The Santo Cause

Ron Santo, who just passed away, surely had a career deserving of the Hall of Fame. Wins Above Replacement suggests he was the most valuable everyday player in the majors in the last half of the 1960s, and was one of the greatest third basemen of all-time.

But 1969 he probably preferred to forget. After the games of August 6 that season, the Cubs had a superb 71-41 record, and led the NL East by nine full games over the second place Mets. Santo was playing like an MVP, with a BA of .314, OBP of .409, SLG of .543 and OPS of .952. But from then on, through September 24, the day the Mets clinched the NL East, Santo managed only a BA of .231, OBP of .315, SLG of .333 and OPS of .648. The Cubs over that stretch went 19-26 and went from 9 games ahead ahead of the Mets on August 6 to six games behind the Mets with five to play. Over the five games remaining after the Cubs were out of it, Santo's OPS was .900.

Ron had health problems most of his life, and he could not have enjoyed repeatedly being denied a deserved induction into the Hall of Fame. But the final seven weeks of the 1969 season could not have been one of his better memories either. Cruel game, baseball, as recent Mets fans know. Perhaps the last few seasons for the Mets could be thought of as Santo's Revenge.

The Tender Trap

John Maine, Chris Carter and Sean Green were "non-tendered". That is, the Mets chose not to offer them the minimum one-year contract salary required to keep exclusive negotiating rights to their services. So the three are now free agents. The Mets could re-sign them, presumably at an amount less than the minimum amounts that would have been required to retain exclusive rights, but to do so the Mets now have to compete with potential offers from all other clubs.

Maine is two Wins short of being in the franchise top 10 for Wins by righty Mets pitchers, and Carter fell two hits short of leading the majors in pinch hits in 2010.

Most Regular Season Wins by a Right-Handed Mets Pitcher:

1. Tom Seaver 198
2. Dwight Gooden 157
3. Ron Darling 99
4. David Cone 81
5. Bobby Jones 74
6. Steve Trachsel 66
T7. Rick Reed and Craig Swan 59
9. Mike Pelfrey 43
T10. Pat Zachry and Gary Gentry 41
12. John Maine 39

Most Pinch Hits by a Major Leaguer in 2010:
1. Joe Inglett (MIL) 20
2. Chris Carter (NYM) 19
3. Delwyn Young (PIT) 16
T4. Ross Gload (PH), Nick Stavinoha (STL) ands and Travis Ishikawa (SFG) 15

Snow More Nieve

Nieve is Spanish for snow, and and Fernando Nieve is "snow more" a Met, having signed a minor league deal with the Pirates. (That is not a phrase describing 21st century stardom: "minor league deal with the Pirates").

Most Games Pitched in a Season By A Met With a Season ERA of 6 or higher:

1. Mel Rojas (1998): 50 Games Pitched, 6.05 ERA

2. Fernando Nieve (2010): 40 Games Pitched, 6.00 ERA

3. Ray Daviault (1962): 36 Games Pitched, 6.22 ERA

4. Ryota Igarashi (2010): 34 Games Pitched, 7.12 ERA

5. Rich Rodriguez (2000): 32 Games Pitched, 7.78 ERA

Feeling Left Out

Pedro Feliciano declined the Mets' offer of arbitration, making him a free agent. He could still sign with the Mets, but they no longer control him contractually.

We can divide Feliciano's career into two pieces. Part 1 ran from from Pedro's MLB debut in 2002 through the end of 2007. Part 2 consists of the last three seasons, 2008 through 2010.

Pedro has been equally superb against lefties in both these parts of his career. Lefty hitters against him had a .575 OPS through 2007, and have had a .579 OPS against him from 2008 on. So no decline whatsoever against lefties.

Bu then we turn to Pedro against right-handed batters. In Part 1 of Feliciano's career, righty hitters had only a .727 OPS against him, a very good number for a lefty pitcher facing righties. However, from 2008 through the just-completed 2010 season, right-handed batters put up a .907 OPS against Feliciano. That is, the numbers indicate dramatic disintegration in his ability against righty hitter, albeit as with any relief pitcher's splits, we are not talking about huge samples, so it's possible Pedro's true talent against righties was not as good as the numbers suggest in Part 1 of his career and not as bad as the last three years' numbers indicate.

But if indeed the split numbers do reflect a real change in Pedro's true talent level against righties, and reflect the real magnitude of that change, Pedro can no longer be used to any significant degree against right-handed hitters. It would be sad to conclude that a fellow who was a full-service relief pitcher, and a famously prolific one, has declined into a pure "Left-Handed One-Out Guy". Unfortunately that may be where Pedro is at this point in his career.

Smashing Success

The obituaries for Gil McDougald tended to focus on a couple of freak injuries: the ball he hit that struck Herb Score in the eye, and the injury McDougald himself suffered when hit by a batted ball in the ear. That's classic press coverage -- look for the human interest angle. But that sort of focus tends to underplay just how splendid, and unusual, McDougald was as a baseball talent.

