Curtis Granderson Has Ended the Game of Musical Chairs in Right Field

Curtis Granderson warms up in right field before a game.  Not many other Mets have been able to say the same since 2014.  (Photo by Ed Leyro/Studious Metsimus)

It's been more than a quarter century since Darryl Strawberry patrolled right field for the last time as a member of the New York Mets.  Since then, the Mets have used 17 different Opening Day right fielders.  Sixteen of them made their Opening Day starts in the 23 seasons between 1991 (when Hubie Brooks replaced Strawberry in right) and 2013 (when Marlon Byrd became the word at the outfield position).  No Met started more than three Opening Day games in right field in those 23 seasons and none started more than two consecutive season openers.

Since Strawberry's departure following the 1990 campaign, a total of 126 men have played at least one game in right field for the Mets.  The long list of players includes Chip Ambres, who played a total of two innings in right field for the Mets in 2007 and drove in the game-winning run in that game - his only RBI as a member of the team - to Bobby Bonilla, who just wanted to be a Bronx tour guide to a certain Daily News reporter and author when he wasn't playing right field 229 times during two stints with the Mets.

Of the 126 players who succeeded Strawberry in right, only 17 of them played at least 100 games at the position.  And in the 23 seasons following the Straw Man's departure, no Met played as many as 300 games in right field, as Jeromy Burnitz's total of 290 games in right led all players from 1991 to 2013.  But after a quarter century, the Mets may finally have found their first everyday right fielder since Darryl packed his bags to go home to Los Angeles.

Curtis Granderson signed a four-year contract with the Mets prior to the 2014 campaign.  It wasn't the first time the team had signed a right fielder to a lengthy contract, as the aforementioned Bonilla signed a five-year deal with the Mets following the 1991 season, only to see him shift over to each corner infield position and eventually run himself out of town with a year and a half left on his contract.

As in Bonilla's case, Granderson had a subpar first season in New York.  Bonilla's final year in Pittsburgh in 1991 saw him produce a .302 batting average, a league-leading 44 doubles and his third 100-RBI campaign in four seasons.  As the Mets' new right fielder in 1992, Bonilla batted just .249 with 70 RBI and fewer extra-base hits (23 doubles, 19 homers) than he had doubles in 1991.  Granderson, who produced back-to-back 40-HR campaigns with the Yankees in his final two healthy seasons with the team in 2011 and 2012, did not drive in many runs for the Mets as a middle-of-the-order hitter in 2014 and was eventually moved to the leadoff spot because of his ability to draw walks.  His first season as a Met was mostly underwhelming, as he batted .227 with 20 homers, 66 RBI and 73 runs scored in 155 games, with 142 of those games seeing Granderson playing right field.

Granderson's sophomore season in Flushing was a smashing success, as he posted a .259/.364/.457 slash line.  His .821 OPS was over one hundred points higher than the .714 OPS he produced in 2014.  He also scored 98 runs and walked 91 times, the most by any Mets right fielder since Strawberry, who scored 101 runs in 1988 and walked 97 times in 1987.  In doing so, Granderson became just the seventh player in Mets history - regardless of position - to have 90+ runs and 90+ walks in the same season.  The other six players are among the best in team history - Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, John Olerud, Edgardo Alfonzo, Carlos Beltran and David Wright.

Who would have thought Granderson would ever be on a list with these guys?

Including last night's game - one in which Granderson had a very Strawberry-like performance with two homers and five runs batted in - Granderson has started 286 games in right field since joining the Mets in 2014.  He has also played in 20 other games in right that he did not start, giving him 306 games played in right field - the most by any player on the Mets since Strawberry departed via free agency more than a quarter century ago.

As of this writing, only Strawberry (1,062 games), Rusty Staub (535 games), Ron Swoboda (434 games) and Joel Youngblood (309 games) have appeared in more games in right field for the Mets.  By early next week, Granderson should pass Youngblood into fourth place and should Granderson stay healthy, he'll pass Swoboda by the end of the season.

For the better part of a quarter century, the Mets struggled to find anyone resembling a permanent replacement for Darryl Strawberry in right field.  In the 21-plus seasons before Strawberry's debut in May 1983, the Mets had trotted out 77 different right fielders.  In the 23 seasons following the Straw Man's departure, New York chewed up and spit out 125 right fielders.  The 126th right fielder is finally making the position his own.

