This Isn't the First Time an ERA Leader Had Trouble Winning Ballgames For the Mets

Jacob deGrom has been brilliant in his first dozen starts with the Mets this season.  In 72⅓ innings pitched, the right-hander has struck out 98 batters while walking just 21.  DeGrom is also leading the National League with a scintillating 1.49 ERA.  And yet, despite putting up Cy Young caliber numbers, deGrom has earned just four wins in those 12 starts,

DeGrom's low win count is partly due to the team's non-existent offense when he takes the hill.  But mostly, it's been the club's shoddy bullpen that has turned potential victories into frustrating no-decisions.  And it's not the first time this has happened to a Mets pitcher.

Jacob deGrom, meet Craig Swan.

Decisions, decisions.  DeGrom and Swan don't know anything about that.  (Al Bello/Getty Images, Diamond Images)

Forty years ago, the Mets were coming off an embarrassing 1977 campaign, one in which the team posted its worst record in nearly a decade and traded its franchise player, Tom Seaver, to the Cincinnati Reds.  As a result, Craig Swan, who had never pitched more than 150 innings in his previous five seasons with the Mets, was expected to increase his workload for the 1978 campaign.  He did not disappoint, even if his teammates did when he took the mound.

Swan made 28 starts and one relief appearance in 1978, setting a career high with 207⅓ innings pitched.  The team's new ace held opposing batters to a .219 batting average and .597 OPS, which enabled him to win the National League ERA title - something Seaver had accomplished three times as a Met - with a 2.43 mark.  Yet despite his ability to keep his opponents from crossing the plate, he had difficulty adding wins to his ledger, as Swan finished the season with only nine of them.

As unfortunate as deGrom has been, with four wins and eight no-decisions in his first 12 starts of the 2018 campaign, it was far more frustrating for Swan, who managed just one victory in his first 16 starts in 1978 despite a stellar 2.59 ERA through mid-July.  Like deGrom, Swan was occasionally let down by his offense, as the Mets scored three runs or fewer in ten of those appearances, which included three shutout losses.  But on days when the bats showed up, it was Swan's bullpen that let the team down.  In four of those first 16 starts, Swan left the game with a lead, only to see the relievers cough it up before you could say Grant's Tomb.

Swan pitched five complete games in 1978 (winning four of those five contests), meaning he needed help from his bullpen in 23 of his 28 starts.  In only eight of those 23 starts did he leave the game with the Mets trailing, yet he went 5-5 with 13 no-decisions in those affairs.  Incredibly, Swan allowed two runs or fewer in 19 of his 28 starts, but was saddled with a no-decision in 11 of those 19 games.  And perhaps the most frustrating stat of all for Swan was that he pitched better in games in which he failed to earn a decision.  His ERA in those games was 2.16.

Like Swan forty years before him, Jacob deGrom knows what it's like to be at the top of his game only to see a potential "W" taken away from him.  In three of his eight no-decisions this year, deGrom has left the game in the hands of the bullpen with a lead, only to see it vanish within a matter of minutes.  How ineffective has the bullpen been in deGrom's starts in 2018?  The answer to this question deserves its own paragraph.

DeGrom has allowed 13 runs in his 12 starts.  The bullpen has allowed 35 runs in those starts after deGrom was removed from the game.  Somewhere, Craig Swan is saying, "I know the feeling."

In 1978, Craig Swan went 9-6 with 13 no-decisions.  Forty years later, Jacob deGrom is 4-0 with eight no-decisions in his first 12 starts.  At least they can take comfort in the fact that they both had winning records in the games in which they did earn a decision.  It could be worse.  Just ask another former Met, Nolan Ryan, who went 8-16 in 1987 when he led the National League in ERA as a member of the Houston Astros.

Hold my beer, indeed.

"No-decisions are better than losses." -- Nolan Ryan, probably.  (Focus On Sport/Getty Images, Todd Spoth)

Doc Gooden's Greatness On The Mound Extended Past The 1986 Season

Photo by Ray Stubblebine/AP

Dwight Gooden, the Mets' hurler who helped exhume the team from Grant's Tomb and brought Shea Stadium back to life in the mid-'80s, is celebrating his 50th birthday today.  When Gooden was at his peak three decades ago, the baseball cognoscenti agreed that his first three seasons in the major leagues were among the best by a young pitcher in the game's history.  Gooden took the mound 99 times from 1984 to 1986, going 58-19 with a 2.28 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 35 complete games, 13 shutouts and 744 strikeouts - reaching 200 or more strikeouts in each season.

But after off-the-field problems came to light prior to the 1987 campaign, Gooden went from being Dr. K to being Dr. Just OK.  Or did he?