Gil could and would start at second base, or third base, or short, whatever the Yankees most needed that season, or indeed that day, and he was a wonderful fielder at all three positions. Baseball-reference's Fielding Runs (based on Sean Smith's Total Zone fielding evaluation system) gives McDougald the fourth highest total among Yankee infielders all-time, behind only Clete Boyer, Phil Rizzuto,and Joe Gordon. But Boyer, Rizzuto and Gordon each played only one infield position (third, short and second, respectively), while McDougald mastered all three of their positions and thus gave the Yankees an extraordinary amount of flexibility to deploy their infield talent effectively throughout the 1950s.

And McDougald was a legitimate offensive force as well. Clete Boyer was one of the great defensive third basemen of all time, but had a career OPS+ of only 86, and Rizzuto's career OPS+ was 93, good for a shortstop of his (or any) era, but not what you call a big hitter. McDougald was nearly as valuable a fielder as either Clete or Phil, but Gil's career OPS+ was a quite substantial 111 (comparable to, say, Alfonso Soriano's career 113 OPS+), making him an important part of the Yankee lineup wherever he played in the infield.

Truly one of the great all-around talents the majors has seen. He retired early, playing only until he was 32, retiring as a Yankee rather than leave in the expansion draft to go play for the brand new Los Angeles Angels. As a result his career numbers don't stack up with the greatest. But he was enormously valuable to the Yankees. McDougald's nickname among his teammates, according to Don Larsen's book The Perfect Yankee, was "Smash", and he was indeed a smashing success.

The Matter of Size

Rumors bounced around the InterMet (that's the Mets subsection of the Internet) yesterday that free agent pitcher Chris Young might be signing with the Mets. Chris is 6 feet 10 inches tall. As such, he would tie Eric Hillman for tallest Met ever.

Eric Hillman started 36 games in his MLB career (all for the Mets) and ended up with only 4 career Wins, which is one of the worst ratios of starts needed per Win in MLB history. The Mets' Pat Misch is right up there with Hillman, though as an active player, Pat still has a chance to win some more games and cut his ratio to a more normal level.

Over the past 100 years of Major League Baseball, among all pitchers who had at least 20 career starts, the pitchers who required the most starts per Win:

Jack Nabors (1915-1917) 37 career starts, one career Win

Mike Thompson (1971-1975) 29 career starts, one career Win

Eric Hillman (1992-1994) 36 career starts, four career Wins

Pat Misch (2006-2010) 24 career starts, three career Wins

Hal Griggs (1956-1959) 45 career starts, six career Wins

Jo-Jo Reyes (2007-2010) 37 career starts, five career Wins

Josh Geer (2008-2009) 22 career starts, three career Wins

Ken Reynolds (1970-1976) 51 career starts, seven career Wins

Yankee Failure Returns Again

Javier Vasquez pitched well for the Expos, and then spent a year with the Yankees and was a disappointment there. Eventually he returned to the NL East and pitched well with the Braves, and then spent another year with the Yankees, only to disappoint there again. So naturally, he now takes a third spin in the NL East, signing with the Marlins. From 1999 through 2010, Vasquez has been credited with ten Wins against the Mets. Over that period, only four pitchers have more Wins against the Mets: Greg Maddux and Tim Hudson (13 Wins each), Randy Wolf (12 Wins) and Dontrelle Willis (11 Wins).

Iron Age

Harvey Araton in today's New York Times:

"In the past seven years, Jeter has missed a combined 51 games, or 7.3 per season, which in modern baseball is about as Iron Horsey as one gets."

Over the past seven seasons, 2004-2010, Derek Jeter has played in 1,083 regular season games. Over the seven seasons from 1926 to 1932, Lou Gehrig played in 1,083 regular season games, exactly the same number as Jeter played in over 2004-2010. For each guy, that was the seven-season sequence in which they played the most regular season games of their respective careers.

Derek played in 48 post-season games over 2004-2010, for a total of 1,131 major league games. over the past seven seasons. Gehrig played in 19 post-season games over the 1926-1932 period, for a total of 1,102 major league contests over that seven-season span -- 29 fewer than Jeter played over 2004-2010.

Top 10, Most MLB Games Played, 2004-2010, Regular and Post-Season Combined:

1. Derek Jeter 1,131
2. Albert Pujols 1,126
3. Ichiro Suzuki 1,115
4. Bobby Abreu 1,114
5. Adam Dunn 1,108
6. Miguel Cabrera 1,103
7. Mike Young 1,100
8. Mark Teixeira 1,098
T9. Miguel Tejada 1,091
T9. Orlando Cabrera 1,091

Manhattan's Last Game

The man who threw the final major league pitch in Brooklyn just passed away: Danny McDevitt, who pitched a complete game victory for the Dodgers in their last home game of the 1957 season, before the franchise relocated to Los Angeles. But a Met fan might ask, what about the last major league pitch in Manhattan?