Until David Wright joined the team in 2004, the running gag was to keep track of the number of third basemen in team history.  (For the record, Wright was the 129th Met to man the hot corner.)  As of today, the Mets have used 158 players at third base.  Meanwhile, a total of 221 players have found themselves playing right field for the Mets at least once in their careers.  Curtis Granderson is doing all he can to make sure that number stays in the 220s until his contract expires after the 2017 campaign.

It's good to know that the Mets finally have a productive player in right field after so many years of searching for one.  A 25-year game of musical chairs was far too long.

Joey's Soapbox: The Mora Things Change, The Flores Stays The Same

I feel like I'm stuck in a snow globe writing about our Mets this off-season.

Greetings, everyone!  This is Joey Beartran, taking over the Studious Metsimus blogging duties on this snowy first day of spring.  My colleague, Ed Leyro, has finally allowed me to write something on the current Mets since he seems to have forgotten they still exist, what with all the ten-million word "One Mo-MET In Time" posts he's been writing this off-season.  Maybe you have the patience to read them, but I'm a fast-talking bear in a fast-moving world.  I don't have time for that.  What I do have time for is telling you about a mistake I hope the Mets don't make regarding the current shortstop situation - a situation that goes by the name of Wilmer Flores.

But before I get to Flores, I have a question to ask you.  Do you remember the 2000 season?  That was the year Mets were coming off a memorable 1999 campaign in which they made the playoffs for the first time since the Reagan administration.  That was also the year Rey Ordoñez got hurt, fracturing his left forearm on a tag play at second base in late May.

Ordoñez was a three-time Gold Glove winner at shortstop, swallowing up ground ball after ground ball, sometimes in spectacular fashion.  But once he got hurt at Dodger Stadium, the Mets were left with a defensive hole at the shortstop position.  They tried to fill it with Melvin Mora, who was in his first full season with the Mets, but he was much more comfortable with a bat in his hands than a glove.

Mora started 37 games at the shortstop position, batting .265 with four homers, 18 RBI and 27 runs scored in just 147 at-bats.  Compare that to Rey Ordoñez, who had a total of four homers in his five-year career up to that point.  Mora also boasted a .442 slugging percentage and .750 OPS in his seven-week trial at short while Ordoñez had a lifetime .292 slugging percentage and .580 OPS prior to his season-ending injury.

The Mets scored 216 runs in Mora's 37 starts, averaging nearly six runs per game.  They scored 212 runs in the 44 games started by Ordoñez prior to his injury, an average of 4.8 runs per game.  Now let's compare the offensive numbers put up by the two players while playing shortstop during the 2000 campaign, especially since they both had almost the same number of plate appearances in their abbreviated seasons.

• M. Mora (164 PA): .265/.308/.442, 12 doubles, 1 triple, 4 HR, 18 RBI, 27 runs, 5 SB.
• R. Ordoñez (155 PA): .188/.278/.226, 5 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HR, 9 RBI, 10 runs, 0 SB.

There's no question that Mora was clearly the better offensive contributor of the two in a similar sample size.  But from a defensive standpoint, Mora was no Ordoñez.  In fact, he wasn't even average.  In the 37 games he started at short as Ordoñez's replacement, Mora committed seven errors in 144 chances for a .951 fielding percentage.  He also participated in just 14 double plays and had 93 assists.  According to baseball-reference.com, Mora's defensive WAR was -0.1 in 2000.  For all you kids out there, that means from a defensive standpoint, he wasn't better than nothing.  Nothing was better than him.

Meanwhile, Ordoñez had a lifetime 8.8 dWAR leading up to his injury.  That's the highest dWAR through five seasons of any Met in the history of the club.  To this day, only Bud Harrelson (13.6 dWAR in 13 seasons) and Jerry Grote (11.2 dWAR in 12 seasons) have posted a higher lifetime dWAR than Ordoñez.

With Mora, the Mets sacrificed defense for offense.  They did the opposite when Ordoñez was in the starting lineup.  But back in 2000, general manager Steve Phillips panicked when Mora couldn't cut it defensively, even with the team scoring a run per game more than they did when Ordoñez was in the lineup.  So just days before the trade deadline, Phillips, in his infinite wisdom, dealt Mora to the Baltimore Orioles for shortstop Mike Bordick.

O, Melvin Mora.  If only you could have fielded like Rey O.  (James Lang/US Presswire)

Bordick basically did what Mora did as a Met, both offensively and defensively, although Bordick played more games at the position for the Mets than Mora.  In 56 games with the Mets, Bordick batted .260 with eight doubles, four homers, 21 RBI and a not-so-impressive 0.1 dWAR.

