Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

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 elimina

"You and your historic parallels..." a friend of mine IM'd me the other day after I shared a few interesting walk-off nuggets with him. Yesterday was one of those days with historic parallels all over the place... * Jake Peavy struck out 16 and his team lost via walk-off. The Mets were once struck out 15 times by Expos starter Mike Wegener on September 10, 1969 (in 11 innings), but won on a walk-off hit by Ken Boswell. (we'll convienently ignore the time El Sid whiffed 16 Braves but lost on a Lonnie Smith HR) http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/09/boswell-that-ends-well.html * The Braves had a 3-0 lead in the 9th against the Marlins and lost on a walk-off passed ball The Mets have never won via walk-off passed ball, but have won 10 games via walk-off wild pitch, including a rather famous occurrence against the Pirates on Oct. 3, 1999 http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/09/i-want-my-turn-at-bat.html * It took 16 innings to get a walk-off winner in the Astros-Pirate

Well, kudos to commenter JB from Long Island. He remembered that Bill Spiers once won a game with a walk-off bunt, one of a slightly more daring variety, on August 18, 1995. The scenario was that the Mets and Dodgers were tied, 2-2, in the bottom of the ninth inning, with Ryan Thompson on third base and one out. The manager, Dallas Green, was a slightly more daring skipper than Willie Randolph and elected to gamble to try to win the game. It was a particularly fitting maneuver that he planned to execute considering that the Mets had just traded their best bunter, Brett Butler, who was in the Dodgers lineup that day. Green sent up Spiers, who was in a David Wright-esque 0-15 slump but an ideal candidate for a suicide squeeze. With Thompson charging from third base on the first pitch, Spiers bunted past Dodgers moundsman Mark Guthrie, and Thompson scored the winning run. "Finessed to perfection" as New York Times writer George Willis described it and I think that description a

updated April 25 at 11:50am with another Mets walk-off bunt (thank you, JB), and a list of pitchers whose first MLB win was a Mets walk-off. The one walk-off scenario that I've been dreading was the kind the Mets got on Tuesday night, a bunt single to beat the Rockies, giving the team its first walk-off victory of the season. I must admit to being unprepared to answer the following question. Have the Mets ever won a game on a walk-off bunt? Fairly early on in the history of this blog, a reader asked that very question, and my answer was "I don't believe so," but I never did the legwork (and there's a lot that needs to be done) to check it. I did go through This Date in New York Mets History and found no references to any, but that's as far as my research has taken me. So I put the call out to you, loyal readers, to assist me. If you know that there's been one, please reference it in the comments section and cite source material. Otherwise, I've got a

Monday's win provided me the inspiration to look up a pair of things that intrigued me over the course of this contest. As the AP game story so eloquently noted, last July, John Maine beat Taylor Buchholz, as supported by a home run and four RBI from Jose Valentin. Monday, John Maine beat Taylor Buchholz, as supported by a home run and four RBI from Jose Valentin. So it got me to wondering: Has the same hitter ever beaten the same pitcher, in the same fashion for a Mets walk-off victory in consecutive seasons? The answer is no, though there are a couple that we could note as "close calls." In 2000, Jay Payton hit a walk-off HR versus Brewers reliever Juan Acevedo. The next season, Payton beat Acevedo, who had moved on to the Marlins, again. Only this time, he did so with a double, instead of a home run. In 1982, Hubie Brooks beat Pirates reliever Kent Tekulve with a walk-off fielders choice. In 1983 he beat him again, only this time more cleanly, with an RBI single. That&

I'm a little worried that we're not gonna get a walk-off this month. The Rockies come to town and the Mets don't exactly have the best walk-off history against Colorado. The Mets last walk-off win against the Rockies came 3,626 days ago on May 19, 1997, and we wrote about it here. http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/12/rud-awakening.html The only lengthier wait than this one is for another walk-off win against the Red Sox. The Mets last walk-off win against the Red Sox was October 25, 1986 (7,485 days ago). We've written about that one, a lot :) Good things come to Mets who wait, who know... The longest span between Mets walk-off wins against one opponent is 10,480 days (nearly 29 years). The Mets had a walk-off win against the Orioles on October 15, 1969 (World Series) and didn't have another one against them until June 25, 1998.