The very fine Phillies' pitcher Chris Short threw a complete game victory over the Mets in the last major league game at the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan on September 18, 1963, at the end of an era (Beatles songs were first heard in the US about the same time, and President Kennedy was assassinated two months later). The box score and play-by-play for this game are here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196309180.shtml

Short's last pitch was a line drive double-play ball to end the game, off the bat of Mets' pinch-hitter Ted Schreiber. Schreiber (whose only major league experience was his 11 starts as an infielder, and 28 other games in which he appeared briefly, with the Mets that season) was a New York City guy, born in Brooklyn and a graduate of that borough's James Madison High School, where he would have been a few years behind my mother. He went to college at St. John's in Queens, and after his baseball career taught for many years at a public school in Brooklyn, while living in Staten Island. Seems somehow appropriate that a Brooklyn/Queens/Staten Island guy brought the curtain down on major league baseball in Manhattan. For Ted's biography, check here: http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=2467&pid=12666.

As for Chris Short, the only pitchers with more career Wins (or Wins Above Replacement, if you prefer the more sophisticated sabermetric measure) as a Phillie are three core Hall-of-Famers Steve Carlton, Robin Roberts and Pete Alexander.

Managing Homers

Here's a list I've put together, with a bit of original research using both baseball-reference and baseball musings' Day-By-Day Database, that shows the top 10 most regular season homers hit by a Met under a single Mets manager:

1. Darryl Strawberry, 196 homers under Davey Johnson
2. Mike Piazza, 170 homers under Bobby Valentine
3. Howard Johnson, 125 homers under Davey Johnson
4. Edgardo Alfonzo, 114 homers under Bobby Valentine
5. Carlos Beltran, 100 homers under Willie Randolph
6. David Wright, 95 homers under Willie Randolph
7. Gary Carter, 89 homers under Davey Johnson
8. Kevin McReynolds, 84 homers under Davey Johnson
9. Robin Ventura, 77 homers under Bobby Valentine
10. Todd Hundley 76 homers under Dallas Green

Now here's a list (in chronological order) of each of the Mets' 19 managers, along with the guy who hit the most homers for each manager and the number of those homers:

Casey Stengel: Frank Thomas 52
Wes Westrum: Ed Kranepool 27
Salty Parker: Jerry Buchek 3
Gil Hodges: Tommie Agee 69
Yogi Berra: John Milner 67
Roy McMillan: Dave Kingman 12
Joe Frazier: Dave Kingman 45
Joe Torre: Lee Mazzilli 59
George Bamberger: Dave Kingman 47
Frank Howard: Darryl Strawberry 23
Davey Johnson: Darryl Strawberry 196
Bud Harrelson: Howard Johnson 52
Mike Cubbage: Kevin McReynolds 2
Jeff Torborg: Bobby Bonilla 28
Dallas Green: Todd Hundley 76
Bobby Valentine: Mike Piazza 170
Art Howe: Cliff Floyd 36
Willie Randolph: Carlos Beltran 100
Jerry Manuel: David Wright 60

Research note: Why did I need to use David Pinto's Day-by-Day Database over at baseball musings for this particular research? One of the few things left that one can do at baseball musings that can't be done at b-ref, either with b-ref's free data or its Play Index data, is run stat searches that key off of mid-season dates. Because managers often come and go mid-season, accurate lists of this type require Day-by-Day Database searches. I did however, first use b-ref's wonderfully helpful data to track the dates of the various mid-season managerial changes. B-ref prominently displays, on each team-season page, the win-loss record of each manager who managed that team that season. By taking that information and then jumping directly to the schedule/results page for that team-season, it is quite easy to track the dates on which those win-loss records for each manager were accumulated. I then had the exact dates of each mid-season managerial change, giving me exact start and end dates for each managerial tenure. It was then just a matter of putting those dates into David Pinto's search form at baseball musings to get homers hit for each manager.

Managing to Win

Terry Collins has won 444 regular season MLB games as a manager. That puts him 141st all-time in career wins as a major league manager. To squeeze into the top 100, Collins will likely need to win close to 190 more.

444 current wins, plus 180 more would put him at 624 career wins. Today that would be good for a tie for 96th among MLB managers all-time. But other managers will be winning games at the same time as Terry and will race him to the top 100. Currently employed managers with between 400 and 624 career wins:

Jim Riggleman 624 (Nationals)

Ozzie Guillen 600 (White Sox)

Eric Wedge 561 (new manager of the Mariners)

Clint Hurdle 534 (new manager of the Pirates)

Ned Yost 512 (Royals)

Joe Maddon 431 (Rays)

If all these guys get past 624 wins before Collins, and they each seem likely to do so, that would leave Terry reaching 624 wins when it would be merely the 101st highest total all-time, no longer in "top 100" territory. Collins can more safely assume he will cross over to the top-100 side if he gets to 630 wins or so, matching Harry "the Hat" Walker's career total. From Terry's current 444 to 630 wins would require 186 more wins. If Terry Collins can get 186 more wins over the course of his new two-year contract (93 win per season average), he will probably have earned a contract extension, as well as a spot in the top 100 winning-est managers.

Houston, No Problem

Terry Collins had a .532 winning percentage as Astros manager. Of the 16 non-interim managers that the Houston franchise has had, only Larry Dierker (.556) has led the team to a better winning percentage. Similarly, Collins finished 27 games over .500 as Astros manager, and again only Dierker ended up with a higher number of games above .500 as Astros manager.