Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

The Mets list the best road trip in franchise history as having taken place in 1991, and like this last one just concluded, it ended with a three-game sweep in Philadelphia. The Mets went 7-0 on that Bon Voyage, a two-city mini-venture that also included Montreal. They returned home for a respite and the All-Star Break, with a 46-34 mark and everything looked pretty good for Bud Harrelson's team. Their first game after the All-Star Break took place on July 11 and it makes sense to presume that the Flushing 9 got a rather rousing ovation when taking the field at Shea Stadium against the Padres that night. A second inning home run by Hubie Brooks against Bruce Hurst got the night off to a rousing start, and RBI singles by Dave Magadan (fired as Padres hitting coach, yesterday, by the way) and Mark Carreon provided the home team with a 3-1 cushion by the 8th inning, with Dwight Gooden pitching. With two outs in that frame, Tony Gwynn started a rally that produced two runs, tying the g...

Answers to the quiz of June 15, 2007, questions found here: http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2007/06/our-special-bonds-yankees-questions.html 1) Tony Phillips , who made the final out of the 1988 World Series against future Met Orel Hershiser. 2) The way the bullpen has gone lately, the Mets may be wishing they had Jorge Julio to pitch to Derek Jeter. 3) You were probably inclined to guess Mo Vaughn, but that would be incorrect. The correct answer is Rico Brogna . 4) Joe Torre had 35 hits in 100 career at bats, including those eight home runs, against the Dominican Dandy, Juan Marichal . 5) When you think of the 1984 Indians as they relate to the Mets, your first instinct should always be Julio Franco . The other player is Brett Butler .

Stretching out one day's post into two... Adam Dunn's walk-off home run on Wednesday was the 29th of the season. We're more than halfway to last year's walk-off home run total. So we posed the question to Dave Smith of Retrosheet : "How often does a walk-off home run happen?" Simply put... There have been 29 walk-off home runs this season in 976 games. That's one every 33.7 games. In other words, seeing one every other day isn't all that unusual. There have been 88 walk-off wins, so approximately one in every three walk-off wins this season has come on a walk-off home run. The Mets have two walk-off home runs this season. Last season, there were 57 walk-off home runs, a comparitively low number, or one every 42.6 regular season games. The average team hit two walk-off home runs. The Mets, an average team, had two. In 2004, there were 80 walk-off home runs, or one every 30.3 games. That's basically one every two days of fully scheduled play. The Met...

Today, we answer a really simple question. How often does a walk-off win occur? Thanks to David Smith of Retrosheet , we can tell you the approximate rate. Since the start of the 2000 season, a walk-off win occurs approximately once per 11.6 games. Simply put, that means the following: 1) A typical night of baseball features one walk-off win, but it's not all that uncommon to see two. 2) The total number of walk-offs per season ranges from around 200 to 225. 3) In an average season, a team should win via walk-off 7 times (based on playing 81 games at home). The Mets have already won by walk-off 9 times, but as we've seen, this is far from a typical season. Here's the data, for those interested Regular season stats 2006 Through the first 924 games, 84 walk-off wins (on pace for 221). Mets have 9 2005: 2,431 games, 204 walk-off wins. Mets had 8 2004: 2,428 games, 217 walk-off wins. Mets had 8 2003: 2,430 games, 205 walk-off wins. Mets had 4 2002: 2,426 games, 214 walk-off win...

Without further ado, the list of those pitchers who played for the Mets and also homered against them, from our trivia quiz of June 13, 2007. http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2007/06/our-special-bonds-pitcher-hr-questions.html 1 and 2- Warren Spahn and Tom Seaver. You can understand why I limited my hints. 3- Ray Sadecki , though most people forget he left the Mets, then returned and ended his career with them. Those steered towards Mickey Lolich should let me know, as I had a feeling that would be a common guess. 4- Armando "They should have started Nomo in the last game in 1998" Reynoso. 5- The hint is in the wording. The singular of people is Person, as in Robert Person , whose trading for John Olerud ranks among the best things to happen to the Mets in the 1990s. 6- Again, hint in the wording, as the answer is Mike Hampton whose children hopefully got better benefits from being educated in Colorado than he did. I was tempted to say he "schooled" the Cardinals ...

Basically this was a 1-for-1 deal. One career walk-off for Eli Marrero. One career walk-off for Kaz Matsui. Kaz Matsui was good for 1 at-bat this year and the problem was that he used this year's turn up in his first of the season in San Diego. Other than that, I can't recall him coming within 25 feet of a home run all year. His dealing is a good thing, as it removed the temptation for him to be utilized and than further dissappoint. There was always temptation to use Kaz Matsui because the thinking was that eventually he'd show the type of performance that merited his salary. His inability to do so frustrated both Willie Randolph and his predecessor, both of whom desperately wanted him to succeed. Kaz Matsui was benched for the first time on Mothers Day, May 9, 2004, against the Brewers. The Mets were 13-17 and Matsui was in the midst of the first of many lengthy slumps, so Joe McEwing got the start at shortstop. To show how far the Mets have come in two seasons, consider ...

This is one of those rare days when I'm up for posting twice...if you came directly to this post, or missed the post from overnight, it can be found here... http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2006/06/mets-blowouts-and-other-minutiae.html The 1963 season didn't start much better than the bumbling 1962 campaign. After their Opening Day loss, manager Casey Stengel was quoted as stating "We're still a fraud." It took the team 20 innings to score a run and six games to string together a multi-run inning. They were outscored 39-10 over their first eight games, all defeats, and were shut out four times within that span. That's what made the events of April 19-21 so unlikely. The Milwaukee Braves, who had already swept the Mets once this season, came to town for four games looking to pad a 7-2 mark. Their lineup featured future Hall of Famers Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews, and future Hall of Famer Joe Torre. Their pitching staff was guided by Warren Spahn and Lew Burdett...

Inspired by Eli Marrero ( if you read the posting this weekend, you'll understand ) and the note from AP that Carlos Beltran had 10 runs scored and 10 RBI this weekend. The Diamondbacks managed to score 9 runs this weekend. For our purposes, let's define a true blowout as a win by 10+ runs because it's easier for me to look things up in that scenario. Sunday marked the Mets first true blowout win of the season * The Mets first true blowout win was a 13-2 triumph over Houston on June 23, 1962. Richie Ashburn homered twice and Jay Hook pitched a complete game. The blowout win was sandwiched around two blowout losses (16-3 vs Houston in Game 2 of a doubleheader the day before and 13-3 against Pittsburgh two days later) * The Mets biggest true blowout was a 19-1 win over the Cubs on May 26, 1964. Dick Smith became the first Mets player with 5 hits in a game. A fan called a newspaper to ask if the Mets won. When told they scored 19 runs, he asked again "Did they win?...