But before I do that, I just want to mention that as we await the days until Spring Training begins, there is the Queens Baseball Convention on Saturday January 10th at McFadden's CitiField. I'll be displaying my Mets baseball card collection at the QBC, which if nothing else has gotten me to organize it a little better. I have cards of close to 600 players, ranging from the greats (Seaver, Piazza, Strawberry, Gooden, Mays) to the "Remember him?" (Bruce Boisclair, Skip Lockwood, Bob Bailor, Pete Harnisch) to prospects who never played for the Mets at the MLB level (Noel Devarez, Ambiorix Concepcion, Tyler Pill). Highlights of my collection include:
- Every Original Mets card from 1962 (including Don Zimmer, who is shown as a Met, but is listed as a Red as he was traded that year)
- Over 100 Tom Seaver cards
- Over 600 Mike Piazza cards, including his 1992 Bowman rookie card
- Close to 200 David Wright cards
- Autograph cards including Tug McGraw, Jerry Koosman, Dave Kingman, and many from the 1986 Mets. Also, a David Wright autograph from 2003, the only card I ever mailed to a player and asked for an autograph in anticipation of David's career..
- Cards containing pieces of game-used uniforms and bats from a bunch of players
Okay, now that that's out of the way, onto my look back at the 2014 season. If you know me at all, or you've read any of my previous posts, you know I'm a stats guy. What I mean by that is not that I'm into all those fancy sabremetric stats like batting average on balls in play, or line drive ratios, but stats that help refute misbeliefs that people have. For example, on a Mets fan Facebook page ("True Mets Fans", not to be confused with "True New York Mets fans"), the question was recently posted, "Up 1 run, 3 outs away from winning the World Series, which Mets closer, from any era, do you bring in to slam the door shut?" Answers ran the gamut from true closers like Tug and Jesse to people saying they'd bring in Seaver or Harvey to get the job done. A person who got a few mentions was Billy Wagner. Sounds like a good choice until you look at Billy's career playoff stats. The man was anything but clutch come crunch time. Read my post from last summer where I graded Mets free agent signings over the years, and you'll see what I mean. Often times, perception doesn't match reality.
Case in point. Two of the most common things you heard about the 2014 season were, "If we had a healthy David Wright..." and "If Curtis Granderson had produced the way he did in his healthy seasons with the Yanks..." They are certainly both valid statements. David was anything but the David Wright we've come to expect, and Curtis's production, while nice, was nowhere near what he did for the Yankees when healthy. But let's look at some numbers:
- April-June the Mets were 37-46 (.446 winning percentage)
- July-Sept the Mets were 42-37 (.532)
- May and June were especially bad, with the Mets going 22-35 (.386)
Here's the funny thing. David and Curtis both produced in May and June. In May, David had 9 doubles, 3 HR, 15 RBI (which equals 90 over a full season), and batted .320. He slipped in June a bit, especially with his batting average, .233, but still had 8 doubles, 2 HR, 11 RBI. Combine his numbers from May/June and over the course of the season you'd get 51 doubles (which would be a team record), 15 HR, and 78 RBI. Not fantastic numbers, but pretty decent. Curtis went 5HR/16RBI/.253 in May, and 5HR/13RBI/.300 in June. Over a full season, that's 30HR and 87 RBI. So the simple truth is, when David and Curtis did produce in May and June, the Mets didn't win. But again, how many times did you hear Mets fans use David and Curtis as an excuse for why our record wasn't better?
There were basically two things that kept the Mets from really being in playoff contention in 2014. First off, they stunk when it came to playing the Nats. They blew the win against them Opening Day and it was pretty much downhill from there. They went 4-14 against them. Take out the 18 games against them and the Mets go 75-69. That's a .521 %, which over 162 games produces 84 wins. Last year the two wild card team, the Pirates and Giants, both had 88 wins (.543%). This is clearly a concern since the Mets will have to play the Nats 18 times again this year. If the Mets are going to have any hopes of being a playoff team in 2015, I think they have to play close to .500 ball against the Nationals. Obviously, better than .500 would be great, but we are talking about a team that won 96 games last year and beat the Mets in the division by 17 games, so I think just getting to .500 against them would be a HUGE step for the Mets.
The other thing that really hurt the Mets was their record in 1-run games, especially early in the season. For the year, they ended up 26-29, but from April-June, they were 10-19. In May alone they were a horrendous 2-10. The first half of the season, they had a lot of trouble winning the close games, so it's no surprise they were 9 games under .500. As good as they were in the 2nd half (their .532% would've produced 86 wins over a full season), they were even better in 1-run games, going 16-10 (.615%). If .615 had been their winning percentage for all 55 one-run games, they would've gone 34-21 in them, and the Mets overall record would've been 87-75. It's pretty clear why the Mets were so awful in 1-run games early in the season. Other than me, I think everyone got a shot at closing at some point during the first two months of the season. Until they settled on Mejia, Bobby Parnell (injured), Jose Valverde (released), Dice K (jack of all trades), and Kyle Farnsworth (released) all closed for the Mets at some point during April (technically March for Parnell) and May. Once the bullpen was finally settled, the Mets started winning on a more consistent basis.
I know there's plenty more to say about the 2014 season, but let's face it, with it being the end of December, it's pretty much all been said already. Rookie of the Year for de Grom. Gold Glove for Lagares. d'Arnaud producing like we anticipated after he returned from his short stay in Vegas. A breakout year for Duda. These, along with the return of The Dark Knight, Matt Harvey, give all us Mets fans reason to hope in 2015. Having already secured my tickets for the Mets home opener (and hoping maybe to see the season opener in DC if I can get tickets), as always, I'll be happy to just be in the park!!
P.S. -- One last stat, the kind of goofy thing I always get a kick out of. I made it to 20 games last year. The Mets were 12-8, including winning 10 in a row for me at one point, which means a .488% team played .600% ball when I attended. Clearly, I am a good luck charm :-)
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