Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

The Mets won a road game by scoring the go-ahead run in the 9th inning. Fistbumps, upon awakening, will be awarded to Cory Sullivan...

Wednesday was the first time in a long time that the Mets, in a performance emblematic of the 2009 season, met all of the following criteria: * They played at home * They played a 9-inning game * They had at least 11 hits AND at least 4 walks * They managed 2 runs or fewer We mention this because the last time the Mets met all of the preceding criteria, they won via walk-off, and we haven't had much chance to celebrate past walk-offs this season. The game of reference took place on May 14, 1989 against the Padres, and the Mets went 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position, instead of Wednesday's lovely 2-for-18 effort (the second 2-for-18 of the season!). The Mets scored their first run in the opening inning on a bases-loaded single by Gregg Jefferies, but would set the tone for the rest of the contest by leaving three men on base. The home team would manage baserunners in every inning, killing off rallies in a variety of manners (three double plays), while stranding a dozen b...

Steve Carlton gave up a Casey Stengel-esque 37 home runs to the Mets. That's the most home runs the Mets have hit against any pitcher. They've hit 33 home runs against Ferguson Jenkins, 30 against John Smoltz and 28 against Greg Maddux. The former is in Cooperstown. The latter two will be, or should be. They've hit 28 home runs against Rick Reuschel, who will need to pay admission to get into the Hall of Fame. He interrupts the path to Phil Niekro (27) and Juan Marichal (25). They've hit 25 home runs against Livan Hernandez, the most they've hit against anyone who was, at one time, a Met. That's one more than they've hit against Tom Glavine (24), and I wish they'd hit 24-hundred against him. They've hit 23 home runs against Don Carman- the same number they've hit against Bob Gibson (the Cardinal, not the ex-Met)- and that's the only time you'll ever see those two mentioned in the same sentence. There's no point (Dave Lapoint, 6) in go...

We continue along with our ranking of the most Metmorable home runs among the 6,000+ hit in team history with a look at #50-41. For those who may have missed our first piece in this series, you can find it here: http://www.metswalkoffs.com/2009/09/sixty-count-em-sixty-most-metmorable.html We'll continue to rate them every Monday until we complete our list of 60. Your thoughts and feedback are welcomed in the comments section. 50- Robin Ventura, May 20, 1999 (#4,241, 4,245) Let's talk Robin Ventura grand slams, and I'm referencing home runs, not singles. Ventura hit 18 grand slams in his major league career, including five for the Mets. A pair came on the same day, one in each end of a doubleheader against the Brewers.He became the first player ever to hit a grand slam in both ends of a doubleheader. The common thread is that they both came on 3-2 pitches from lefties with two outs- the first in the first inning against Jim Abbott, the second in the fourth inning of the nigh...

Some leftovers from a Friday ... * The Mets had it just as bad, walk-off error-wise, in 1971. Over a one-month span, they lost 3 games due to miscue. - On July 17, they lost when Ken Boswell misplayed a Cesar Cedeno infield hit, and the subsequent error made Tom Seaver a loser when Roger Metzger scored the run that ended a 2-1 Astros win. - On August 11, they fell 1-0 in 12 innings to the Padres, spoiling a great effort by Tom Seaver when catcher Jerry Grote made an errant throw to third trying to nail Larry Stahl, who was completing a double steal. Stahl would score the winning run. - Three days later, they lost to the Giants, 6-5 in 10 innings, blowing a 5-4 edge in the ninth and dropping the game when centerfielder Don Hahn dropped a fly ball hit by Jimmy Rosario with the bases loaded (the play was scored SF-E8). It was one of three errors in the loss, which dropped the Mets to 13-30 over a 43-game span (sound familiar???) * One quick note for those of you who remember 1980 fondly (...

True Metsochists know...The Mets have one more walk-off loss than they did entering Wednesday.   That's all you need to know.

Given David Wright's performance this season, it would seem that Darryl Strawberry's Mets record of 252 home runs is a little more safely positioned than we initially thought. Wright ranks 5th in Mets annals with 140 home runs. He's 14 behind Dave Kingman, and it seems reasonable to expect him to bounce back and sky King next season, but after that, it's a bigger climb to the No. 3 spot and Howard Johnson's 192. Carlos Beltran ranks sixth with 126 home runs. He's chasing Wright and Kingman. Given that he's only got two more years on his contract, and that he's only halfway to Strawberry, an ideal finish for him would be right alongside Johnson. Carlos Delgado ranks 11th with 104 home runs and I get the feeling that's where he'll sit. He needs 14 to match Ed Kranepool's total and crack the top 10. That ain't happening unless he gets thrown a one-year invite to return next season, and I don't think he will. Jose Reyes and John Olerud sh...

