30 Years Ago Today: Mets Score Club Record 23 Runs in a Game

The late Harry Caray probably wishes he hadn't been taken out to the ballgame on August 16, 1987.

The New York Mets are currently playing the crosstown rival Yankees in a four-game home-and-home series.  Thirty years ago today, the Mets were playing another of baseball's storied franchises, taking on the Chicago Cubs on a lazy Sunday afternoon at Wrigley Field.  One year after winning the 1986 World Series, the Mets were battling the St. Louis Cardinals for the division title and needed to win the finale of their four-game set against the Cubs after dropping the first three games.  They were in the throes of a poor stretch that saw them lose six out of eight games after they had cut the Cardinals’ lead in the division from 10½ to 3½ games.  In that eight-game stretch, they had scored only 20 runs.  They needed to bust out of their slump quickly if they were going to continue to stay in the race with St. Louis.  Fortunately, the wind was blowing out at Wrigley Field on August 16, 1987 and the Mets’ bats were ready to take advantage.

The starting pitchers were Ron Darling for the Mets and a kid for the Cubs who had just been recalled from the minors after being sent down two weeks earlier due to a poor 6-10 start for the big club.  You may have heard of him.  He was a scrawny 21-year-old kid named Greg Maddux.

The Mets jumped out of the box quickly, scoring three runs in the first inning to take an early lead.  The lead had extended to 7-0 by the time the Cubs came up to bat in the bottom of the fourth inning.  However, Darling struggled in the fourth, giving up a grand slam to catcher Jody Davis.  That was followed up by a home run from the next batter, a rookie who was pinch-hitting for Cubs reliever (and former Met) Ed Lynch.  That neophyte was Rafael Palmeiro, who hit the tenth of his 569 career home runs to cut the Mets lead to 7-5.

Fortunately for Darling, manager Davey Johnson did not remove him from the game despite the poor inning.  He was allowed to put out the fire he started and pitch the minimum five innings required to qualify for the victory.  Because of that, Darling was able to stick around to reap the benefits of the additional fireworks displayed by his teammates as they continued to ride the jet stream out of Wrigley Field.

The Mets immediately responded to the Cubs’ five-run fourth by scoring three runs in the fifth inning and seven additional runs in the sixth.  They now had a commanding 17-5 lead, but the Cubbie carnage continued.  Not satisfied with a lead of a dozen runs, they scored three additional runs in both the seventh and eighth innings.  Jesse Orosco relieved Darling in the seventh and gave up four runs in his inning of work, but by then, the Mets had already put the game away.  A run by Chicago in the ninth inning off Jeff Innis produced the final tally in the Mets’ 23-10 shellacking of the Cubs.

The offense was powered by Lenny Dykstra and Darryl Strawberry.  Eights were wild for the two Met outfielders, as they combined for eight hits, eight runs scored and eight runs batted in.  Strawberry in particular smoked the Cubs’ pitchers, as all four of his hits went for extra bases (two doubles, a triple and a home run).

Dykstra and Strawberry - two smiling California kids who put lots of frowns on Cubs fans' faces on August 16, 1987.

In doing so, Strawberry became just the third Met to produce four extra-base hits in one game, joining Joe Christopher, who accomplished the feat in 1964, and Tim Teufel, who turned the trick just six weeks prior to Strawberry.  Strawberry added a stolen base in the second inning, making him the first Met to collect four extra-base hits and a stolen base in the same game.  The Straw Man was the only Met to accomplish this feat until Yoenis Céspedes matched him with four extra-base hits (three homers, one double) and a steal against the Colorado Rockies on August 21, 2015.

Strawberry also became just the third Met to score five runs in a game, after Lenny Randle in 1978 and Lee Mazzilli in 1979.  In addition, the Straw Man drove in five runs, making him the first Mets player to have a five-run, five-RBI game in franchise history.  The only other Mets to accomplish that rare feat since August 16, 1987 are Edgardo Alfonzo, who produced six runs and five RBI against the Houston Astros on August 30, 1999, and Céspedes in the aforementioned 2015 affair.  He had seven RBI to go with his five runs scored.

