G(r)eek Chorus, Part VI
by
Jason
on Tue 22 Mar 2005 12:12 PM EST
Kaz Ishii's old pitching coach said the toughest pitch for him was "strikes" and warned that he'll drive us crazy. I was thinking of a certain departed senator even before Newsday noted that Ishii walked 98 in 172 innings, while Leiter walked 97 in 173 2/3. Of course Leiter went 10-8 with a 3.21 ERA, while Ishii went 13-8 with a 4.71 ERA, which proves some combination of A) we were bad last year and B) baseball is unfair.
As for Jason Phillips, Jim Tracy says he sees a few things that could help him. Ain't it always that way? Not knowing that Team A's girl mutters in her sleep and leaves towels on the floor, Team B thinks, "he doesn't appreciate her -- I'll encourage her to laugh more and suggest wearing her hair down and it'll be one helluva summer." And sometimes she's ready for a change and it's even true. (This example is completely gender-reversible.) If Ishii wins 13 games, color me more than happy.
Looking at the 40s, I'm struck by how many of them represent bygone eras in one way or another. Even by Met standards, John Milner's power output is pretty anemic -- but then, 20 home runs used to mean something. Doug Flynn is the kind of leather guy (also an innocent term once) who wouldn't get a contract these days, a non-fate that would befall Al Weis too -- Al, like Buddy Biancalana, has probably never thought he was born too soon. (You could say guys like that do have jobs today because now they're blown up to Herculean proportions through regimens fair and foul, but I'd rather not think about that on a sunny day.) There's no way the Braves could get away with employing Chief Noc-A-Homa now (which is probably best), let alone what would happen if some Met emulated John Stearns and administered a beating to him. One thing I remember about Donn Clendenon is his biography ending with his holding a good job for a pen maker somewhere in South Dakota. Think Rafael Palmeiro's worried about what corporation will give him a sinecure?
Bobby Ojeda, in retrospect, might have been the last wild man of a wild era. Before the '88 NLCS I skedaddled from school to visit a friend in Maine, and so heard the news late. What? He did what? He did it gardening? Bobby O shouldn't have been opening mail with his pitching hand then, let alone puttering around with gardening shears. Maybe that moment -- even more than Straw and K-Mac (if memory serves, it was them) failing to get a crucial sac fly later in the NLCS, the suicidal trades of '89 or the off-the-cliff disaster of '91 -- marked the true beginning of the end of that particular era.
Ah, Benny Agbayani. I still smile every time I see poor Aaron Fultz's name in a box score somewhere.
And Turk Wendell, whom I miss as much as I do Dennis Cook. He saw no harm in fantasizing about bombing Yankee Stadium from a fighter jet. He took time out from a champagne bath to give Jeff Kent the business for thinking the Giants had the better team. After he let Rick White bunk with him after being acquired in 2000, White admitted to reporters that "he drives so fast, I have no idea where we live."
Turk was an honorary one of us.
It's Just Emotion That's Taking Me Over
by
Greg
on Tue 22 Mar 2005 07:31 AM EST
Billy Beane recently told Sports Illustrated that
"emotional decisions can be devastating" to managing a payroll and
building a roster. With Jason Phillips following Joe McEwing out the
door, unemotional decisions kind of hurt, too. Only Mets fans would get
a touch misty for a guy who had to rev it up in September to hit .218.
But that's why we're Mets fans. Phillips joins the Dodgers on the heels
of his induction into the Stephanie Prince Hall of Backup Catcher
Favorites, which previously enshrined straphanging Brent Mayne and
mellifluous Orrrrlando Merrrrcado.
As long as we're on the subject of better halves, we've officially
reached the upper reaches of The Hundred Greatest Mets Of The First
Forty Years.
50. John Milner: On the Tigers or the Reds or someplace where
they've hit home runs as a matter of course for generations, John
Milner would be an afterthought if thought about at all. On the Mets,
he was power personified for quite a few seasons. Between 1972 and
1977, he led all Mets in home runs four separate times. Only Strawberry
and Piazza, at five apiece, have surpassed this feat. None of Milner's
home-run-king years yielded more than 23 dingers, but he made an
impression. His highest total, featuring two grand slams, came in the
'73 pennant year. Three years later, he mashed the ungodly sum of three
grand slams, an unheard of salami accumulation in those pre-Ventura
days. By the time John was traded to Pittsburgh, he trailed only
Endless Eddie Kranepool on the all-time Met homer list. As Hammers
went, Milner barely showed, finishing well off the pace set by Henry
Aaron and Stanley Burrell, but as mid-'70s Mets went, U Couldn't Touch
Him.
