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.