Dykstra also made Mets history in the game, becoming the first Met to collect seven at-bats in a nine-inning game.  The only Met to match Dykstra since then is Luis Hernandez, who went 3-for-7 in an 18-5 thrashing of the Cubs in 2010, which, just like Dykstra's record-setting effort 23 years earlier, took place on a lazy Sunday afternoon at Wrigley Field.

Strawberry and Dykstra victimized several Cubs pitchers that day, including starting pitcher Greg Maddux.  Maddux collected almost 10% of his 355 career wins against the Mets.  His 35 victories (against 19 losses) are the most by any pitcher against New York.  However, one of his worst pitching performances against the Mets (or any other club) took place on that Sunday afternoon in the North Side of Chicago.

Throughout his major league career, which resulted in a much-deserved call to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, Maddux was always known as a control pitcher, as he walked fewer than 1,000 batters in over 5,000 innings.  But on August 16, 1987 against the Mets, Maddux pitched 3⅔ innings and was charged with seven earned runs allowed.  He gave up six hits and a very un-Maddux-like five bases on balls.  Let's dissect Maddux's effort to see just how much of an anomaly this game was for him.

Greg Maddux would have preferred starting at Shea Stadium on August 16, 1987.

Greg Maddux made 740 starts in his big league career.  He issued five bases on balls or more in just 20 of those starts.  But in 14 of those 20 starts, he lasted at least six innings, giving him more time to issue those free passes.  Maddux wouldn't have another game in which he lasted fewer than four innings and allowed five or more walks until 2004, a year in which he produced his first ERA above 4.00 since - you guessed it - 1987.

Maddux also allowed seven earned runs in the game, which was the first time he had ever allowed that many runs in one of his starts.  Maddux would go on to allow seven or more earned runs in a start a total of 27 times in his career, including three more times against the Mets, but he never walked more than three batters in any of his other seven-run efforts.  The game on August 16, 1987 was the only time in his 23-year career that Maddux allowed seven or more runs and walked more than three batters.  And that was from a future Hall of Famer who beat the Mets more than any other pitcher in the 56-year history of the club.

Going into their series finale against the Cubs on August 16, 1987, the Mets were in a hitting slump and got out of it in a major way at Wrigley Field.  They scored more runs in that one game than they did in their previous eight contests combined.  By doing so, the Mets established a new franchise record with their 23-run outburst in Chicago and were able to use that game as a stepping stone that carried them all the way until the last week of the season, when they were eliminated from playoff contention by the Cardinals.  And it all happened exactly 30 years ago today.



 

Sweepin' Ain't Easy ... Said No One at Citi Field This Weekend

After looking deflated and defeated in losing three games to their division rivals in Washington, the Mets came home for a four-game series this weekend against the Chicago Cubs, who have been the best team in baseball all season.  The series would mark the 58th time since 1962 that New York and Chicago had squared off for four consecutive games.  And in their first 57 four-game series, the Mets had taken all four games just one time.

But thanks to some timely hitting, effective pitching and a monster 6-for-6 game by Wilmer Flores, that is no longer a true statement.

New York completed a four-game sweep of the Cubs today, defeating the North Siders, 14-3.  They scored seven runs in the second inning to give Cubs starting pitcher Jon Lester his shortest outing in over 300 career starts just one day after he won the National League Pitcher of the Month award for the just-completed month of June.

The Mets won the four games by blowing out the Cubs twice (they also defeated the Cubs, 10-2, on Friday) and taking two nailbiters on Thursday and Saturday, both by a 4-3 score.  Basically, they continued their dominance over the Cubs that began last year during the four-game NLCS sweep.

But as great as the Mets have performed against the Cubs over the last eight months, they had only won every game of a four-game series from Chicago just once in 57 tries.  In 1985, during the first series between the two teams after their battle for division supremacy the previous year, the Mets brought out the brooms against the Cubs in a four-game set at Shea Stadium, allowing a total of just four runs in the series.