49. Al Weis: Al Weis hit two homers in the 1969 regular season.
Both were launched in the heat of summer at Wrigley Field. Al Weis
never hit a home run at Shea Stadium before he went deep to lead off
the seventh inning of the fifth game of the 1969 World Series, tying
the score at three. He never hit another at Shea. Al Weis, in 1,577
at-bats across 800 Major League games, was a career .219 hitter. In
five 1969 World Series games, he came to bat eleven times and
registered five hits, good for a .455 average. Al Weis knew from timing.
48. Kevin McReynolds: For a couple of years there, Kevin
McReynolds had no serious flaws as a ballplayer. The term "five-tool"
wasn't applied to him, but he hit better than .280, homered almost 30
times annually and was good for close to a hundred RBIs. His left-field
defense was above average (led the league's LFs in assists more than
once) and he stole 35 bases in 36 attempts in 1987 and 1988. Darryl
Strawberry and not Kirk Gibson might have won the NL MVP in '88 had
Darryl's less famous teammate not siphoned off support -- Straw
finished a close second, Mac third -- but a case could be made that
McReynolds was the key man for the Eastern Division champions. Indeed,
he hit two homers in the NLCS against the Dodgers. All the tangible
evidence applied fairly will reasonably lead one to conclude that Kevin
McReynolds was, during the period of his employment by New York's
National League representative, an all-around very good to excellent
ballplayer. But when you get right down to it, he made for a lousy Met.
47. Doug Flynn: "Ground ball to second. Doug Flynn looks it into his glove and fires to first. Side retired."
Not "happy recap," not "he could've hit that in a silo," not even
"brought to you by Manufacturers Hanover Trust" were likely uttered as
much by Bob Murphy as the words above were between June 1977 and
October 1981 while Doug Flynn anchored the Met infield. No better than
the third piece of silver wrung from the Reds for Tom Seaver at the
time of the four-for-one debacle, Dougie emerged as a Gold Glove second
baseman in 1980. If that doesn't sound like much, consider what it
takes to win a Gold Glove: reputation and repetition. The other
National League winners that year were Phil Niekro, Gary Carter, Keith
Hernandez, Mike Schmidt, Ozzie Smith, Andre Dawson, Garry Maddox and
Dave Winfield. Most of those players were superstars at other facets of
the game and all were or would become multiple Gold Glove recipients.
Doug Flynn was none of these things. He earned his hardware as a
power-free .255 hitter on a virtually invisible team because he was
that a good fielder. He missed a solid month's worth of games when he
broke his wrist in August, but was voted the award because he was that
good a fielder. A squirming Frank Cashen donned a cowboy hat to
celebrate the re-signing of the Kentucky native in the winter of '81.
Flynn, you see, was moonlighting at the Lone Star Cafe, playing in his
buddy Greg Austin's country band. A picture exists of the second
baseman inking the new deal on the uptight, upright Cashen's back. Why
would The Bowtie play along with such an uncharacteristic photo-op?
Because Doug Flynn was that good a fielder. (On an unrelated
note, Flynn mysteriously drove in 61 runs as the eighth-place hitter on
the 99-loss Mets of '79. He wasn't nearly that good a hitter.)
46. Bobby Ojeda: On a staff that encompassed so many talented,
callow, live wires, Bobby Ojeda arrived on the 1986 Mets with a left
arm that must've been coated in leather. Betcha it had a map of the
world etched into it. He was only 28, but the arm was wise beyond its
years. Judged as fifth-starter insurance, Ojeda broke through as the
dominating Mets' most dominant starter early on, tossing dead fishes,
going 18-5 and posting a 2.55 ERA, the second-best in the league. His
presence took enormous pressure off young Gooden, Darling, Fernandez
and Aguilera. Long before Art Howe made the phrase a punchline, Bobby O
battled. Everything about him said business, never louder than in the
two Game Sixes, the tensest baseball matches of their day. In Houston,
he gave up three irritating runs in the first, wriggled out of it after
a botched squeeze and hung tough for five, giving up nothing more.
Against the Red Sox, he held up under the massive strain of an
elimination game while competing with Clemens' no-hit caliber stuff,
and kept the Mets in it, 2-2, through six. When asked during the World
Series if he had conflicting emotions facing his old club, Bobby Ojeda
pointed to the NY on his jacket. This, he said, is who I work for now.
