It’s easy to make a list of bad Mets teams. Quote Casey Stengel, drop a Steve Chilcott reference, talk about how the Mets never got higher than ninth in the National League until their eighth season, mix in assorted Bob Klapisch take-downs. Instead of that, I wanted to look at the three years that officially marked the transition of the Mets from competitive to craptacular: the seasons that signaled the end of contention for the three past eras in baseball where the Mets were in the playoff mix. How did they self-destruct and what were the motivations behind it?

The 1969-1976 Mets were not one of the great dynasties of baseball history. 1969 was a magical year, but other than that, the Mets next-highest win total was in 1976, when they won 86 games. They managed to reach a second World Series in 1973, when every team in the NL East decided that they’d rather not make the playoffs and the Mets happened to catch fire down the stretch, taking it with 83 wins. Obviously, it was a bit of a fluke accomplishment; the fact that the Mets took it to seven games against the A’s in the 1973 World Series is as much a testament to the randomness of playoffs as it was a testament to the Mets’ dominant starters. This was a .500 ballclub at heart.

This version of the club was built on pitching. The lottery that allowed the Mets the rights to Tom Seaver was essentially the team’s first foray into relevancy. I won’t expound much on Seaver; I figure you’ve heard of him if you’re reading this. I just wanted to say that he was great. Really, really, great. The Mets got a lot of solid work from guys like Gary Gentry and Jim McAndrew, but Seaver’s main running mates were Jerry Koosman and Jon Matlack. As Koosman went, so went the Mets. His best years during this time frame match up perfectly with when the club was at its best: 1969, 1973, and 1976. Matlack was one of the unluckiest starters in baseball history by win-loss record, finishing 125-126 despite his career 3.18 ERA. He burst onto the scene in 1972, winning the Rookie of the Year award, and had five stellar seasons for the Mets. They were backed up in the bullpen by Tug McGraw, the creator of both “You Gotta Believe!” and Tim McGraw. Well, batting .500 ain’t bad.

Unfortunately, the Mets had problems batting .300 on the field, let alone .500. During this era, the Mets rarely were able to field a team with more than two good hitters. 1969, 1971, and 1976 were the only three years that the Mets were able to cobble together three hitters that could reach the 120 OPS+ mark in regular playing time. Cleon Jones and Ed Kranepool were the two constants in the Mets lineup, with Tommie Agee a key factor in the early 70’s and Rusty Staub and John Milner joining in 1972. Dave Kingman arrived in 1976 just in time for the implosion. The Mets had good glove guys up the middle to surround these guys in Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson, and later Felix Milan, but third base was a different story.

The 1969 Mets featured raw third baseman Wayne Garrett playing at Age 21 and throwing up a brutal 56 OPS+ by hitting .218/.290/.268 in 400 AB’s. The Mets spent a lot of talent away trying to fix this perceived hole instead of chalking it up to youth and inexperience. Mets president M. Donald Grant led the charge for a new third baseman, trading for what he thought would be the answer in Joe Foy. Foy had posted three solid seasons since being called up by the Red Sox in 1966, but he fizzled out for the Mets, hitting .236/.373/.329 in 322 at-bats, and washed completely out of baseball by 1972. To get him, the Mets only had to give up Amos Otis, who’d be a five-time All-Star and finish in the top ten of the AL MVP voting four times. Fair enough. After putting up with Bob Aspromonte as a stop-gap in 1971, the Mets went back to the drawing board and brought over Jim Fregosi, a perennial MVP candidate for the Angels in the 60’s. Unfortunately, this was now the 70’s, and Fregosi was injury prone and the Mets were asking him to learn a new position. Oh, and they gave up Nolan Ryan to get him. You may have heard of that guy before. Naturally, once Foy washed out and Fregosi was sold to Texas, Garrett was given another shot at starting in 1973, and he cracked 16 homers with a 110 OPS+, going on to be a solid, if not spectacular, third baseman for the latter half of this Mets’ run. And all it cost was a Hall of Famer and a five-time All-Star.

With that dilemma “solved”, Grant and the Mets looked to bring in another established bat. In 1972, Willie Mays joined up for a song, which was a well-considered idea besides the fact that Willie Mays was 41 years old and only had about 700 at-bats left in the tank. Along with Willie, the Mets also picked up a more credible bat in Staub. Le Grande Orange would spend most of 1972 hurt, but gave the Mets a stellar middle of the order bat during his four-year tenure with them. Unfortunately, acquiring Staub cost Ken Singleton, who was like Staub if Staub was unestablished and 24; he’d go on to be a big part of the Orioles’ dynasty of the 80’s. Mike Jorgensen and Tim Foli, who went with Singleton, also went on to have long careers, although as supporting players instead of stars. Next up was Kingman, who brought terrific power and only cost money, but his horrific plate approach led to poor batting averages and on-base percentages below .300 in both of his full Mets seasons in the timeframe. Instead of keeping both Kingman and Staub, the Mets dealt Staub away during the 1975 offseason, for Mickey Lolich and a Baldwin brother to be named later (it ended up being Billy). Like the third base search, the Mets had whiffed on their plan to bring in a long-term established bat to back the staff.

Finally, what hadn’t been undone with poor personnel decisions was brought about with the advent of free agency. The arbitration ruling of Peter Seitz finally ended the reserve clause in 1975, and this development brought much acrimony among Grant and Seaver. Most Mets fans know the rest of the story here: Seaver getting unceremoniously dealt away as Grant haggled over money, and New York Daily News columnist Dick Young famously attacked Seaver’s wife in print, leaving Seaver outraged. The Mets were 26-35 on June 15th when Seaver was dealt for Pat Zachry, Steve Henderson, Doug Flynn, and Dan Norman, and, without Seaver and Kingman (who was also dealt on the 15th), they went 8-18 over the next month, finishing at an embarrassing 64-98.

Matlack and Milner were dealt to Texas and Pittsburgh respectively in a four-team trade that offseason; Koosman was sent to Minnesota after 1978. The returns for these trades were meager: Jesse Orosco was netted in the Koosman trade, but the Mets would not get a single piece of their next championship team besides in any of their deals. In fact, the only two players the Mets received that would even turn in an All-Star appearance over the next few years were John Stearns (who came over from Philadelphia for McGraw before 1975) and Zachry. Naturally, the Mets floundered. It took eight years for them to win 70 games again, as Stearns was surrounded by mediocrity and Zachry flamed out due to injuries.

The 1980’s Mets are generally regarded as the greatest “what if?” team in club history, but the 70’s Mets are definitely in the same ballpark for wasted potential. They could’ve had a dominant four-man staff with two Hall of Famers backed up by Otis, Singleton, Milner, and company if they’d just left well enough alone. Poor personnel decisions mixed with Grant’s reticence to adapt to post-free agency baseball left the Mets as a second division ballclub for almost a decade. Without free agency around to clean up mistakes, talent evaluation was the most important part of the game. The Mets targeted the wrong players to fix their problems and gave up great talent to give them. Once it became clear that the 1973 core wasn’t getting over the hump again, the Mets adapted a reasonable scorched earth policy and entered rebuilding mode, but they barely got anything in return for their key players.

It is hard to adapt many lessons from this club to the present day because the environment was so different, but at the very least it brings one perspective on today’s Mets:

Maybe one day that Lastings Milledge deal will blow up in Omar Minaya’s face, but things could definitely be worse.