From 1987 to 1991, Doc's numbers were clearly not the same as they were during his first three seasons.  But they were still pretty darn good.  In his fourth through eighth seasons with the Mets, Gooden went 74-34 with a 3.39 ERA and 1.23 WHIP, striking out 797 batters, completing 22 games and tossing eight shutouts.  He also finished in the top five in the Cy Young Award voting twice.  (Gooden was fifth in the Cy Young balloting in 1987 and fourth in 1990.)  He accomplished all of this from 1987 to 1991 despite making fewer than 28 starts in three of the five seasons.

Perhaps his greatest and most underappreciated accomplishment occurred in 1991.  After seven consecutive seasons of winning 87 or more games, the Mets finished under .500 in '91.  But Gooden still managed to finish with a 13-7 record, 3.60 ERA and 150 strikeouts in only 27 starts.  In 15 of those 27 starts, Gooden allowed two earned runs or fewer, but received losses or no-decisions in six of the games, mainly because he was surrounded by a putrid offense.

Keith Miller (.280) and Gregg Jefferies (.272) were the only players with 300 or more plate appearances to finish the year with a batting average north of .260.  Howard Johnson (38 HR, 117 RBI, 108 runs) was the sole Met with more than 16 homers, 74 RBI or 65 runs scored.  Gooden basically had to help himself when he was in the game, as he batted .238 with three doubles, a homer, six RBI and seven runs scored in only 63 at-bats.  His .333 slugging percentage was higher than the marks posted by Mark Carreon (.331 in 254 AB), Vince Coleman (.327 in 278 AB) and Garry Templeton (.306 in 219 AB).

In the five seasons immediately following the 1986 championship campaign, when Gooden supposedly went from being a great pitcher to just being a very good pitcher, the right-hander's winning percentage was .685 in 137 starts.  That was the highest winning percentage for all pitchers who made 100 or more starts from 1987 to 1991.  The rest of the top five included Dave Stieb, Roger Clemens, Bob Welch and Dave Stewart - pitchers who combined to win 909 games over their long and successful major league careers.

Player	W-L%	GS	W	L	ERA	FIP	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Dwight Gooden	.685	137	74	34	3.39	2.78	.249	.304	.342	.647
Dave Stieb	.667	137	68	34	3.32	3.78	.226	.306	.332	.638
Roger Clemens	.662	172	94	48	2.74	2.61	.227	.284	.329	.613
Bob Welch	.662	174	88	45	3.47	3.93	.245	.313	.375	.689
Dave Stewart	.629	181	95	56	3.54	3.66	.246	.314	.366	.680

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2014.

The Mets averaged nearly 99 wins a season from 1984 to 1986, with Gooden accounting for 58 of the team's 296 wins in those three campaigns.  Although several stints on the disabled list caused Gooden to miss significant time in 1987, 1989 and 1991, Doc still won 74 games in the five years immediately following the team's championship in 1986.

Averaging 27 starts per season from 1987 to 1991 should have allowed other National League pitchers to finish well ahead of Gooden in wins, but that never happened.  In fact, only Doug Drabek won more games in the Senior Circuit than Dwight Gooden did during that five-year stretch, as seen in the chart below.

Player	W	G	GS	CG	SHO	W-L%	IP	H	BB	SO
Doug Drabek	77	165	162	26	12	.602	1106.0	1009	283	643
Dwight Gooden	74	139	137	22	8	.685	969.0	911	283	797
Greg Maddux	73	171	168	32	9	.549	1143.0	1107	374	718
Tom Browning	72	176	175	19	5	.576	1141.1	1123	297	573
David Cone	67	155	138	27	10	.620	994.2	829	336	945

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2014.

When Gooden was at his best from 1984 to 1986, he was the league's premier strikeout pitcher, fanning 200 or more batters in each of his first three seasons and averaging nearly 250 Ks per year.  Gooden's propensity for throwing strike three earned him the nickname Dr. K, but just because he wasn't leading the league in strikeouts from 1987 to 1991 as he did in his first two seasons didn't mean he was no longer frustrating batters at the plate.

In his fourth through eighth seasons in the big leagues, the good Doctor struck out 797 batters.  Only one pitcher in the National League had more strikeouts than Gooden did during those five "post-dominant Doc" seasons - his teammate, David Cone, who won two strikeout titles of his own in 1990 and 1991.

Player	SO	SO/9	SO/BB	K%	GS	W	L	W-L%	IP	BF
David Cone	945	8.55	2.81	23.1%	138	67	41	.620	994.2	4092
Dwight Gooden	797	7.40	2.82	19.8%	137	74	34	.685	969.0	4023
Sid Fernandez	733	8.40	2.55	22.8%	128	48	40	.545	785.2	3211
Mike Scott	719	7.13	2.72	19.4%	134	59	46	.562	908.0	3715
Greg Maddux	718	5.65	1.92	14.9%	168	73	60	.549	1143.0	4831

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2014.

