Tag: New York Mets

Mets Facts — June 21, 2024

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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:

StarterWL
Jack Fisher1017
Tracy Stallard1020
Al Jackson1116
Galen Cisco619

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.

Mets Facts — June 20, 2024

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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?

Mets Best Starters by Decade

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To win a baseball game, a team needs to outscore its opponents. To do that, it needs to prevent the other team from scoring as many runs as it does. The leader of the prevention part is the pitcher.

No batter leads the offense the same way that a pitcher leads the defense. He — and the catcher — are involved in the most plays in a game, but the pitcher plays a bigger role because what he does initiates the majority of a game’s plays.

A measure of a pitcher’s success in limiting other teams’ run scoring is the RE24 stat. An RE24 of zero means the player is average. On some websites, the higher a pitcher’s RE24, AKA run value, the better the pitcher performed, so a value of +24 would be much better than -24.

Sites that express it that way are Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, and Stathead with Baseball Reference now calling the RE24 for pitchers “Base-Out Runs Saved“; whereas, on other sites, such as Baseball Savant, it is the opposite: the lower a pitcher’s run value, the better. A value of -24 would be much better than +24.

Further, the complexity of the RE24 calculation has increased substantially since its early days when it was based on just base/out states and outs. For example, today on Baseball Savant, there is a Pitch Arsenal Stats Leaderboard giving a pitcher’s run value based on pitch type (e.g., changeup) “and on the runners on base, out, [and] ball and strike count,” and a Swing & Take Leaderboard giving for a pitcher a run value based on a pitch’s “outcome (ball, strike, home run, etc).”

In the chart below, the Mets top two starters in each decade based upon their RE24 totals (base-out state) in that decade are shown. The decade leaders are Tom Seaver (twice), Dwight Gooden, Rick Reed, Al Leiter, and (so far in this decade) Jacob deGrom (twice). Those five would make a starting rotation that few Mets fans would complain about.

The second-place finishers include Jerry Koosman, Jon Matlack, Sid Fernandez, Bret Saberhagen, Johan Santana, R. A. Dickey, and Marcus Stroman. Further, Matlack had a higher RE24 than did the first-place finisher in two other full decades: the 1990s and 2000s. Even the second-place finishers would make a strong starting rotation.

One pitcher yet to throw a pitch for the Mets, but who is now a member of the team, Max Scherzer, has in his 14 years in Major League Baseball accumulated an RE24 of 318.5. In that timespan, only two other pitchers have accumulated a higher RE24: Justin Verlander is at 327.22, and Clayton Kershaw is at 431.64.

And in the decade from 2010 to 2019, Scherzer remains in third place with Jacob deGrom in eighth and Carlos Carrasco 33rd.

Three More Mets Minor League First Basemen

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Previously, I looked at first basemen in the Mets three lowest Minor League teams. Today, I’ll look at first basemen playing for the Savannah Sand Gnats, St. Lucie Mets, and Binghamton Mets.

At Savannah, 24-year-old Sam Honeck’s been the primary first baseman. Currently, he’s on the 7-day DL. In his third season of pro ball, he’s hitting only .227 with a slugging average of .346, not the numbers you’d like to see from a first baseman. The Mets selected Honeck in the 11th round of the 2009 MLB Draft.

At St. Lucie, Stefan Welch plays first base. He’s been in the Mets organization since 2007, signed out of Australia. This season he’s hitting .267 with a .433 slugging average. Of his 29 extra base hits, 10 are homers. In the 10-game span from July 11-21, the 22-year-old hit .429 with a slugging average of .543.

Manning first base for the Binghamton Mets is 24-year-old Allan Dykstra, one of the season’s most pleasant surprises. Traded for Eddie Kunz, the Padres 2008 first-round draft choice is hitting .270 with 13 homers and 51 RBIs. He’s been particularly effective batting with runners on base, hitting .300 in those situations.

The three first basemen discussed in today’s post coupled with the three discussed in a previous post indicate that the Mets are well-positioned at first base from their Rookie League teams through Double-A.