Sixty years ago, on Father’s Day, June 21, 1964 in the first game of a twin bill, the Phillies’ Jim Bunning no-hit the Mets at Shea Stadium, striking out 10 while walking none in the only perfect game ever pitched against the Queens men. It was Bunning’s first season with the Phils after being traded to them by the Tigers in one of baseball’s most lopsided deals.
Unfortunately for the home team, despite getting three hits in the second game they were again no match for the league-leading Phils, whose three runs in the top of the first were one more than then the Mets scored in the whole game, the Phillies sending nine batters to the plate before the Mets could get their turn in the batter’s box.
The day’s two losses put the cellar-dwelling Mets 21.5 games behind the Phils in the National League standings and 11.5 behind the next-to-last Milwaukee Braves.
At that point in the season, the Mets were the only NL team whose pitchers had yielded more than 300 runs.
At season’s end, their top four starters all had losing records:
Starter
W
L
Jack Fisher
10
17
Tracy Stallard
10
20
Al Jackson
11
16
Galen Cisco
6
19
Since 1962, only 15 Mets pitchers have lost 16 or more games in a season and, only in 1964, did four do that. Further, in 1962, three accomplished that feat; in 1963 and 1965, two did.7
The last Mets’ pitcher to lose >= 16 in a season was Mike Torrez, who lost 17 in 1983 while walking 113 batters on a team that won only 68 games.
This season, Brandon Nimmo and J. D. Martinez are tied with the most hits (13) when they swung with a 0-0 count with the Mets. As a team, the Mets rank 13th in first-ptich hits, the Houston Astros first, per Baseball Savant.
Ninety-nine times since 1962, the Mets’ first batter in a game got a first-pitch hit on their first at-bat, per Stathead, with Jose Reyes getting the most, 17, and Jeff McNeil having the 3rd-most at 7.
McNeil is also one of three current Mets in the Top 10 of Mets with the most first-pitch hits, regardless of inning.
#3 is Jeff McNeil with 196.
#8 is Brandon Nimmo with 130.
#10 is Brandon Nimmo with 125.
This season, Jose Altuve leads the majors in 1st-pitch hits with 23. The most a Met has is 13 (Nimmo).
A Historical Look
The first Met to start a game with a first-pitch hit was Dick Smith in 1964. It wasn’t until 1988 that a Met did it more than once in a season, Len Dykstra accomplishing the feat four times. Lance Johnson broke that record in 1996, getting a first pitch, game-leadoff hit eight times, a feat Jeff McNeil fell one short of tying in 2019.
Only six Mets started a game with a first-pitch homer. Jeff McNeil was the last one to do it in 2019 and Jose Reyes the only one to do it twice.
Test Your Mets Knowledge
Which Met has the most hits on his first-pitch swings in all his at-bats?
With a hole at the hot corner that has heated up with Ronnie Mauricio’s leg injury, a probable product of his playing spring, summer, fall, and winter ball, the Mets have invited a former high school second baseman who was the Big East Player of the Year in 2017, Rylan Bannon, to spring training.
After homering 15 times in his last season playing for the Xavier University Musketeers’ baseball team, he dipped into the double digits in homers in every season since, including 18 for the Sugar Land Space Cowboys, the PCL team with the lowest won-loss percentage in 2023, a fact Bannon’s resume is unlikely to mention.
His home run total, however, was the third most on the team in a league where it is common for batters to touch all four bases on a hit, 68 hitters doing that at least 10 times last season — 12 played third base.
Bannon didn’t just draw attention with his bat; he also showed skill on the basepath, stealing 12 bases, tying him for the league lead among third basemen.
In the field, in 479.2 innings at third, he made just five errors while notching 85 assists.
Bannon’s presence in spring training should increase the competition at a position where the Mets again do not have a proven “name” vying for the everyday job at third.
The Mets have had a lot of players behind the plate, “the game’s most demanding position,” according to Jesse Yomtov, starting with Hobie Landrith who, on April 11, 1962, caught the first pitch thrown by a Mets’ starter (Roger Craig).
