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December 16, 2008
The All-Time Mets Roster
Tom Seaver’s number 41 is the only retired Mets player number, which is surprising for a team that’s been in existence since 1962. The Tampa Bay Rays have been around since 1998 and have retired a number: Wade Boggs’ 12. However, this does not mean the Mets haven’t had some truly great players don the orange and blue over the years. With the help of the great website Ultimate Mets Database, I compiled the all-time Mets roster, composed of the best players to don a Mets uniform. These players may not have had their best years in Flushing (just imagine if they had), but they are the all-time greats to play there, regardless of their actual level of play as a Met. Included on this roster are seven Hall of Famers and three likely future Hall of Famers. The years each player played for the Mets are listed as well. Rotation Tom Seaver (1967-1977, 1983) Honorable Mention: Bret Saberhagen, Dwight Gooden, Johan Santana, David Cone Seaver, Ryan, and Spahn are three of the greatest pitchers of all time. As dominant as Ryan was, I think his ridiculously high walk totals would’ve driven me nuts, had I been alive to watch him in his prime. Ryan walked 100+ batters in a season 11 times. Compare that to Seaver who never walked more than 89 in a season. I’m still amazed by the fact that Saberhagen walked just 13 batters in 177.1 IP for the Mets in 1994. Give Santana a few more seasons and he will probably supplant Koosman (and maybe even Glavine) in this rotation. Bullpen Rick Aguilera (1985-1989) Honorable Mention: Mike Stanton, Roger McDowell, Mike Marshall, Randy Myers This was the toughest group to decide, as all of the honorably mentioned players have a strong case. I may be biased towards the more recent pitchers, but keep in mind starters threw a lot more complete games and relievers weren’t used as much in the Mets’ early days. Marshall appeared in a record 106 games and threw 208.1 highly effective innings out of the bullpen for the Dodgers in 1974. Add that to the list of records that will likely never be broken. Catcher Yogi Berra (1965) Piazza and Berra are interchangeable here, but I went with Berra because he was probably better than Piazza defensively. His endless list of great quotes adds to his value as well. Berra was no slouch offensively either, and he finished in the top-four in MVP voting each year from 1950-1956. His Mets career consisted of four games and nine plate appearances, but he coached for or managed the team from 1965-1975. First Base Eddie Murray (1992-1993) Murray is the second-best switch-hitter of all time (Mickey Mantle is first) and still had some pop left in his bat when he came to the Mets in 1992 at age 36. Hernandez is one of the best defensive first baseman ever, and I think if he hit some more home runs his Hall of Fame case might have been stronger. Second Base Jeff Kent (1992-1996) I think Kent is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and the only thing that hurts his case is his prickly personality. Who knew in 1996 that he would eventually set the record for most home runs by a second baseman? Kent was a late bloomer, and continued to be a productive hitter even through his 40th birthday. Just reading Alomar’s name makes me cringe, as I am reminded of those painful 2002-2003 Mets seasons. Shortstop Tony Fernandez (1993) Definitely the weakest position on this list, Reyes will probably replace Fernandez with about two more seasons like he had in 2008. How different is the game today? Harrelson slugged .288 in his career and managed to keep his starting job during most of it. Third Base Howard Johnson (1985-1993) There have been 138 third basemen in Mets history, but all four listed here made their name playing in the last 25 years. Baseball lifer Don Zimmer was the first, starting at third for the 1962 Mets on opening day. Zim put up a hilarious .077/.127/.096 line in 55 plate appearances that season. Give Wright four more seasons and he will be the greatest hitter in Mets history. Outfield Willie Mays (1972-1973) Mays, Snider, and Henderson all had some of their best seasons playing in New York – just not with the Mets. Mays’s number 24 remains unofficially retired to this day, although Henderson wore it during his rocky stints in Flushing. Please share if you think any player has been omitted, and hopefully one day the Mets come to their senses and retire 17 and 31. 44 Responses to “The All-Time Mets Roster”Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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Useless article. Most of the players chosen played for the Mets way past their primes. Yogi Fn Berra over Carter or Piazza? Come on!
Sorry, James, but this falls far, far short. It seems that you’ve just picked names out of a book and selected players based mostly on stats.
Honorable mention for Dwight Gooden?? Dude, he was a ROY and CY winner!!! Shea Stadium was never more charged up than when Gooden pitched. Easily, the BEST young pitcher I’ve ever seen. Despite Doc’s relatively short tenure as a Met, the all-time order is still: Seaver first, Gooden second, no doubt whatsoever.
