Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

For an introduction, see the other "Best Games I Know" installments Arizona Diamondbacks St. Louis Cardinals (pre-2006 playoffs edition) It should be noted that these are difficult to write. The original draft of this installment was penned in November, but I've hemmed and hawed over these for a good while. Narrowing the field down to 10 games wasn't easy, nor was trying to figure out what to write for each contest. Hopefully it will stir up some thought and discussion. Best Games I Know Mets vs Braves #10 (May 12, 1962 G1 , G2 ) The First Walk-Offs Wins number 6 and 7 in Mets history were the first walk-off wins for this franchise in regular-season play. That they got a pair on the same date via walk-off home runs by Hobie Landrith (off Hall of Famer and future Met Warren Spahn) and (should-be Hall of Famer) Gil Hodges was rather neat and rather historic. It was the first time that both games of a doubleheader ended in that fashion, a feat that has only been repeat...

It is my philosophy this season not to dwell on that which you do not possess, as right alongside "Ya Gotta Get Worse!" I've decided to embrace the belief "Enjoy what you have" simply because it makes my life a lot more pleasant to do so. And what the Mets do have is 341 walk-off wins (and yes, to the anonymous poster from yesterday, a walk-off triple (click on the link) is among them), which I plan to relish in this space on a regular basis. Besides, I'm not sure why everyone's moaning and groaning about no-hitters today. The Mets have had them before. Or do you not remember March 22, 1965? That was the day the Mets took down, as the New York Times called them, "the hottest spring training team in Florida." Credit for the ultimate pitching success goes to Gary Kroll and Gordon Richardson, who combined on nine hitless frames in blanking the Pirates, 6-0. Kroll worked the first six and Richardson closed with a strong last three. At one point the...

Source: Baseball-Reference.com Play Index * Longest Hit Streaks Mets History David Wright 2006-07 24 Hubie Brooks 1984 24 Mike Piazza 1999 24 John Olerud 1998 23 Mike Vail 1975 23 Cleon Jones 1970 23 * Longest Hit Streaks From Start of His Season, Mets History David Wright 2007 12 Ed Kranepool 1965 12 Johnny Lewis 1965 11 * Longest Multi-Season Hit Streaks Mets History David Wright 2006-07 24 Jose Vizcaino 1995-96 16 Gary Carter 1986-87 16 Rusty Staub 1973-74 16 * The longest hit streak of a multi-hit variety in Mets history is 8 games, by Steve Henderson (1979). Thirteen players have reached 6 games, including Carlos Beltran (2006) and Jose Reyes (2003). * The longest hit streak by a Mets pitcher is held by Jerry Koosman, at 6 games (1974) * The longest hitless streak by a Mets position player is 20 games, by David Wright's good friend, Joe McEwing (2002). * The longest "reached base at least once" streak in Mets history is 47 games, set by John Olerud (1998-99). Jose Vi...

As he approaches 300 wins, Mets pitcher Tom Glavine should be thankful for a handful of instances in which his team really helped him out. Of Glavine's 292 victories, four came in games in which his team won via walk-off and twice, his teams turned a potential Glavine defeat into victory in that final turn. The first of those instances was on May 7, 1994, against the Expos, a contest in which Glavine carried a two-hit shutout into the ninth inning. The problem was that as well as Glavine pitched, Jeff Fassero was just as good and he matched Glavine's zeroes into the 9th inning. With two outs and nobody on in the Montreal ninth, Glavine finally ran into trouble from which he could not escape successfully. A double by Larry Walker preceded an intentional walk to Moises Alou and an unintentional pass to Randy Milligan (aka the scout who signed David Wright). With the bases loaded and two outs, Glavine got ahead of Lenny Webster, 1-2, but Webster reached on an infield single. Walk...

You're going to read a lot today about the start of Jackie Robinson's major-league career, but my focus will be on one particular game related to the conclusion of his playing days. Game 6 of the 1956 World Series took place a day following a perfect game by Yankees pitcher Don Larsen and it was a worthy follow-up to that masterpiece, though it's not anywhere near as heralded. The Yankees were one victory away from clinching the series, ahead 3 games to 2, but the Dodgers were determined to deny their championship and force a seventh game. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, and that would play a role in this contest. Both Dodgers starter Clem Labine and Yankees starter Bob Turley pitched masterfully, though Turley walked eight, two intentionally, matching shutout frame for shutout frame. Labine escaped jams by getting Mickey Mantle out in the third and Billy Martin in the sixth with two men on base. Turley survived two major threats, in the sixth and eighth, and both requir...