Screen shots or it didn't happen.  (Courtesy of Ultimate Mets Database)

The Mets went on to win all nine games they played versus Chicago at Shea Stadium in 1985, taking a three-game series in August and a two-game set in September.  But the four-game sweep marked the first and only time New York had won every game of a four-game series against the Cubs in the team's first 54 seasons.  Until now.

And if you want to say that it's very difficult for any team to win four consecutive games in the same series against the same team, perhaps you should know what the usually lowly Cubs have done against the Mets in four-game sets since their first one in 1962.

That first four-game series in June 1962 at the Polo Grounds resulted in four Cubs victories.  It should be noted that the Cubs finished that campaign with a 59-103 record, which was - and still is - the worst regular season record in Chicago's long history.  (The 1966 Cubs also went 59-103.)

A year later, the Cubs swept another four-game series from the Mets, this time at Wrigley Field.  Then in 1965, the Cubs added a third venue to the four-game sweep-a-thon, taking four straight from New York at Shea Stadium.

It then took nearly two decades for Chicago to win all four games of a four-game series against the Mets, but they finally repeated the feat in 1984, scoring 32 runs in the four August games at Wrigley Field.  The Cubs had previously pulled off four-game sweeps against three awful Mets teams in 1962, 1963 and 1965.  However, the 1984 Mets squad won 90 games.  It wasn't just pushover Mets clubs that were experiencing the wrath of the Cubs in four-game sets.

Let's now fast forward seven years later to 1991.  On August 9, the Mets went into Wrigley Field with a 57-50 record.  They were still very much alive in the race for the N.L. East title, entering the game just 5½ games behind the first place Pittsburgh Pirates.  But the Cubs, who were struggling and under .500 entering the series, took out their frustrations on the Mets, winning all four games.  The sweep was the beginning of a season-changing 11-game losing streak for the Mets.

It was déjà vu all over again for the Mets in 1992, as once again in August, the Mets were still in the race for the division crown - they were 7½ games out of first - but were swept four straight in Chicago.  That sweep was the beginning of a 21-35 stretch for the Mets to close out the season.

With the Cubs moving to the N.L. Central in 1994, the Mets and Cubs only played five four-game series from 1994 to 2014, with none of them resulting in sweeps for either team.  But in 2015, the Cubs pulled off a four-game sweep of the Mets at Wrigley Field in May.  Of course, we all know how that season turned out for the Mets.

So that means the Mets suffered four-game sweeps to the Cubs seven times from 1962 to 2015, returning the favor just once in 1985.  Once.  In fifty-four seasons.

But now that number has gone up to two, as the Mets have just completed a four-game sweep of the Cubs at Citi Field - the only venue in which the Cubs have yet to turn the trick against the Mets.

Sweeping a series of any length - particularly a four-game series - may not be easy, but don't tell that to the Mets.  They treated the series the way Cubs used to treat four-game series against the Mets.  And in doing so, fans got to witness something they hadn't seen the Mets do as a team since 1985.

The Cubs are the cleanest team in baseball after they just got swept by the Mets.

Broken News: Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

Welcome to another edition of Broken News, where someone else breaks the news and then we break it again.  In today's installment, we're going to look back at Friday night's game between the Mets and Giants, otherwise known as the game in which the bottom of the third inning turned into a matchup between the Gas-House Gorillas and the Tea Totallers.  (Go watch classic Bugs Bunny clips if you don't know what I mean.)

In the third, the Mets sent 15 men to the plate and scored a dozen runs, breaking the franchise record for tallies in a single frame.  Yoenis Céspedes put the icing on the inning by giving his regards to Giants reliever Mike Broadway, lining a grand slam to score the Mets' ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth runs of the frame.  Earlier in the third, Céspedes had driven in two runs with another hit.  His six RBI set a club record for a player in one inning.

