Taking Away The Positives

* The Mets are 10-5 against teams currently holding the wild card spot (5-3 vs Giants, 3-1 vs Rockies, 2-1 vs Red Sox).

* Luis Castillo, hitting .312, ranks second in the major leagues in highest batting average by a player with 0 or 1 home runs (Juan Pierre: .322)

* The Mets lead the NL in stolen bases, and rank second in the league in triples.

* Carlos Beltran's batting average (.336) is 16 points better than Albert Pujols. David Wright's also 4 points up on Pujols at .324

* Nelson Figueroa's .333 batting average is the best for any pitcher this season with a minimum of 10 plate appearances.

* Omir Santos has a commanding lead in every possible category in the race for most "anything" by an Omir.

* Darren O'Day (3 IP) and Billy Wagner (2 IP) will tie the Mets record for best ERA in a single season with their 0.00 efforts.

* Among those pitchers who have started a game for the Mets this season, none has a record worse than two games below .500.

* Pedro Feliciano trails by only 3 games (he's pitched 70) in the race for the NL lead. if he finishes first, he'd be the first NL pitcher to lead his league in games pitched in back to back years since Paul Quantrill (2002-2003)

* For those familiar with the stat, the Mets are performing exactly how their Pythagorean projection would expect them to perform...for those unfamiliar: Projected win percentage= (Runs squared)/(Runs squared) + (Opponents runs squared)

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Been There, Won That

The Dodgers had 19 hits in their loss to the Mets on Thursday night in a game that, no offense (pardon the ironic pun), was excruciating to watch for many, many reasons, none of which I feel like getting into at this hour. Willie Randolph summed it up in his press conference afterwards, saying simply "It's not fun!" I wonder if Tom Hanks, Alyssa Milano, Ray Romano and Kareeem Abdul-Jabaar (all in attendance) stuck around for the finish? I do wish to note briefly, again with the aid of Baseball-Reference, that the last time the Dodgers had 19 hits and lost a game, it was to the Mets. The difference between that game and this one was that this contest, of May 24, 1973, lasted an interminable 19 innings., with the Mets winning, 7-3. Rusty Staub's fifth hit of the game drove in the go-ahead run. Ken Boswell added an RBI single and Ed Kranepool salted the game away with a two-run double. Some other noteworthy anecdotes from a quick box score gleaning: * Like Thursday's...

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 ...

They Don't Make Em Like The Mook Any More

"There are certain things that stay with you, your whole life in sports. Mookie flying is one of those things." -- Blogger's father, 1:10pm on Feb 9. During the 1987 season, Mookie Wilson was on first base in seven instances in which the batter at the plate hit a double. How many times do you think Mookie scored? I'll give you a hint: Every time. According to some recent reading I've done, The average runner scores from first base on a double around 40-45 percent of the time. Mookie's career percentage: 65 percent (45 of 69) The average runner goes first to third on about 27 percent of singles hit. Mookie's percentage: 50 percent (120 of 240) The average runner scores from second base on about 58 percent of singles hit. Mookie's percentage: 75 percent (162 of 215) How good was Mookie Wilson? Let me put it to you this way. The guy turns 54 years old today (and got an early present by being re-hired by the Mets as a minor league instructor). I'd take...

Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

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