So I was in the midst of my first media-guide surfthrough of the season the other day and that's normally a rather pleasant experience. But then I came across something that really bothered me. It came to my attention that Luis Aguayo is now a Met. Just my luck. Aguayo the team's field coordinator, meaning that he oversees spring training for the Mets minor league teams, extended spring training, and the Mets instructional league team and for all I know, he may absolutely fantastic at handling the duties of that position. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. Luis Aguayo is a Mets fans source of absolute heartbreak, not quite on the scale of Yadier Molina, but close enough in my mind to warrant thoughts of disdain. It was the fall of 1987, some 20 years previous, when the Mets limped, stumbled and staggered their way to 92 victories despite a mess of injuries and the drug-related downfall of the Doctor. (Gooden). There were a lot of bad losses that season and though many...

The post counter on my blogger page tells me that this is post #411 and I'll go with that, even though some of them consist of me merely saying "No post today, back tomorrow." With that in mind, my goal today is to be as informative as I was in post #410, which I'd have to rank among my all-time favorites (maybe at 500, we'll do a "best of"). So today, rather than pay tribute to Mets killers, I'm going to borrow an idea from Jerry Seinfeld and do the opposite. It's my little tribute to his tv show (and George's gym teacher, Mr. Heyman) that I'm going to refer to the players I write about today as "Metskilledya." Again, following the Q and A format, with mucho kudos to the Play Index section at Baseball-Reference.com Who holds the record for longest "hitless" streak against the Mets? Well, in order to do this, we have to adjust our criteria to suit what Baseball-Reference can handle, and as a result, there are several a...

I'd been wanting to write something on Mets-killers and streakholders for quite some time and the news of Ryan Howard's accomplishment Monday struck me as a good chance to do so. For those unaware, Howard became the first player since Hank Aaron to homer in 5 consecutive games against the Mets. That's pretty impressive company, perhaps even more so considering that Aaron did it back in 1962-63. So, with the help of those new handy-dandy Retrosheet search engine tools on Baseball-Reference.com , I thought I'd take a look at other noteworthy streakholders against the Mets. To make it an easier read (and perhaps inspire a trivia question or two), we'll offer it up in a Q and A format. Who holds the record for the longest hitting streak against the Mets? Matty Alou, 22 games, spanning from 1971 to 1973. Steve Finley (1995-97) and Gary Templeton (1978-79) rank 2nd with 21-game streaks. Who holds the record for longest hitting streak against the Mets, at Shea Stadium? Lui...

Have the Mets ever won a game via walk-off due to a shortstop's miscue? You betcha. In fact, we've written about it twice previously http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/06/fatherson-walk-off-memory.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/06/win-like-flynn_21.html Those two games represent half the number of times that the Mets have triumphed via the E6 and for the purpose of moving towards completing the set, we'll tell you about the most recent of this quartet of occurrences today. Even though the Mets home opener wasn't a walk-off win (and the E6 only tied the game), there is a parallel to what happened Monday at Shea (and if you couldn't tell, we love historical parallels) in that the game a)took place in April and b) was against a team from Pennsylvania, but we doubt that Pirates shortstop Kevin Polocovich made any comments about his squad being a team to beat. It's a good thing because the Pirates went on to finish 69-93 and games like this didn't ...

It's a beautiful day for baseball this Monday (more or less) as the game returns to Flushing for the first time this season and we're excited that there's finally a chance for walk-off wins again. That got us to doing some research into what we're calling HOTWOOD. No, that has nothing to do with the Mets bats from their first few games, nor is it the town in Indiana where (name that obscure Met) grew up. HOTWOOD stands for Home Openers That Weren't On Opening Day. And here's what we can tell you about them... * The Mets are 12-9 all-time in HOTWOOD, a good record, but far shy of their 29-17 Opening Day mark. *The Mets have won 5 HOTWOOD in a row, though that comes with an asterisk attached to the 2000 HOTWOOD win. When the Mets opened in Japan in 2000, they were technically the home team on Opening Day, but to call that game the "home opener" would be inappropriate, as it would also be to acknowledge the second "fake" Opening Day" that c...