The Mets basically did a conga line around the bases in the third, scoring half a dozen runs off starter Jake Peavy and another half dozen against Broadway to set a team mark with 12 runs in one inning, breaking the old record of 11, which was accomplished in 2006 in an inning where the Mets clubbed two grand slams.

I attended Friday night's game and got to witness the third inning in person.  It was the 13th grand slam hit by a Mets player that I've had the pleasure of seeing at Shea Stadium and Citi Field.  I've also had the honor of being at Citi Field for eight of the 12 walk-off homers hit in the park's history, including all six game-ending blasts since 2013 and the only two walk-off grand slams ever hit there.  I've been in the right place at the right time for many of these exciting finishes, which reminds me of the first times I ever saw a grand slam and a walk-off homer.

If you're a long-time reader, then you know about the first walk-off homer I ever saw in person.  It happened in 1996, when Rico Brogna accomplished the feat against the Chicago Cubs in the same game where Mark Grace punched me in the face.  But there were also fisticuffs in the game where I witnessed my first-ever grand slam, and it involved a mighty mite and a future Hall of Famer.

On May 14, 1994, the Mets and Braves hooked up for a Saturday matinee at Shea Stadium.  I got to my seat a little late for first pitch, but realized that I had a celebrity sitting next to me in my field level seat.  It was none other than MTV personality Dan Cortese.  That's right, the bandana enthusiast from MTV Sports and Rock n' Jock fame was my next-seat neighbor for the festivities.  Because I like to rock with the cool kids.

My seat mate for the game in which I witnessed my first grand slam in person.  (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images)

The Mets took a 3-0 lead into the fifth inning and had two outs and no one on base.  It did not appear as if the Mets would be able to extend their lead against Braves starting pitcher John Smoltz in the frame.  But then Smoltz allowed singles to Bobby Bonilla and Jeff Kent and followed that up with a wild pitch that moved Kent into scoring position behind Bonilla, who was already at third.  Smoltz then intentionally walked David Segui to load the bases for Ryan Thompson.  On a 1-2 pitch, Thompson blasted a long home run off Smoltz to give the Mets a 7-0 lead and me my first in-person grand slam hit by a Met.  That brought up Brooklyn-born John Cangelosi to the plate and he made sure to let Smoltz know that he still had a lot of Brooklyn in him.

On the first pitch following Thompson's grand slam, Smoltz nailed Cangelosi in the back.  It was the second consecutive inning Smoltz had hit Cangelosi in the John-on-John crime, as he was plunked by the Braves starter in the fourth inning as well.  Bruised, but not battered, the diminutive Brooklynite then charged at Smoltz, who had seven inches and sixty pounds on the Mets left fielder, and a bench-clearing brawl ensued.  There is no truth to the rumor that I had to hold back Dan Cortese from joining the fracas, but he was throwing air punches in his seat as if he were mentally trying to show Mets players who were 200 feet away from us how to defend themselves against the big bad boys from Atlanta.

After the dust had settled and Smoltz and Cangelosi had been tossed, the game continued without incident and the Mets went on to record an 11-4 victory.  An interesting side note that was overshadowed by the boxing match was that Mauro Gozzo recorded the win for the Mets in the game, a win that was made possible by Thompson's grand slam.  Gozzo was originally drafted by the Mets in 1984, but was traded to Kansas City in 1987 in the deal that brought David Cone to New York.  Five years later, Cone was traded to Toronto for Jeff Kent and Ryan Thompson - the same Ryan Thompson who helped Gozzo defeat the Braves.  (Gozzo had returned to the Mets as a free agent following the 1992 campaign.)

Since Citi Field opened in 2009, I've had a better than 50-50 chance to be in attendance whenever a grand slam or walk-off home run has been hit by a Mets player, including the grand slam by Yoenis Céspedes on Friday night.  It's gotten to the point where I've kind of gotten used to seeing slams and walk-offs.  But prior to 1994, I had never seen either type of blast in person.  Then Ryan Thompson ended my grand slam drought in 1994, followed by Rico Brogna's walk-off blast two years later.  Both firsts were accompanied by fists.  (Only one was accompanied by Dan Cortese.)  At least both were also accompanied by Mets victories.