Go figure that it was Anderson Hernandez that hit the Mets 6,000th regular season home run, probably the least likely source to hit the milestone marker in a season in which lunacy has become normalcy. We wanted to commemorate that number and figured that the appropriate way to do so would be to rate the favorites of the bunch. But how many to count in our top grouping? We settled on honoring the top 1 percent, which comes out to 60, and rather than say they're the greatest, let's just say they're the "most Metmorable," which seems like the right way to put it. We'll present them, in reverse order here, 10 at a time and each Monday for the next 6 weeks, we'll continue the list along. Here is our inaugural compilation, from 60 to 51. If you're wondering about the title, when you're talking home runs, there's no better person to reference than Babe Ruth. When Ruth hit 60 in 1927, he was quoted after his last as saying "Sixty, count em, 60! L...

Fistbumps, and lots of them, for David Wright. And I guess we should give one to Pedro Feliciano too. * This was the 137th time in Mets history in which the Mets won a road game by scoring to win in the 9th inning. It was the fourth such win of the season, the first since May 23, 2009, when Omir Santos hit a two-run home run to beat Jonathan Papelbon and the Red Sox. * It's the first time they've won in that fashion in Philadelphia since a 1-0 win on May 23, 2002, on Mark Johnson's ninth-inning double. * It's the seventh time that the Mets came from behind in the 9th inning to win IN THE 9th inning in Philadelphia, the first since September 3, 2001, when they scored five runs in the 9th inning to beat the Phillies, 10-7. * It's the second straight year that the Mets beat the Phillies, 10-9, in Philadelphia. They also won in Philly on July 7, 2008, and July 25, 1990. The latter is best known for being the game in which Bob Murphy yelled "They win the damn thing!...

http://www.metswalkoffs.com/2005/09/boswell-that-ends-well.html 40 years ago today, Mets move into first place to stay...

Carlos Beltran is returning just in time. Beltran, who had a walk-off hit for the Brooklyn Cyclones on Saturday, comes with the Mets closing in on 6,000 home runs (4 away!), and with the Mets lacking in one statistical category for the 2009 season. The Mets do not have a walk-off home run. They are one of six teams in baseball without one. They've had a walk-off home run in all but three seasons in their history (1973, 1979, and 1994), and we're closing in on a fourth. Carlos Beltran has five career walk-off home runs. Considering how much David Wright's power has been lacking, how Gary Sheffield figures to be absent the rest of the season, and how the rest of the lineup is basically bereft of walk-off capability, Beltran is our best hope.

I don't know if you got to see Prince Fielder's walk-off home run celebration on Sunday, but I found it terrificly entertaining. If you didn't see it, imagine Fielder stomping on home plate as hard as he could. Rather than swarm him, his teammates all toppled over, as you might see a child do during a game of Ring Around The Rosie. Fielder than raised his arms in triumph, and everyone (at least on the Brewers) got up and had a good laugh. This was clearly a play on the Yankees recent helmet bouquet toss following a walk-off home run, and the variety of things that LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers do during pre-game introductions. I liked it. It didn't interfere with the game. It was funny. It was memorable. It got me to wondering how some of the Mets teams might celebrate a walk-off home run. The 1962 Mets would probably all fall down too, except they'd trip over themselves, accidentally. The 1969 Mets would probably all bow and pray in tribute to the great ...

Fistbump to Bobby Parnell since he doesn't get credit for anything else from a seven-inning gem. * Mets Walk-up Win (bottom of the 8th) #172 was the Mets fourth of the season, their first since August 1, when Angel Pagan hit a walk-up grand slam to beat the Diamondbacks. * The four walk-up wins matches their total from the 2008 season. * It was the Mets first walk-up win over the Cubs in 15 years. Their last was April 14, 1994, when Jeff Kent hit a two-run eighth-inning homer to beat the Cubs, 10-9. * It was the third time the Mets got a walk-up win by a 6-2 score, the first since beating the Dodgers on July 19, 1991. * It was the second time this season that Fernando Tatis had the game-winning walk-up RBI. He also had the walk-up grand slam against the Rockies on July 27. * Cory Sullivan became the 346th different player in Mets history to hit a home run. It was regular season home run #5,994. * The Mets have won their last 17 games in which their starting pitcher has pitched at l...