So what happened in the years after the Bordick-for-Mora trade?  Well, Bordick went back to Baltimore as a free agent at the conclusion of the 2000 campaign, where he became Mora's teammate.  In nine full seasons with the Orioles, Mora reached 20 doubles eight times, 20 homers three times, double digits in stolen bases four times, batted over .300 twice, led the league in on-base percentage once (.419 in 2004), made the All-Star team twice (2003, 2005) and won a Silver Slugger award (2004).  Meanwhile, Ordoñez played two more seasons with the Mets and played his final game in the big leagues as a member of the Chicago Cubs in 2004 - right around the same time Mora was becoming a legitimate star.

That brings us back to the current day shortstop situation with our good pal, Wilmer Flores.  (You thought I had forgotten about him, didn't you?)  In case you've been hibernating in a cave somewhere, let me remind you that Flores is generally not considered a good fielder.  But no one is complaining about how much better he is at the plate than Ruben Tejada.  In 2014, Flores split his season between AAA-Las Vegas and the Mets, spending approximately half of his time at the big league level.  Flores's numbers were strikingly similar to the overall numbers put up by Melvin Mora in 2000 prior to his trade to Baltimore.

• W. Flores (2014): 78 games, .251 average, 13 doubles, 1 triple, 6 HR, 29 RBI, 28 runs.
• M. Mora (2000): 79 games, .260 average, 13 doubles, 2 triples, 6 HR, 30 RBI, 35 runs.

Taking it a step further, Flores's offensive and defensive WAR in 2014 were also right on par with what Mora produced 14 seasons before him, as Flores had a 0.7 oWAR and -0.2 dWAR, while Mora put up a 0.6 oWAR and -0.1 dWAR with the Mets in 2000.

Let me give it to you straight.  Tejada is a good fielder, one who's clearly better with the leather than Flores.  But the difference between Tejada and Flores defensively doesn't even compare to the difference between Ordoñez and Mora.  Ordoñez was one of the best defensive shortstops of his era.  The nicest things we can say about Tejada is that he has nice eyebrows and he won't hurt the Mets in the field.

We've already seen how big of a mistake it was to let Melvin Mora go without giving him a chance to prove himself for more than 37 games.  We can't make the same mistake with Wilmer Flores, especially since Flores is also five years younger now than Mora was in 2000 and can still mature in every facet of the game.

Wilmer Flores may never become a Silver Slugger-winning All-Star like Melvin Mora was, but he certainly has the potential to establish himself as a very good baseball player.  We already know he can hit.  Let him prove to us that he can learn from his mistakes on the field.

At the very least, it would prove that the Mets are trying to learn from their mistakes off the field.  The team certainly doesn't need another Mike Bordick situation in Flushing.

Let him play!  Let him play!  (Brad Barr/USA TODAY Sports)

Breaking The Four-Games-Under-.500 Wall

At any age, Matthew Broderick has no problem breaking the fourth wall, so why can't his team break four games under .500?

In television, movies and comic books, there is a term called "breaking the fourth wall".  This term refers to fictional characters speaking directly to their viewers/readers, in essence finding their way through the imaginary wall that separates their scripted world from our reality-based universe.  A talented writer can make this wall-breaking quite entertaining (see Ferris Bueller's Day Off for an example).  However, the Mets don't have a talented writer.  And they're not exactly breaking any fourth walls.  In fact, they're having a tough time just breaking the four-games-under-.500 wall.

On June 4, the Mets lost the middle game of a three-game series in Chicago to drop their record to 28-31.  The next day, after the last place Cubs completed the sweep, the Mets found themselves four games under .500.  The Mets went on to lose their next game as well, this time in San Francisco, and failed to move back to three games under the break even point.  That game at AT&T Park began an alarming trend that is still active to this day.

Let's take a quick look at how the Mets have fared each time they've taken the field when the morning paper has reported that they're four games under .500 (since early June). 

• June 6:  The 28-32 Mets lose to the San Francisco Giants, 4-2.
• Jul. 19:  The 46-50 Mets lose to the San Diego Padres, 6-0.
• Jul. 29:  The 51-55 Mets lose to the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-0.
• Aug. 1:  The 52-56 Mets lose to the San Francisco Giants, 5-1.
• Aug. 3:  The 53-57 Mets lose to the San Francisco Giants, 9-0.
• Sep. 11:  The 71-75 Mets lose to the Washington Nationals, 6-2.
• Sep. 13:  The 72-76 Mets lose to the Washington Nationals, 10-3.