Wilmer Flores Is Already Approaching Several Hitting Records for Mets Shortstops

Wilmer Flores is improving with the glove, but he's really picking it up at the plate.  (Photo by Ed Leyro/Studious Metsimus)

Throughout the off-season and during the first month of the 2015 regular season, many Mets fans clamored for general manager Sandy Alderson to acquire a good-hitting, good-fielding shortstop.  The incumbent at the position, Wilmer Flores, was expected to hit well in the major leagues, but was considered a liability on defense.  In his first 30 games of 2015, Flores committed nine errors in 129 chances and wasn't contributing much with the bat, as he was hitting just .229 with three homers and eight RBI through May 8.

But since then, Flores has taken great strides in improving his defense, making just one error in his last 104 chances (.990 fielding percentage) and participating in 20 double plays.  He has also elevated his game at the plate, batting .263 with seven homers and 20 RBI over his last 31 games.  In fact, he has as many homers in that span as he does strikeouts - a rarity for a player who hits with power.

For the season, Flores has been hovering around the .250 mark, but his ten homers are tied for the most by a shortstop in the major leagues.  (The Cardinals' Jhonny Peralta also has ten.)  In addition, Flores ranks in the top five at the shortstop position in RBI (28) and slugging percentage (.433).  Among players on his own team, however, Flores ranks first in home runs, second in RBI (just one behind the injured Daniel Murphy), second in slugging percentage and third in runs scored.  Flores is in the top three in each of those categories despite having the sixth-most plate appearances on the team this season behind Juan Lagares, Curtis Granderson, Michael Cuddyer, Lucas Duda and Daniel Murphy.  And among all National League players, regardless of position, Flores is the ninth-toughest to strike out, as he has whiffed just 25 times in 201 at-bats.

On Friday night, Flores hit his tenth home run of the season, making him just the third Mets shortstop to reach double digits in homers over an entire season, joining Kevin Elster (1989) and Jose Reyes (2006, 2007, 2008, 2010).  [Note: Eddie Bressoud hit ten homers as the Mets' primary shortstop in 1966, but only eight of those homers came while Bressoud was playing shortstop.  He hit one as a first baseman and one as a second baseman.]  However, Elster didn't hit his tenth homer in 1989 until the final week of the season, while the earliest Reyes reached double figures in long balls was in 2008, when he launched his tenth rocket on July 12 during the team's 94th game of the year.  Flores turned the trick a full calendar month before the date Reyes did in 2008, doing so in the Mets' 62nd contest, leaving exactly 100 games for him to add to his total in 2015.

For his career, Flores has produced 25 doubles, 17 homers and 70 RBI in just 555 at-bats.  By comparison, Elster had 21 doubles, nine homers and 47 RBI in his first 555 at-bats, while Reyes had 32 doubles, ten homers and 52 RBI in the same number of at-bats.  Doubles-wise, Flores ranks in between Elster and Reyes, but Flores is already superior to both Elster and Reyes in home run and RBI production.

With the season still three weeks away from being halfway done, Flores is approaching 30 RBI, putting him on pace to easily surpass 60 RBI for the entire season.  Only two Mets shortstops have ever driven in at least 60 runs in a single season - Reyes, who owns the franchise mark at the position with 81 RBI in 2006 (he also produced 68 RBI in 2008) and the normally light-hitting Rey Ordoñez, who became the first shortstop to drive in 60 runs for the team when he reached that exact figure in 1999.