Catcher: Ask Seaver, Koosman, etc, how much Jerry Grote meant to the pitching staff in 69 and 73. But again, I suppose you left him off based strictly on stats?
And lastly, Mike Bordick at SS!? C’mon, Reyes and Harrelson are miles and miles ahead.
No Ron Hunt?
I spent a summer on Ron’s farm coaching baseball with him and picking his brain. I saw hundreds of old photos of him and he was to the Mets what Mantle was to the Yankees in his heyday. His career numbers weren’t extremely impressive, but his two Mets all-star appearances should have earned him at least an honorable mention.
First of all, my mistake: James had sent an update to the article and I forgot all about it. He changed his selection at shortstop.
Second, folks need to work on their reading comprehension.
What they did as a Met is completely irrelevant. It’s a list of the players with the best total careers, regardless of team, to ever play for the team, not the best performances as a Met.
There are thirty million best-Mets lineups out there, and James was going for something a little different.
A couple quibbles. I would argue that HoJo’s terrible defense is enough to push him well behind Robin Ventura, who was one of the best defensively. Baseball Prospectus has the defensive difference at more than 200 runs; Robin also had 2600 or so more plate appearances over his career.
Second, I’d say Jeff Reardon (367 saves) deserves a place somewhere in the bullpen.
I’m not even reading beyond pitcher. Catcher is tempting, but what’s the point? Anyone who puts Berra in there above Grote, Carter or Piazza knows nothing about the NY Mets and it’s history. When you combine 1984 through 1988, Dwight Gooden had four of the best seasons any pitcher has ever had in the entire history of Major League Baseball. Yet to you he gets an “Honorable Mention”? How old are you? 15? Did you ever get to see anyone play baseball prior to 1993?
FAIL.
Five. Five of the best. Sorry.
And yes Alex, I understood the direction of the article. But Glavine over Gooden? Really? Gooden’s 1985 is good enough to discount Glavine’s entire career (and his 1984 for that matter). And Yogi played in four games. FOUR GAMES! All as a player/coach. Come on! That just can not count. The man was a full time NY Yankee for crying out loud. He has no business on this list.
So your forming an opinion on a probably. Not fact. Mike Piazza was a very underrated defender. It is not all about throwing out baserunners.
That popped into my head right when I read his analysis.
Mike Stanton? (112 ERA+) Where’s Tim Burke (136 ERA+), Jeff Reardon (121 ERA+) and heck, Alejandro Pena (118 OPS+). I think all three of these guys were better than Stanton.
Where’s Pedro?
I think anyone who does a blog like this, opens themselves up to negativity. That’s why I refuse to be negative. This is your opinion and whatever these guys say, I hope that none of it effects your opinion.
Berra over Piazza? Yikes.
No Pedro Martinez? Double Yikes.
And something just feels so wrong about saying that Tony Fernandez and Howard Johnson are the best SS and 3B ever to put on a Mets uniform. I don’t care about the length of someone’s career and what their counting stats are. Quality over quantity please.
TBO this piece turned my stomach a bit. Maybe its the fact that most of these players had their better wears in another uniform. Like putting Kent in front of a true met 2B/3B’man who took us to the WS in 2000 with his glove and by hitting over .320 that year.
Hey, lighten up everyone. I had the same disagreements as everyone here, but I understand what James was doing. My constructive criticism would be that he should have put a much more forceful explanation/ disclaimer at the top about this NOT being based on performance with the Mets, but rather over the entire career.
ps… but I´ll agree with Danny that, even with the criteria James went with, leaving Pedro off was a big oops.
Man….tough crowd!
I liked what you tried to do James, but I quibble with several of your selections:
1) Pedro Martinez is arguably the best pitcher of all time. So he is definitely one of the 5 best to ever put on a Mets uniform. I get leaving Gooden off the list if you were looking at career numbers vs. peak. Gooden’s peak was amazing, but too short.
2) HoJo over Wright and Ventura? I loved HoJo when I was a kid, but he is another guy with a short peak. Ventura was never as good as HoJo at his peak, but he was very good for a long time. Wright’s past two seasons are better than HoJo’s best — at least from my recollection without looking at season OPS+. Wright will top all of HoJo’s career numbers in another 3-5 years.
3) Piazza is the best hitting catcher of all time. Period. Plus he defense (aside from throwing) and game calling skills were above average. Yogi can’t hold a candle to Piazza.
