Ok, so here's what I've got...
I can now tell you, on "pretty good" certainty that Bill Spiers and Endy Chavez are the only two players in Mets history to win a game with a bunt hit.
I say this because I ran a series of checks through the notes in my database. In doing so, I made the following presumptions.
* The Mets have never had a walk-off win via bunt double, triple, or home run.
* The Mets have never won a game in which a bunt hit brought in two runs.
Presuming those to be true left me with a list of games that the Mets won via one-RBI singles. I've had the good fortune to write about a significant number of those already and the good fortune to watch a good number of those games within my lifetime. Eliminating them left me with about 75 games as possibilities though some seemed highly illogical (I had serious doubts that Dave Kingman ever bunted to win a game).
For those games, I ran a check of Retrosheet play-by-play data and doing so allowed me to eliminate all but eight, for which play-by-play description of the winning hit did not include field location (I made a presumption that a bunt hit couldn't reach the outfield as I ran this check).
For the remaining games, I checked the corresponding New York Times game story (TimesSelect, which gives you access to the archival history of the paper is a great, affordable buy for any baseball historian). That allowed me to eliminate six.
There were two games for which I could not find a game story, but found references to the game in the next day's story. There was no reference to bunt hits by John Sullivan (May 2, 1967) or George Foster (September 2, 1984), so I'm crossing those off my list unless someone says otherwise.
That leaves me with just Spiers and Chavez and if we want to throw an asterisk on J.C. Martin (1969 World Series, Game 4), I'm alright with that.
True Menting know...The Mets last walk-off win via bunt hit (August 18, 1995) was part of a string of three walk-off hits in a seven-day span. The Mets also got walk-off wins vs the Giants on August 21 and the Padres on August 24.
I can now tell you, on "pretty good" certainty that Bill Spiers and Endy Chavez are the only two players in Mets history to win a game with a bunt hit.
I say this because I ran a series of checks through the notes in my database. In doing so, I made the following presumptions.
* The Mets have never had a walk-off win via bunt double, triple, or home run.
* The Mets have never won a game in which a bunt hit brought in two runs.
Presuming those to be true left me with a list of games that the Mets won via one-RBI singles. I've had the good fortune to write about a significant number of those already and the good fortune to watch a good number of those games within my lifetime. Eliminating them left me with about 75 games as possibilities though some seemed highly illogical (I had serious doubts that Dave Kingman ever bunted to win a game).
For those games, I ran a check of Retrosheet play-by-play data and doing so allowed me to eliminate all but eight, for which play-by-play description of the winning hit did not include field location (I made a presumption that a bunt hit couldn't reach the outfield as I ran this check).
For the remaining games, I checked the corresponding New York Times game story (TimesSelect, which gives you access to the archival history of the paper is a great, affordable buy for any baseball historian). That allowed me to eliminate six.
There were two games for which I could not find a game story, but found references to the game in the next day's story. There was no reference to bunt hits by John Sullivan (May 2, 1967) or George Foster (September 2, 1984), so I'm crossing those off my list unless someone says otherwise.
That leaves me with just Spiers and Chavez and if we want to throw an asterisk on J.C. Martin (1969 World Series, Game 4), I'm alright with that.
True Menting know...The Mets last walk-off win via bunt hit (August 18, 1995) was part of a string of three walk-off hits in a seven-day span. The Mets also got walk-off wins vs the Giants on August 21 and the Padres on August 24.
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