That's seven straight losses in games the Mets have "tried" to pull back to within three games of the ever-elusive .500 mark.  And I have the word "tried" in quotation marks because the Mets haven't really competed in those seven affairs.  They've lost the heptad of games by a combined score of 46-8.  That's like the Seahawks defeating the Broncos in the Super Bowl and then adding a late field goal just in case.

To make matters worse, in the seven losses the Mets have held the lead for a grand total of one half inning.  That brief flash of hope came on a two-run homer by Daniel Murphy in the seventh inning of the Mets' game against the Giants on June 6.  San Francisco tied the contest in the bottom of the frame and scored the go-ahead runs an inning later on a two-run blast by Buster Posey.

As incredible as it may seem, that Murphy homer is as close as the Mets have come to sniffing the three-games-under-.500 mark since June 4.  For all you kids out there, that was almost 100 games ago.

The wise prophet Ferris Bueller once told us directly to our popcorn-stuffed faces, "Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you can miss it."  In the case of the 2014 Mets, the baseball season has moved pretty fast.  But if they don't find a way to break that four-games-under-.500 wall, they could miss ending their streak of five consecutive losing seasons.  And that, my friends, is nothing to twist and shout about.

The Mets' Hitting Record David Wright May or May Not Want

David Wright has usually been a spectator when the home run apple has risen at Citi Field.  (Photo by Kathy Kmonicek/AP)

David Wright will be the first to tell you that he's had a disappointing season.  Entering Sunday's rubber match against the Cincinnati Reds, Wright is batting .270 with eight home runs and 63 RBI.  His .371 slugging percentage would not only represent a career-low for Wright, but it would also be lower than his .377 lifetime on-base percentage (which was .382 coming into the 2014 campaign).

Needless to say, Wright has not done many positive things to help the Mets' struggling offense in 2014.  However, he is close to accomplishing something with his bat that has never been done by a Met in a single season.

There are currently eight players in franchise history who have driven in 60 or more runs in a season that did not see the player reach double digits in home runs.  The chart below lists those eight players and adds a ninth - David Wright - with his numbers entering today's game.  The chart is sorted by runs batted in and also lists the number of home runs hit by each player during his tenure with the team.

Player	Year	Home Runs	RBI	Career HR as a Met
Dave Magadan	1990	6	72	21
Joel Youngblood	1980	8	69	38
Lance Johnson	1996	9	69	10
John Stearns	1979	9	66	46
Daniel Murphy	2012	6	65	48
David Wright	2014	8	63	230
Gregg Jefferies	1991	9	62	42
Doug Flynn	1979	4	61	5
Rey Ordoñez	1999	1	60	8

As of today, David Wright has the sixth-highest RBI total of all players in Mets history who failed to hit a minimum of ten home runs in a season.  Wright needs seven RBI in the team's last 20 games to become the second Mets player to have a 70-RBI campaign without the benefit of a double-digit home run total.  Should Wright drive in ten runs before the end of the season without hitting more than one ball out of the park, he'd set a new team record, becoming the most prolific single season run-producer of all Mets players who failed to hit 10 HR.

What makes Wright's name look completely out of place on the list above is that Wright has 230 career home runs, which are second in franchise history behind Darryl Strawberry's lifetime total of 252.  Incredibly, the other eight players listed above combined to hit 218 homers during their time with the Mets, or a dozen fewer than Wright has hit by himself.  (That number can still rise, as Daniel Murphy is still active.)

Wright owns or will own most of the Mets' hitting records, but this is one single-season achievement he probably wasn't counting on.  Dave Magadan, who hit 21 home runs in seven seasons as a Met, most likely never expected to hold on to this unusual team record forever.  But he surely never thought it would be David Wright who was about to knock him off his perch.
 

The Worst Team Money Wasn't Spent On

"What do you mean, I won't spend money?  I got you four months of Chris Young, right?"  --Papa Smirk

Going into today's matinee with the Miami Marlins, the Mets have managed to score just 520 runs in their first 137 games.  That averages to 3.8 runs per game.  At that pace, the Mets would cross the plate 615 times this season, which would be four fewer than their run total from 2013.

