Switch In Time Part 2

The rest of the Mets Switch-Hitters All-Time Team:

SS Bud Harrelson
The choice between Harrelson and Jose Reyes is simply a choice between quantity and quality. Harrelson played in 1322 games for the Mets and accumulated 130 Win Shares for them (Win Shares being the Bill James-developed summary stat that tries to reflect all aspect of a player's contribution to team wins). Reyes, still a mere youth in normal baseball career terms, has played in less than half as many Mets games (596) and accumulated 87 Win Shares. But notice how many more Win Shares per game Reyes is piling up. Harrelson's contribution was almost all in his defense, Reyes makes an enormously greater contribution than Buddy did on offense and his defense has become top-drawer recently as well. Jose's Win Shares totals the last three seasons have been 17, 29 and 24. Harrelson's best three Win Shares seasons of his whole career were 19, 17 and a couple of 14's. And Reyes is still only 24 years old. I picked Harrelson here in deference to his very long and graceful service to the Mets (Harrelson is second only to Ed Kranepool in most games played in the history of the franchise). But assuming no precipitous drop in performance or an unexpected trade, Jose will have to replace Buddy on this All-Switch-Hitter team in just another season or two.

OF: Mookie Wilson, Lee Mazzilli, Carlos Beltran
I'm kind of cheating here, by picking three center fielders instead of a left fielder and a right fielder. But Mookie and Mazzilli played enough corner outfield to allow them to fit in here. And if I forced myself to choose left field and right field specialists here, I'd have to choose from among a group of least favorite Mets in history: Vince Coleman, Roger Cedeno, Carl Everett. Thank you, but with that choice I'll Mookie and Maz.

Beltran has 958 Runs Created through 2007, his age 30 season (I'm using baseball-reference's Runs Created, which is basically Total Bases multiplied by On-Base Percentage, with a bunch of additional tweaks to reflect other aspects of run creation). That is third highest Runs Created number ever for a switch hitting outfielder through his age 30 season:

1. Mickey Mantle 1,577
2. Tim Raines 1,031
3. Carlos Beltran 958
4. Pete Rose 915
5. Lance Berkman 906

(Lee Mazzilli appears at 20th on this list, Mookie Wilson at 40th)

BTW, Rose counts as an outfielder on this list because through his age 30 season he'd played in the outfield in more games (746 games) than the infield (644 games)

P: Mickey Lolich
Not many pitchers switch-hit. Lolich was not a good hitter, even for a pitcher, but he was better than the only other two Mets pitchers, Pete Harnisch and Victor Zambrano, who switch hit and played with the team for any significant amount of time.

The best switch-hitting pitchers in modern baseball (since 1900)were probably Early Wynn and Ted Lyons. In the era since 1962, when the Mets became a franchise, Jim Perry (Gaylord's brother) was a good pitcher who switch-hit and Carlos Zambrano today is a switch-hitter who is both a fine pitcher and a pretty darn good hitter.