No Mets shortstop has ever led the team in home runs or RBI.  In fact, the closest any shortstop has ever come to leading the team in either category was in 1966, when Eddie Bressoud (10 HR, 49 RBI) finished six homers behind team leader Ed Kranepool and 12 RBI behind Ken Boyer for the club lead.  However, as mentioned before, Bressoud accumulated some of his offensive totals at other defensive positions.  The only true shortstops to finish within 20 RBI of the team leader were Roy McMillan, whose 42 RBI in 1965 left him twenty short of team leader Charley Smith, and Jose Vizcaino, who finished 20 RBI behind team leader Rico Brogna in 1995.  Vizcaino's 56 RBI during the strike-shortened 1995 campaign set the franchise record for runs batted in by a shortstop in a single season, a mark that was surpassed by Ordoñez four years later and Reyes seven years after that.

There haven't been too many offensive-minded shortstops in Mets history.  But there have been some standout seasons at the plate for some players who manned the position.  And if Wilmer Flores continues his recent power production, he might become the first to lead the team - or even come close to leading the team - in either of those categories over a full season.

With his offensive struggles and defensive shortcomings no longer as obvious as they were during the first month of the season, Mets fans are now clamoring for Flores to come up to the plate rather than asking for his head on a plate.  It's amazing what a little production and some historical perspective can do to calm the savage beast.

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.
 

Wilmer Flores Has A Game For The Ages

Wilmer Flores (facing camera) slammed his way into the Mets history books (Photo by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images).

Wilmer Flores ended the series that wouldn't die by killing the Phillies with his bat.  In the finale to the five-game series at Citizens Bank Park, Flores delivered a two-run double in the sixth inning and a long grand slam in the ninth.  His six RBI helped the Mets defeat the Phillies, 11-2 - just the second time all season that the Mets won a game by more than five runs.

Flores' 6-RBI performance was accomplished in his 42nd major league game, making him the 45th player in major league history to drive in half a dozen runs in one of his first 50 games.  However, he was not the fastest Met to accomplish this.

The first Met to have a 6-RBI game within his first 50 big league games was Jeromy Burnitz, who drove in seven runs in his 37th game on August 5, 1993.  Burnitz held the mark until David Wright posted a 6-RBI game in his 14th major league game, which coincidentally took place 11 years to the day after Burnitz's breakout game.  Flores became the third Met to join this club last night.

In addition to becoming the third Met to have a 6-RBI game within his first 50 games in the big leagues, Flores also became the third shortstop to drive in six runs in a game for the Mets.

Prior to Monday night's game, exactly 22 players had driven in six or more runs in a game while wearing a Mets uniform, doing so a total of 32 times.  Flores became the 23rd Met to accomplish the feat.  But of those 23 players to accomplish the feat, just three did so playing shortstop, and none of them was named Jose Reyes.

In 1967, Jerry Buchek started 92 games at second base for the Mets, moving over to shortstop just five times in his first season in New York.  But one of those five starts was on September 22, in the second game of a doubleheader against the Houston Astros.  Buchek hit a three-run homer in the eighth inning to temporarily give the Mets a 5-4 lead.  Then, after the Astros tied in the ninth, Buchek hit his second three-run blast of the game in the tenth inning, giving the Mets a win in walk-off fashion.  How unusual was Buchek's performances in that game?  Take out his two-homer, six-RBI performance against the Astros and he hit just 20 homers and drove in 102 runs in his other 420 big league games.

A quarter-century later, another light-hitting shortstop produced a six-RBI game for the Mets when Dick Schofield turned the trick on July 19, 1992 in an 8-4 win over the San Francisco Giants.  In the fourth inning, Schofield broke a 2-2 tie by hitting a double with the bags full to clear the bases.  Four innings later, Schofield gave the Mets some extra insurance by hitting a three-run homer.  The 1992 season was Schofield's lone year in New York, a year in which he produced four homers and 36 RBI in 142 games.  That means the shortstop had 25% of his homers and one-sixth of his RBI total in just one game.

Last night, Flores became just the third Mets shortstop to collect six RBI in one game, doing so in his 42nd major league game and only his 11th at short.  It's a rarity for any Mets player to have a 6-RBI game.  It's even more unusual for a Met to have one so early in his career.  And it's just as rare for that player to do it as a shortstop.  Wilmer Flores joined all of those exclusive clubs with one monster game.