4) I would be interested to compare Beltran with Duke Snider — with plenty left in the tank, Beltran is closing on him–especially if you factor Beltran’s Godlike defensive ability
I always wonder how different out all-time team would look like if cocaine didn’t exist.
Didn’t mean to be harsh before just though the piece was a bit farfetched to associate Mets with some of these players albeit they were once a met. However, I understand what you were trying to do..
It just looks awkward, example if you were doing an All-Time Jets and had:
Quarterback:
Brett Favre
With Honorable Mention: Joe Namath
It’s almost wrong.
It’s absolutely criminal that Pedro isn’t on that list. If you’re going for best careers, Pedro is one of, if not the best ever and I think certainly the best inning per inning pitcher ever.
And Alomar is better than Kent, Piazza’s better than Berra, and Wright is already better than HoJo.
Really no Pedro? Sorry but this guy gets no respect, I remember listening to Mike & Mike one morning and Tommy John said Pedro wasn’t a Hall of Famer but that Curt Schilling (I think it was him) was. He has the highest ERA+ of any starting pitcher ever, his WHIP is the fifth lowest ever behind starters whose last game were 1910, 1917, and 1894. (Mariano is third) He has the third highest K/9 rate, third in K/BB, eighth in Hits/9, and even though I don’t put much stock in it, seventh in win percentage. And who can forget, he probably had the best season of all time as well. The only thing holding back Pedro from the title of best pitcher, in my opinion, is his longevity, he doesn’t have the innings that others do, but for when he did pitch, he was the best in the game. He no doubt belongs ahead of Glavine, Koosman, Saberhagen, Santana & Cone, and probably deserves to be ahead of Ryan & Spahn, maybe even Seaver as well.
With regard to Piazza vs. Berra, I think many of you are severely underestimating how good Berra was, especially with the glove.
Mike Piazza was an underrated defender, but a lot of that had to do with the fact everyone said he was horrible. He was not horrible. He could never throw, and he was above average at most other things a catcher has to do. That said, just because he was good at the other things doesn’t mean you can ignore the throwing, and it is an important part of being a catcher.
Yogi Berra, on the other hand, is one of the best defensive catchers who ever lived. Baseball Prospectus has him being 6% above average at the position for his career, an excellent mark. I know the Win Shares system thinks even more highly of Berra’s defense; James gave him an “A” in the defensive ratings, and he’s right on the border of earning an A+. On top of that, Berra is absolutely one of the ten best hitting catchers of all time.
It is far from impossible to think Yogi was a better player than Piazza.
I’ve already said my piece about HoJo, but concerning Tony Fernandez: he’s a tragically underrated player. He was a .288 lifetime hitter and a gold-glove shortstop. Quite frankly, he’s almost the exact same player as Davey Concepcion, though, in my opinion, slightly better.
Wow, time for me to go cry my eyes out in the corner… a few things
1) I missed Pedro - a pretty inexcusable omission. I knew I’d miss atleast 1 or 2 guys, and I got an email about it at like 4 AM this morning. That warrants a “FAIL”.
2) People, please read the WHOLE column before posting that I’m a freakin’ moron for omitting Jerry Grote while including Yogi Berra. Like Alex posted above, everyone and their mother has made an all-time Mets roster based on performance in a Mets uniform. I wanted to try something different. Shame on me.
3) Happy Haps, go back to grade school, you obviously can’t read despite your statement otherwise.
4) I probably coulda done a better job doing what I usually do, staring at WARP3, OPS+, FIP and ERA+ spreadsheets til my eyes bleed but I don’t think it’s a totally awful list (or as Happy Haps says, “FAIL”). On any other day I’d probably go with Alomar over Kent or re-do some of the bullpen guys.
::::sobbing::::
I once did a journal comparing every position in the NL east. I even had a little disclaimer that it was my opinion and if you would like to add something, go ahead. Justify it. It was sad. People told me I was wrong but didn’t offer any explanation why. Keep on keeping on.
P.S. I’m all for the debates over my selections which are based in intelligent discussion (as opposed to “Ask Seaver, Koosman, etc, how much Jerry Grote meant to the pitching staff in 69 and 73″ or “And Yogi played in four games. FOUR GAMES!”)
That’s part of the reason I wrote this.
I love you too, cocksucker
Lovely. Thanks for reading dude!