I've sung the praises of this new Baseball-Reference Play Index tool a few times already, so I'll tell you again how wonderful it is to be able to use it to share some more minutiae with you. People like to speak of the excitement of the multi-homer game. A multi-triple game, like the one Jose Reyes had in another rout on Friday, is as exciting, and a lot more rare. * It was the 3rd multi-triple game of Jose Reyes' career. The two previous ones came in 2005- on May 18 against the Reds and May 26 in Florida against the Marlins. * The 3 multi-triple games are a team record, breaking the mark he previously shared with Doug Flynn (who once had a 3-triple game) and Lance Johnson. * Johnson had 8 multi-triple games, most by any player within the last 50 years, one more than George Brett and two more than Willie Mays. The active leaders are Carl Crawford and Omar Vizquel, who have 5. * Among the other notable players to have had 3 multi-triple games: Joe Morgan, Pete Rose (2 comin...

I know many of you are preoccupied with thoughts today about how the Braves are a formidable foe (not to brag, but we knew that on Tuesday ), but I'm going to focus elsewhere. So apparently Daisuke Matsuzaka proved he was the real deal on Thursday, striking out 10 in his major-league debut as the Red Sox beat the Royals. Every baseball pundit in America (and Japan) is analyzing the performance today, guessing what it means for the future of this young, Japanese attention-getter. It got me to wondering what the Mets record was for strikeouts by a pitcher in a major-league debut. It turns out that the answer is eight and that two pitchers share the mark. The 40th anniversary of their debuts comes in the next week, so it seems appropriate to reference it now. I presume most of you reading this blog know who Tom Seaver (the pitcher, not the winemaker who likes to leave games early) is, so I won't go into explaining his background or the postscript, but just tell you his debuting de...

I'd imagine the Cardinals approval ratings are about as low as our current President, especially after... * This, which was the third time in the history of the Mets-Cardinals rivalry that the Mets scored 10 or more runs and the Cardinals tallied none. The first was a Jon Matlack 13-0 shutout at home on July 1, 1976. The second was an 11-0 Sid Fernandez gem in St. Louis on August 1, 1989. * It was the first time the Mets beat the Cardinals by 10+ since a 13-1 romp on September 7, 1989. * The 2 runs allowed by the Mets in their first three games were the fewest they've surrendered in an opening trio in team history. The previous best was 4, in 1981, a season interrupted by strike. The Mets are 3-0 for the first time since 1994, also a season wiped out by strike. * John Maine became the 2nd Mets starter ever to pitch at least 7 innings, allowing 1 hit or fewer, within his team's first 3 games of the season. The other was the "great" Bruce Berenyi, who matched Maine...

It was about a year ago at this time that we honored the Mets for reaching the 10,000 double plateau. We have no such milestones approaching for double plays, but since they've been the most important thing to come out of the two victories so far, we thought we'd pay homage. * With 7 double plays turned in 2 games, the Mets are on pace to turn 567 for the season. That would shatter the club record of 171, previously set in 1966 and 1983. It would also destroy the major-league record of 217, set by the 1949 Philadelphia Athletics. * The Mets turned 4 DP on Opening Day and 3 in the second game of the season. The record for double plays turned in a game is 5, previously set August 8, 1962 (a 5-2 win vs the Giants), May 24, 1973 against the Dodgers (7-3 19-inning win), June 9, 1983 against the Cubs in Wrigley Field (6-4 11-inning win) and June 5, 1997 at home against the Marlins (a 6-0 regulation victory). * The information is a little more easily accessible on ground-ball double ...

I hope it's not a sign of the times but we went walk-off-less on Opening Monday for the first time this century, though we can rest our hopes today on the debut for the Giants and Padres if we so choose. Did you know that it's been 33 years since the Phillies last had a walk-off win on Opening Day? Mike Schmidt hit the winning homer off Mets closer Tug McGraw that day and that became relevant yesterday in the final frames of the Phillies-Braves game, which brings me to the point I wanted to make today. I know there's a lot of talk (much from Jimmy Rollins) about how this year's NL East race is about the Phillies and the Mets. I choose to differ with that viewpoint. I think it's about the Mets and the Braves. And that worries me. I picked the Braves to go to the World Series in my preseason predictions (to face the other NY team) and the reason for that was on display in the latter part of yesterday's game. The Phillies should have scored at least once in the las...

