 RBI
.300 BA, 41 HR, 111 RBI

You might recognize those numbers. They're the stats from the seasons in which Reggie Jackson was from the ages of 29 to 34.

Let's now build in a fade to Strawberry's career, because producing at his level for 14 years definitely takes its toll. But let's make the presumption that he stayed a Met for life, and didn't have the luxury of the DH to fall back upon. We'll give him five more seasons, build in an injury or two, and an eventual decline in production, but presume enough sympathy from the Mets to keep him around because he was Darryl Strawberry. That would be something like:

.254 BA, 28 HR, 119 RBI
.231 BA, 26 HR, 74 RBI
.242 BA, 5 HR, 32 RBI
.222 BA, 13 HR, 54 RBI
.199 BA, 14 HR, 44 RBI

The astute baseball fan may recognize those as the numbers from the last five seasons in the career of Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew.

When Darryl Strawberry left the Mets for the Dodgers, the two Hall of Famers whom he resembled the most statistically were Killebrew and Jackson. If we take the Mets portion of Darryl Strawberrys career and combine it with the work of Msrs. Killebrew and Jackson, we get a career line that reads:

.262 BA

530 HR

1,658 RBI

281 Stolen Bases

Don't think we'd be waiting this long for the Mets Hall of Fame, or any Hall of Fame to induct him if that had been the case.

Comments

Dan said…
Wow, good stuff. What a shame it didn't happen that way. I wonder if his late-career Yankee success played any part in delaying his Mets HOF induction.
G-Fafif said…
Gosh, that's depressing. On the other hand, at least Darryl's departure gave us Bobby Bonilla.

Popular posts from this blog

Best Games I Know: Phillies (Updated)

  The best wins against the Phillies in Mets history …   May 5, 2022 – Mets 8, Phillies 7 The Mets score 7 runs in the 9 th inning to overcome a 7-1 deficit and win in Philadelphia.   April 29, 2022 – Mets 3, Phillies 0 Tylor Megill and 4 Mets relievers combine on the second no-hitter in franchise history.   September 22, 2016 – Mets 9, Phillies 8 (11) The Mets tie it in the 9 th on a Jose Reyes home run and win it in the 11 th on a 3-run home run by Asdrubal Cabrera.   July 17, 2016 - Mets 5, Phillies 0 Jacob deGrom pitches a one-hitter. Only hit is a single by Zach Eflin in the 5 th inning.   August 24, 2015 – Mets 16, Phillies 7 David Wright homers in his first at-bat in more than 4 months. The Mets hit a team-record 8 home runs.   July 5, 2012 – Mets 6, Phillies 5 The Mets score 2 runs with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9 th to beat Jonathan Papelbon. The winning run scores on David Wright’s bloop down the right field line.   August 13

The best Mets ejections I know

When you think of the Mets and famous ejections, I'm guessing you first think of the famous Bobby Valentine mustache game, when after Valentine got tossed, he returned to the dugout in disguise. You know it. You love it. I remember being amused when I asked Bobby V about it while we were working on Baseball Tonight, how he simply said "It worked. We won the game." (true) But the Bobby V mustache game of June 9, 1999 is one of many, many memorable Mets ejection stories. And now thanks to Retrosheet and the magic of Newspapers.com , we have a convenient means for being able to share them. Ever since Retrosheet's David Smith recently announced that the Retrosheet ejection database was posted online , I've been a kid in a candy store. I've organized the data and done some lookups of media coverage around the games that interested me post. Those newspaper accounts fill in a lot of blanks. Without further ado (and with more work to do), here are some of my findings

Trip(le) Through Time

In their illustrious history, the Mets have had one 'Triple Crown Winner,' so to speak and I'm not talking about the typical meaning of the term. I've gotten some queries recently as to whether a walk-off triple is even possible and I'm here to tell you that it is. There has been one, and only one, in Mets history, though I don't have the full explanation of circumstances that I would like. It took place against the Phillies on September 10, 1970. This was a marathon game that would have fit in perfectly with those having taken place so far this season and allowed the Mets to maintain a temporary hold on first place in an NL East race oft forgotten in team history. It went 14 innings, with a tinge of controversy in a negated Ken Boswell home run, a thrilling play by Bud Harrelson, who stole home in the third inning, and some stellar relief pitching, in the form of five scoreless innings from Danny Frisella, aided by Tim McCarver getting thrown out in a rundown b