Writing about the current state of the Mets is a bummer. Instead, I'll tell you a funny story. I don't think I'm embellishing any details, but it's been awhile, so I apologize if I inadvertently fictionalize anywhere. Flash back about 15 years ago to my college days. As a sophomore, I won an award (third-place) from the New Jersey Press Association for a feature I wrote about our athletic director's eclectic tastes in literature (he liked Chaucer) and music (Gregorian chants). The problem was that the awards ceremony coincided with the one day a week in which I guested on our radio station's sports talk program, and did the sports report for the 5:30 news. If you knew me in college then, you knew that, at the time a) I hated being on the school newspaper and b) I lived for doing the sports talk show and the sports reports more than anything else. Something happened the night before the ceremony and I got into a nasty argument with my roommate (it was over someth...

I'm very excited to announce a new project that I've put together. With the Mets on the verge of reaching 6,000 regular season home runs, I've put together a Mets home run encyclopedia of sorts. Thanks to the research tools at Baseball-Reference.com, I was able to assemble data for every Mets regular season and postseason home run in one place. I haven't yet fully figured out how to make the best use of this data, but you'll surely see it sprinkled into my work in the future. I'm currently working on a series of pieces in which I will rank the most notable (I suppose you can call it greatest) Mets home runs of all-time. That will probably debut in the next week or so. For now, I leave you with some minutiae to show off the extent of what I can do... * The Mets have hit 6,055 home runs, if you combine regular season and postseason. They've hit 5,992 in the regular season and 63 in the postseason. The first was hit by Gil Hodges on April 11, 1962. The most rec...

* 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 Felici...

A little busy today...Put Nelson Figueroa in with this group http://www.metswalkoffs.com/2008/05/best-games-i-know-bad-pitcher-good-game.html

One of the neat things about having a blog is that, in theory, anyone can read it, from anywhere. And they might not always be looking for your blog. The magic of the Google search has, for the most part, eluded this blog during its four years of existence. For the most part, when someone has found this blog via Google search it's because they knew of the blog, but didn't know the exact address, so they punched "Mets Walk Offs" into Google and got me. Most of those searches ended when the blog changed its URL to eliminate the "Blogspot" reference. And for the most part, so did the arrivals via Google search. That changed within the last 10 days however. On Friday, I got an e-mail from a reader who informed me he was looking for Brett Hinchliffe's whereabouts and stumbled upon my recent post. He thought I was being serious about Hinchliffe's return to the Mets (he wasn't the only one fooled by my Brett Favre parody) and was curious why he wasn...

The Mets won a game by the score of 10-3 on Thursday. I thought that was an unusual final score, but when I checked, I noticed that the Mets won by the score of 10-3 a month ago- July 25 in Houston. Then I checked a little further and noticed something really unusual. Here's a list of the last 10 times the Mets won a game by the final score of 10-3. 8/27/09 at Marlins 7/25/09 at Astros 6/25/05 at Yankees 8/19/04 at Rockies 6/12/01 at Orioles 8/10/00 at Astros 9/12/99 at Dodgers 8/3/99 at Brewers 4/9/99 at Expos 9/22/97 at Marlins Notice what they all have in common? They were all done on the road. The last time the Mets won a HOME GAME by a 10-3 final score, their starting shortstop was Manny Alexander and their starting moundsman was soon-to-be 4-0 Armando Reynoso, and we could rejoice in Carlos Baerga beating up the Phillies with four hits and four RBI. It was May 31, 1997. Since then, the Mets have scored 10 runs in a HOME GAME 24 times. They have excorcised every possible 10-ru...

Thursday marks the anniversary of a game that might be confused for one that took place in 2009. This one occurred in 1963 in Forbes Field against the Pirates, a team that gave the Mets plenty of trouble in their early days. An Al Moran single gave the Mets a 1-0 lead in the second inning and Grover Powell, who pitched so well in his first big league start a week earlier, gave the visitors five very good scoreless innings. Powell's day ended prematurely when he was hit in the cheek by a line drive, which forced him to leave the game due to blurred vision. His replacement in the sixth, Galen Cisco, pitched credibly for three innings. In the home ninth, with the Mets still up, 1-0, Pirates shortstop Dick Schofield Sr. (father of the future Met) led off with a walk. The next batter, Manny Mota, bounced a game-ending single to centerfield. How can that be, you ask? A single with a man on first and nobody out. There should be two on, none out, but the Mets should still be ahead, 1-0, ri...