Without further ado, answers to the queries posed here: http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2007/06/our-special-bonds-ownership.html 1- You may recall us mentioning once before that Bud Harrelson had significant success against Hall of Famer Bob Gibson , but so did Wayne Garrett and Ed Kranepool. 2- Steve Carlton lost to the Mets 3 times on Opening Day. Rick Reuschel was one better, with four Opener defeats against the Mets. Lee Mazzilli homered three times against both of them. 3- By far, my favorite question of these 10. Tom Seaver homered in his only plate appearance against accused scuffballer Dave Smith and convicted felon Denny McLain . 4- Ya gotta know that the all-time Mookie Wilson triples-yielding king is Tug McGraw. 5- Those of you who remember that Curt Schilling was with the Astros in his pre-Phillies days should have gotten that one right. Anthony Young was 3-2 vs Houston, 12-46 against everyone else. 6- All of these men share the distinction of having pitched even after R...

The last time the Mets opened a season in St. Louis (1992, for those curious) their second baseman was their future (now current) manager. Perhaps the next time they open in St. Louis, the second baseman of today will be their future general manager (or some other front-office position appropos for someone who runs a winter-league team). I think the best thing to come out of Opening Day from a walk-off perspective (that's what we do here) is that a few of the Flushing geriatrics, in whom I'm currently showing little faith, walked-off the field on their own power. I told someone the other day that by the end of the season that David Newhan would be the everyday second baseman and Endy Chavez would be the regular left fielder. That person shunned and mocked my thinking, particularly after what Msrs. Valentin and Alou showed from a defensive perspective in Game 1. I didn't write a season-preview piece but had I done so, I would have voiced significant concerns over both of tho...

With the birth of a new year upon us, I feel it necessary, once again, to both reintroduce and reinvent myself to fit the needs of the blogging community. Walk-offs have run (or walked) their course and it's time to focus on something new. You may recall that I dabbled in such a thought at this time last year, but my foolish pursuit to chronicle the history of Mets walks lasted merely one day. I don't profess to be an expert in this blogging thing by any means, but I think it has been a worthwhile experience. About 22 months ago, I came across a blog that was very unique- PlunkBiggio , which is devoted to recording Craig Biggio's hit-by-pitch count. It is rare to find such a cleverly done "niche blog" and in thinking about it, I decided that my niche just isn't clever enough. To make a long story short, I have decided to retool my blog to focus not on walk-offs, but on chalk-offs. For those who don't understand the meaning, think of how a ball must be clea...

Thanks, in large part, to the new, Baseball-Reference.com PI tool, you can stump your friends with the following trivia... * Six Mets have had 4 hits in an Opening Day game, but none has ever had more. The 6 are Richie Hebner, 1979 Kevin McReynolds, 1988 Darryl Strawberry, 1988 Jeff Kent, 1994 Todd Hundley, 1995 Xavier Nady, 2006 * Two Mets have scored 3 runs in an Opening Day game, but none has ever scored more. The 2 are Jerry Grote, 1969 Brett Butler, 1995 (interestingly, the Mets lost both games) * Two Mets have stolen 2 bases in an Opening Day game, but none has ever had more. The 2 are Mookie Wilson, 1985 Darryl Strawberry, 1989 * Five Mets have homered twice in an Opening Day game, but none has ever had more. The 5 are Cleon Jones, 1973 Darryl Strawberry, 1988 Kevin McReynolds, 1988 Bobby Bonilla, 1992 Robin Ventura, 2001 * Four Mets have had at least 4 RBI in an Opening Day game, but none has ever had more. The 4 are Ron Swoboda, 1968 Richie Hebner, 1979 Todd Hundley, 1995 Rob...

Let's get some of this stuff out of the way now, if you don't mind...we might revisit the topic again, but while it's fresh on my mind, let's make sure you're prepared for Sunday with an initial burst of knowledge. * The Mets are 28-17 on Opening Day all-time, and that's after an 0-8 start, so we're looking at a nice 28-of-37 run.. Their first Opening Day win came in 1970, and their most recent Opening Day win came in 2006. * The Mets have alternated wins and losses in their last 5 Opening Days and not to alarm you, but if the streak continues, they're due to lose on Sunday. * The Mets are 11-9 all-time on the road on Opening Day (counting Tokyo as a neutral site), having lost 4 of their last 6 road Opening Day affairs. * The Mets are 4-2 against the Cardinals in Opening Day games, with the wins coming in their last four Opening Day meetings (1985, 1989, 1992 and 1996). The losses came in their first two Opening Days- 1962 and 1963, by a combined score o...