So how far back do we have to go to find the last time the Mets scored fewer than 615 runs over a full 162-game season?  You have to set the arrival time on the DeLorean to 1992, when New York scored 599 runs.  If you recall, that 72-90 squad was more famously referred to as "The Worst Team Money Could Buy."

That team, full of superstars and a major league high $45 million payroll, batted .235 and was the last Mets team that didn't register 600 tallies in a non-strike shortened season.  And prior to 1992, the last time the Mets scored fewer than 615 runs (the pace they're currently on for the 2014 season) was in 1983.  That year was the seventh straight season the team averaged fewer than 3.8 runs per game.  Long-time Mets fans would recognize that seven-year period from 1977 to 1983 as the Grant's Tomb era - the period in which Mets fans abandoned Shea Stadium almost as quickly as former team chairman M. Donald Grant abandoned his senses, his wallet and his ability to field a winning team.

So basically, the 2014 Mets are scoring at a pace that's been seen just twice by the franchise in nearly 40 years.  And both low-scoring periods have been associated with some of the lowest moments in the club's history.

But not all is gloom and doom.  On the flip side, this year's pitchers have allowed just 533 runs, putting them on pace to give up 630 runs in 2014.  That would be the lowest total in a non-strike shortened season since 1990, when the team allowed 613 runs en route to a 91-71 campaign.

Although pitching wins championships, a little hitting and run-scoring helps as well.  Both the 1969 and 1986 championship teams boasted pitching staffs that allowed fewer than 600 runs.  Of course, those two teams combined to outscore the opposition by 296 runs.

The 1992 squad was the last team to score as little as the 2014 club has.  That was known as "The Worst Team Money Could Buy".  This year's squad is about to become "The Worst Team Money Wasn't Spent On".  The front office has a lot of work to do during the off-season to make sure future Mets teams don't have "The Worst Team" moniker attached to them, regardless of how much money can or won't buy.

Mets Make Low-Hit History ... Again!

"Hey, kid!  Can you hit?  We can use you in the lineup!"  (Photo by Anthony Causi via ABC News)

Let's face it.  The 2014 Mets would have trouble hitting water if they fell out of a sinking ship.  But as bad as they've been with their bats this season, they've become historically bad over the last five games.

Beginning with Thursday night's game against the Nationals, the Mets have collected just 19 hits in their last five games.  They've failed to amass more than four hits in any of those games, banging out three hits in the series finale versus Washington, followed by four hits in each of their four games against Chicago.

It's only the seventh time in history (since 1914) that a team has played five consecutive games in the same season without collecting more than four hits in any of them.  See the chart below and pay close attention to how many times you see "NYM" in the first column.

Team	Strk Start	End	Games	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	BA	Opp
NYM	2014-08-14	2014-08-18	5	142	13	19	3	0	2	.134	WSN,CHC
NYM	2004-09-03	2004-09-08	5	141	4	17	4	0	3	.121	PHI,FLA
DET	2003-03-31	2003-04-05	5	147	4	16	2	0	2	.109	MIN,CHW
CIN	1993-08-10	1993-08-15	5	138	3	14	2	0	2	.101	SFG,ATL
OAK	1980-06-25	1980-06-30	5	150	7	20	2	0	2	.133	MIL,CHW
NYM	1963-09-12	1963-09-15	5	150	4	17	1	0	1	.113	SFG,HOU
BOS	1946-05-11	1946-05-16	5	147	8	15	3	0	2	.102	NYY,CHW,SLB

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 8/18/2014.


The Mets are responsible for three of the seven times in big league history that a team has played five straight games with four or fewer hits.  The 1963 squad was the only one to accomplish the feat between 1946 and 1980, while the 2004 club was the last one to do it before this year's team joined them.

The 2003 Tigers actually carried over their low-hit frustrations from the previous year, as Detroit's 2002 club closed out the season with a two-hit game against the Toronto Blue Jays.  The 2003 squad then failed to collect more than four hits in each of their first five games of the season.  Their six-game streak has never been matched in baseball history.  However, it stretched out over two seasons.  The 2014 Mets (as well as the '63 Mets and the '04 Mets) kept it all within the confines of one campaign.

It doesn't get any better over the next three games, as the Mets face Scott Kazmir (.226 batting average against him in 2014), Jeff Samardzija (.238) and Clayton Kershaw (.198) in succession.

Will the Mets collect five or more hits against Kazmir tomorrow?  Or will they become the first team in history to be held to four or fewer hits in six straight contests in the same season?  The hitters will have plenty to say about that tomorrow.  Assuming they show up.