There's one last thing that won't show up in a boxscore or a Baseball Reference chart that helps assess Dwight Gooden's value to the Mets after his first three historic seasons with the team.  During the five-year period from 1987 to 1991, Gooden was outstanding at helping the Mets win games that immediately followed a loss, thereby preventing the Mets from suffering through extended losing streaks.  In Gooden's 137 starts during those five years, 65 of them came after a loss by the team.  The Mets' record in those 65 contests was 41-24, giving the team a .631 winning percentage in post-loss games started by Doc.  When any other starting pitcher took the mound immediately following a Mets loss during that five-year stretch, the team's record in those games was 147-148, for a .498 winning percentage.  That's how valuable Gooden was to the team after he had supposedly lost his ability to dominate hitters.

Dwight Gooden never had a winning percentage under .650 in any season from 1987 to 1991, while the Mets never posted a winning percentage above .625 in any of those five campaigns.  The entire team stopped being as great as they were in 1986, but not Doc.  He just continued to find ways to win.  If anything, he was one of the main reasons why the team continued to be competitive for as long as they did, until the bottom fell out in the early '90s.

Today is Doc's 50th birthday, making it a perfect day to look back at how golden he was not just during his first three seasons with the Mets, but in the years immediately following the team's World Series championship.  The baseball pundits might say Gooden wasn't the same pitcher after 1986, but that didn't make him any less valuable to the Mets.  The numbers don't lie.  Doc Gooden never lost his ability to be among the best pitchers in the league even when his club stopped being one of the best teams in the league.
    

Doc Gooden Was Great After He Stopped Being Great

Photo by Ray Stubblebine/AP

Baseball historians will say that Dwight Gooden's first three seasons in the major leagues were some of the best by a young pitcher in the game's history.  Gooden took the mound 99 times from 1984 to 1986, going 58-19 with a 2.28 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 35 complete games, 13 shutouts and 744 strikeouts - reaching 200 or more strikeouts in each season.

But after off-the-field problems came to light prior to the 1987 campaign, Gooden went from being Dr. K to being Dr. Just OK.  Or did he?

From 1987 to 1991, Doc's numbers were clearly not the same as they were during his first three seasons.  But they were still pretty darn good.  In his fourth through eighth seasons with the Mets, Gooden went 74-34 with a 3.39 ERA and 1.23 WHIP, striking out 797 batters, completing 22 games and tossing eight shutouts.  He also finished in the top five in the Cy Young Award voting twice.  (Gooden was fifth in the Cy Young balloting in 1987 and fourth in 1990.)  He accomplished all of this from 1987 to 1991 despite making fewer than 28 starts in three of the five seasons.

Perhaps his greatest and most underappreciated accomplishment occurred in 1991.  After seven consecutive seasons of winning 87 or more games, the Mets finished under .500 in '91.  But Gooden still managed to finish with a 13-7 record, 3.60 ERA and 150 strikeouts in only 27 starts.  In 15 of those 27 starts, Gooden allowed two earned runs or fewer, but received losses or no-decisions in six of the games, mainly because he was surrounded by a putrid offense.

Keith Miller (.280) and Gregg Jefferies (.272) were the only players with 300 or more plate appearances to finish the year with a batting average north of .260.  Howard Johnson (38 HR, 117 RBI, 108 runs) was the sole Met with more than 16 homers, 74 RBI or 65 runs scored.  Gooden basically had to help himself when he was in the game, as he batted .238 with three doubles, a homer, six RBI and seven runs scored in only 63 at-bats.  His .333 slugging percentage was higher than the marks posted by Mark Carreon (.331 in 254 AB), Vince Coleman (.327 in 278 AB) and Garry Templeton (.306 in 219 AB).

In the five seasons immediately following the 1986 World Series championship campaign, when Gooden supposedly went from being a great pitcher to just being a very good pitcher, the right-hander's winning percentage was .685 in 137 starts.  That was the highest winning percentage for all pitchers who made 100 or more starts from 1987 to 1991.  The rest of the top five included Dave Stieb (68-34, .667), Roger Clemens (94-48, .662), Bob Welch (88-42, .662) and Dave Stewart (95-56, .629) - pitchers who combined to win 909 games over their long and successful major league careers.

Despite his dropoff in strikeouts following the 1986 season, Gooden's 797 Ks from 1987 to 1991 was surpassed by just one pitcher in the National League - his teammate, David Cone.  Cone struck out 945 batters over the five-year stretch.  Gooden's 74 wins was also second in the NL to Doug Drabek, who won 77 games for the Pittsburgh Pirates from '87 to '91.