45. Benny Agbayani: If Benny Agbayani played in New York, they'd
name a coffee after him. Oh wait, they did: Benny Bean Coffee. It was
perfect product placement. He was instant: After a non-descript cameo
in '98 (a cold cup of coffee, if you will), Benny was called up in May
'99 and started hitting right away. He was piping hot: Benny's ten home
runs in his first 73 at-bats established a team record. He was a trendy
blend: His decidedly non-jockish demeanor combined with his awesome
output turned Benny into BEN-NEE! among the Shea faithful, a folk hero
to go. He'd shake you of your morning drowsiness: Live from Tokyo, it
was Benny's grand slam, stroked at around 8:30 AM New York time, that
secured the Mets' first win of the 2000 season. He was stirring: With
one out in the bottom of the thirteenth, Benny ended Game Three of the NLDS against the Giants with a deep-brewed shot off Aaron Fultz. He was good to the last drop: Benny's eighth-inning double plated the run that beat the Yankees in Game
Three, halting their bitter World Series winning streak and refreshing,
at last, the Mets' hopes. All in all, Benny Agbayani was no drip.
44. Randy Myers: Leave no doubt behind. Come on in the ninth and
throw heat. Radiate fire to entice the fans. Seem a little off-kilter
to frighten the opposition. Wear camo. Pose in it for a poster. Pump
iron to make the front office nervous. Let a few stories circulate,
like how you and your aunt have started your own fan club. See to it
that your parents give you a middle name like Kirk so the announcers
will refer to you as Randall K. Myers. Compel them to emphasize the K.
Don't nibble. Don't mess with sliders and curves and offspeed stuff.
Announce your presence with authority. Bring that heat. Do it well
enough to keep your team in contention when the established closers are
flailing. Do it long enough to install yourself as the new closer. Do
it right into the playoffs where you should be protecting every
ninth-inning lead whether the manager remembers to get you up or not.
Don't get traded for some guy who in the long run may be nominally more
reliable but is never as exciting.
43. Donn Clendenon: Steve Renko, Kevin Collins, Bill Carden and
Dave Colon turned eternally into trivia answers on June 15, 1969. The
question was, "What four young players did the New York Mets trade the
very first time they stopped building for the future to concentrate,
once and for all, on the present?" Not incidentally, the player who
arrived to show the world that Baby Met was no longer a kid was
33-year-old Donn Clendenon. A real veteran. An experienced right-handed
bat. A first baseman to split time with Kranepool. When the Mets dealt
for Donn, they were a distant second, nine games behind the Cubs. But
they decided they had matured enough to behave like adult pennant
contenders. Four months and a day later, Clendenon hit his third Series
homer, leading the charge that would overtake Baltimore in Game Five
and capping the performance that would land him MVP honors. The Mets
were fully grown.
42. John Stearns: John Stearns deserved better. No Met who
played on so many bad teams -- he showed up a bit too late for '73 and
was forced to leave a little shy of '86 -- ever looked like he ached to
win so badly. John Stearns played so hard on so many losers that it
hurt to watch. He parlayed his effort into four All-Star selections. He
showed no mercy to runners -- regardless of their size -- who thought
they had a right to home plate, a piece of real estate that belonged to
him. He didn't suffer the hijinks of clowns professional (Chief
Noc-A-Homa comes to mind) or amateur (pity the fool who jumped the rail
and entered the field of play where the Dude earned his pay). Sure it
would've been wonderful if John Stearns could've sprayed a little
bubbly as a player. But anyone can give it his all when things are
going well. It takes a special man to throw his body, his soul and
whatever minimal caution he bothered with to the wind when the only
reward is the likelihood of disappointment and the chance to feel it
again tomorrow.
41. Turk Wendell: Middle relief is so overlooked in baseball
that even in this stat-happy age, there is no definitive data used to
verify success in the role. Holds? What's a hold? Nobody cares.
Inherited runners? Fine, but what about entering at the start of the
inning? Things go wrong there, too. The middle reliever's lot is
tougher than that of the closer. The closer gets loads of blame if he
blows a game, but he also has the chance to pile up saves and cash in
on them. Middle relievers are just as easily booed off the mound for
their transgressions in the sixth or seventh as their fireman
counterparts are in the eighth or ninth. But they're deemed far more
readily replaced, and often are. In this climate -- particularly on a
staff that had starters give out with troubling regularity after five
innings -- Turk Wendell may have been the most vital cog in Bobby
Valentine's wobbly Mets machine. The whomping of the rosin bag, the
extracted animal teeth dangling from his neck, the impertinent remarks toward Vlad Guerrero (suggesting he should go back to the Dominican if he didn't like being pitched close), the Turkishness of his being...none of it should detract from the fact that for the better part of three seasons and two post-seasons, Turk Wendell entered a gaggle of games that were on the line and, more often than not, kept them in line. Nobody keeps stats on it, but he was the best middle reliever the Mets ever had.