You are very welcome. And BTW, what did you expect from someone who needs to go back to grade school? My lord…
Berra over Piaza ? C’mon dude. Koosman your # 5 ? What about Pedro, or Leiter, christ even Frank Tanana ? Get a clue you cocksucker!
Sorry Piazza, and left out Cone
how can Neil Allen be omitted?
Guys,
If anyone wants to discuss the list, feel free to email me at my email address listed above. I’d rather see the profanity in my inbox rather than on the message board here.
Thanks,
James
To me, Berra doesn’t even count as a Met. That would see Piazza on the Marlins’ version of this list and that doesn’t make sense.
At least create the list by players who at least spent a half season with the Mets.
Alomar is far superior to Kent IMO. Pedro off the list is as you said criminal.
I don’t have a problem with the list, but the whole gist of the article is epic fail. It’s not even remotely entertaining for me.
List of great baseball players who put a Mets uniform at some point. What’s the enjoyment in that?
If it’s entertainment you want, I HIGHLY recommend this borderline genius comedic post from Mr. Future at his “blog.”
Sir, you are a regular Joseph Heller.
Can’t we all……
Hell! I got beat up for less than this.
I think it’s fun…..Cy Young played for Saint Louis for a season or two, won 26 games in one of em’, and I think it’s fun to see him on an all Cardinals team..
P.S. I never once called you a moron, so why feel the need to question my intelligence?
Is your opinion of higher value than mine? I think that sort of goes against the very foundation of this web site.
Also, if you look at your previous articles, James, I’ve given you nothing but praise.
So I don’t get the barb being thrown at me for noting that sometimes baseball is not based purely on stats.
::takes picture of thread::
::scurries off::
I haven’t seen a blog take a hit like this since that one I wrote about the God that is Yadier Molina..
You forgot Louis Castillo.
I insulted him first by saying, “How old are you? 15? Did you ever get to see anyone play baseball prior to 1993?”. Should not have done that. It was unnecessary. But boy did Jimmy take offense! Really went for the jugular with Future by comparing him to a friggin Nazi! Yowza…
Not nice, but then again Future gave me a healthy ration of shit a few days ago on top of calling me a “pretentious jerk”. So a laughed. :)
And no he didn’t refer to him as a Nazi. I just didn’t want to be the one who took the most heat here. :( I hope I haven’t offended any Russian Jews in the audience.
Oof.
Well I hope this doesn’t discourage you from trying new things in the future James. I think I agree with some of the commenters that you didn’t back up some of your picks very well, but I also consider you undeserving of a lot of the hate in here.
I just wanna apologize if i came off like an asshole. Like Chris said, don’t let this discourage you from writing more
I thought the criteria for these selections was quite unclear, but it was clearly meant to be a harmless and fun exercise, so I don’t know why everyone got all bent out of shape.
Apologies to everyone I offended in the comments section, especially Mr. Grinch. It was unwarranted.
I meant this as a light-hearted exercise, but I admit it’s probably not my finest work. Apologies.
I posted at my blog with an updated list, after reading some of the great points brought up in the comments.
P.S. Joseph Heller was a Nazi? Best I knew he was Jewish, born in Brooklyn, and flew a ton of air missions during WWII for the United States. Not sure what that comment was about.
That’s why I posted again at 12:32. It was silly.
I (like many others) have no interest in such a list- Warren Spahn won over 360 games, yet he pitched half a season with the Mets and was terrible…
Violating the point of the list, here’s my list of pitchers based upon career value AS Mets:
Starters:
Tom Seaver
Jerry Koosman
Dwight Gooden
Al Leiter
Sid Fernandez
(Sid’s Mets career wasn’t that much better (if at all) than Matlack’s, Cone’s, Darling’s or Reed’s
- but his name hasn’t come up at all above so I’m going with El Sid at #5.
Relievers:
My orignal list was:
John Franco
Jesse Orosco
Armando Benitez
Tug McGraw
Billy Wagner
It feels wrong so I tweaked it a bit to give credit for multi inning appearances (it’s too easy for today’s one IP or less relievers to post great ERAs)
I came up with
Jesse Orosco
John Franco
Tug McGraw
Armando Benitez
Skip Lockwood
(Bob Apodaca was 6th)… I’d like to bounce Armando…
Thanks James, I do appreciate that.
No worries, it’s all good, man!
And as Chris McCown mentions,
don’t let this thread discourage
your future writing.
Sorry dude but this list is pointless, it is stupid and you screwed up.