One other thing that Gooden was great at from 1987 to 1991 was something that never showed up in the boxscore.  During those five years, Gooden was outstanding at helping the Mets win games immediately following a loss, thereby preventing the Mets from suffering through extended losing streaks.  Doc started 65 games following a Mets loss from 1987 to 1991.  The Mets were 41-24 in those games.

Photo by Ed Leyro/Studious Metsimus

Today is Dwight Gooden's 49th birthday.  It's been nearly three decades since he rocketed onto the major league scene with his blazing fastball and devastating curveball as a rookie in 1984.  It's also been almost two decades since he threw his final pitch as a member of the New York Mets.

From the ages of 19 to 21, Gooden was arguably the best pitcher in the game.  Then, as his off-the-field habits started to come to light, he failed to approach his otherworldly numbers from 1984 to 1986.  But that didn't mean he stopped being a great pitcher.  In fact, no one in baseball gave his team a better chance to win from 1987 to 1991 than Gooden, and only a handful of pitchers sent as many opposing batters back to the bench without putting the ball in play than Doc did.

Just because he wasn't leading the league in strikeouts and threatening to throw a no-hitter in every start didn't mean he wasn't the Doctor anymore.  In fact, he continued to operate with surgical precision for quite some time after the 1986 campaign.

Doc Gooden never stopped being great on the mound.  It's a shame that some people thought his greatness just wasn't good enough.
 

Marlon Byrd Could Do What No Met Has Done Before

Power hitters don't usually run very well.  And speedsters aren't prone to hitting home runs.  So it would be reasonable to say that players who are among the league leaders in home runs don't usually find their names near the top of the triples leader board.  Of course, there have been some exceptions over the years.

Hall of Famer Stan Musial led the league in triples in 1948, 1949 and 1951.  He hit 39, 36 and 32 homers in those years, respectively.  More recently, in 2007, Jimmy Rollins led the league with 20 triples while hitting 30 homers to capture the National League Most Valuable Player Award.

Only three players in the modern era of baseball (since 1900) have led their respective leagues in triples and homers in the same season.  Those players are Willie Mays (13 triples, 51 homers in 1955), Mickey Mantle (11 triples, 37 homers, also in 1955) and Jim Rice (15 triples, 46 homers in 1978).  All three are in the Hall of Fame.

As you can see, it's quite rare for a player to be among the league leaders in both triples and home runs.  Just nine players have finished in his league's top ten in triples and homers over the past 20 years, as seen in the chart below.

Player	Year	Triples	Place	Home Runs	Place
Sammy Sosa	1994	6	T-6th	25	9th
Ellis Burks	1996	8	T-5th	40	T-5th
Vladimir Guerrero	1998	7	T-8th	38	T-6th
Barry Bonds	1998	7	T-8th	37	9th
Nomar Garciaparra	1998	8	T-4th	35	T-10th
Vladimir Guerrero	2000	11	T-2nd	44	T-4th
Luis Gonzalez	2001	7	T-8th	57	3rd
Ryan Braun	2007	7	T-6th	37	T-4th
Carlos Gonzalez	2010	9	6th	34	4th
Curtis Granderson	2011	10	3rd	41	2nd

Of the nine players in the last 20 years who have finished in the top ten in both three-base hits and homers, only Vladimir Guerrero accomplished the feat twice, doing so for the Expos in 1998 and 2000.  But notice that none of the nine players played for the Mets.  That shouldn't be surprising.  After all, only 16 Mets have ever cracked the year-end top ten in triples.  And of those 16 players, none of them hit as many as 20 homers. (Jose Reyes' 19 homers in 2006 are the most.)  Obviously, that means no Met has ever finished in the top ten in both triples and homers in the same season.

But that could all change this season.  And it might be done by an unlikely candidate.

Word.

Marlon Byrd currently has five triples and 20 home runs.  His five triples are good for a ninth place tie in the National League, while his 20 homers are tied for the eighth highest total in the Senior Circuit.  Should Byrd finish in the top ten in the league in triples, he would become the first Met to hit 20 homers in a season in which he cracked the top ten in triples.  In addition, should Byrd remain in the top ten in both triples and homers, he'd also become the first Met ever to do so.

Not Jose Reyes.  Not David Wright.  Not Darryl Strawberry.

Marlon Freakin' Byrd.

No one expected Marlon Byrd to do much for the Mets this year.  He was supposed to be part of a rotating outfield who could perhaps hit well against left-handed pitching.  But instead, he's become the team leader in home runs, runs batted in, and slugging percentage.  He also has a chance to be among the league leaders in both triples and homers.  That's something very few players can claim over the past 20 years.  That's something no Met has ever been able to claim.  Until now.  Maybe.

This has truly been a remarkable season for Marlon Byrd.  And it also has a chance to be an historic one.