Five catchers have stood out.
To choose them, five statistics were primarily used: WAR, WPA, RE24, Total Bases, and Times on Base (excluding by error) with WAR and WPA the two dominant ones in that order. In addition, their selection was based solely on their time with the Mets, not on their overall career, as a player could have played for multiple teams
Among the Mets top five catchers, two are in the Hall of Fame: Mike Piazzaand Gary Carter. Piazza played eight seasons for the Mets after playing seven on the Dodgers, Carter five after playing 11 for Montreal. Filling out the list are Jerry Grote, who played 12 seasons in the Big Apple, John Stearns, who played 10, and Todd Hundley, who played nine.
Sources: Stathead Baseball and Baseball Reference
Grote came closest to Piazza in Times on Base, only 91 apart; however, as a Met, Grote played four more seasons than Piazza who averaged getting on base 183.6 times a season versus 114.8 for Grote.
Based only on their Mets WAR number, the top two are Piazza and Stearns; however, when WPA and RE24 are taken into account, the difference between the two becomes quite significant. And Piazza separates himself even more from the others in Total Bases, having 607 more than the second-most — Grote’s 1278. But then, in his Mets career, Piazza amassed a .542 SLG. No one else in the group came within 100 points of that number.
Piazza had the third-highest JAWS rating among all catchers.
Twitter Poll
I found the tweet below after I completed the above write-up and was not surprised by Piazza’s landslide victory. He was one of the Mets most popular players.
Fun project at MLB dot com. Over the coming weeks, we're constructing an "all-time team" for every franchise, with input from you.
We'll start with an easy one: Who is the best catcher in Mets history?
Another stat, TOB/TB, helps lengthen Piazza’s lead over the rest of the field. Written about in 2016 by Rob Mains, the TOB/TB Number is calculated using this formula:
Multiply Times on Base by Total Bases.
Double it.
Divide the result by the sum of Times on Base and Total Bases.
Piazza’s TOTtb number of 1,651 was 325 points ahead of Grote’s with the average for the top five catchers 1,170.
Others’ Views
Tim Boyle, in his catcher comparison, made this comment about Mike Piazza:
“Piazza didn’t have a reputation for playing well defensively. As the years went on, he got worse. I’m not so sure anyone holds this against him. Piazza was far too amazing at the plate for anyone to criticize him for his weaknesses behind it.”
In contrast, Jennifer Khedaroo viewed Piazza’s defensive skill differently, writing
“In terms of defense, Piazza played well year after year. He was consistently in the top five for putouts, assists, double plays turned and runners caught stealing.”
And though Harold Friend agreed that Piazza was a better hitter than Gary Carter, he still pushed Piazza into second place among the best Mets catchers, Carter’s defensive skill giving him the edge:
“Gary Carter was the most valuable Mets catcher. Piazza will always be rated as the greater player, but Carter was more valuable to the Mets. Gary Carter was (and is) a world champion.
Piazza was the greatest hitting catcher ever. Although he was a good defensive player his first few seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he was a defensive liability during his tenure with the Mets.”
Overall, Friend wrote, “Carter provided great defense, handled an excellent pitching staff magnificently and was a timely clutch hitter.”
In response to Friend, in my opinion the best measure of clutch hitting is WPA. For that stat, Piazza’s score was more than 10 times higher than Carter’s.
With regard to Piazza’s ability behind the plate, in an nj.com article, its author, Brendan Kuty, wrote that Hall of Famer Tom Glavine “said Piazza’s reputation as a bad defensive catcher is undeserved.”
“He did a lot of things well behind the plate,” Glavine said. “Yeah, he wasn’t the greatest thrower. That unfortunately translated into people thinking that some of this other game wasn’t as good as it was. He called a good game. He received the ball fine. He blocked balls fine.
But so often catchers are defined defensively on how well they throw and there’s much more that goes into just being a good defensive catcher than being able to throw. That aspect of his game, for whatever reason, garnered the extra attention and overshadowed the other aspects of his game.” (from Kuty article)
Bats and Stats 