Without question, it truly was a game for the ages for Wilmer Flores on Monday night. 
 

The Mets Set A Timely Record This Weekend

On Friday night (and Saturday morning), the Mets and Phillies took part in a 5-hour, 23 minute marathon that wasn't decided until the bottom of the 14th inning, when the Phillies walked off with a 6-5 victory.  As tiring as that game was for its participants and the fans, that was just the opening act for yesterday's affair.  Once again, the Mets and Phillies played a 14-inning affair, but this time they needed five hours and 32 minutes to decide a victor.  The Mets pulled out a 5-4 win by scoring a run in the top of the 14th and keeping the Phillies from crossing the plate in the bottom of the inning.

Two games, 28 innings, 10 hours and 55 minutes of game time.  It's almost enough to make even the biggest baseball lover put up the white flag.

So of course, with me being a numbers geek (so I've been told), I decided to see if the Mets had ever played back-to-back games of 14 innings or more.  I also fiddled around to find out if they had ever played consecutive five-hour games and if they had ever needed nearly 11 hours to complete two straight games, regardless of how many innings they needed to play those games.

Kids, we're looking at history here with these last two games.

Wake up, Mets fans!  You're missing out on history!  (Photo by Chuck Solomon/SI)

Prior to Friday and Saturday, the Mets had played consecutive games of 14 innings or more just once in their history.  That occurred on September 7 and September 8, 1979, when the Mets hosted the eventual World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates at Shea Stadium.  On September 7, the Mets and Bucs played a 14-inning affair that ended in an 6-4 victory for Pittsburgh.  The Mets could have won the game in the 11th, but failed to score after loading the bases with no outs.  Pittsburgh won it when Mets third baseman Richie Hebner committed an error on what should have been the third out of the inning.  The Pirates took advantage of Hebner's gaffe, scoring on a single by Dave Parker and a passed ball by Alex Treviño, who caught all 14 innings.  No wonder long-time Mets fans hate Richie Hebner to this day.

Pittsburgh tied the September 7 game by scoring a run in the top of the eighth.  The next day, they scored twice in the eighth to knot the score again.  This time, the squads needed 15 innings until one team tasted victory.  Fortunately, the Mets did not have to endure a dual dose of defeat, as John Stearns singled home Lee Mazzilli with two outs in the bottom of the 15th inning to give the Mets a 3-2 victory.

Both games were played rather quickly, with the 14-inning game lasting three hours and 45 minutes and the 15-inning affair taking four hours and 18 minutes to complete.  Clearly, neither game approached the length of the two affairs played by the Mets and Phillies over the last two days.  But several consecutive games in the team's early days did.

The Mets didn't play the first five-hour game in team history until May 31, 1964, when they needed a record seven hours and 23 minutes to play a 23-inning game against the San Francisco Giants, a game they lost, 8-6.  That marathon was the second game of a doubleheader.  Fortunately, the first game lasted just two hours and 29 minutes, meaning the teams played the two games in under ten hours.  On June 2, 1964, the Mets played their first game after the 23-inning affair, taking a tidy two hours and 38 minutes to defeat the Houston Colt .45s by the final score of 7-4.  That means the Mets needed ten hours and one minute to play back-to-back games, the first time they had ever surpassed ten hours of playing time in consecutive games.

In 1968, the played another endless game, needing 24 innings before falling to Houston by a 1-0 count.  That game lasted six hours and six minutes.  However, neither the game preceding it nor the game immediately after the tense snoozefest made it to the three-hour mark, meaning the ten-hour, one-minute record for consecutive games was still intact.

The Mets did not play their third 5+ hour affair until 1973, when they took a 7-3, 19-inning decision over the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.  Their next five-hour game took place a year later, when the Mets played a team-record 25-inning game at Shea Stadium against the St. Louis Cardinals.  The game took seven hours and four minutes to complete.  The following night, the Cardinals and Mets needed two hours and 57 minutes to play nine innings, giving them a record-tying ten hours and one minute of playing time for two straight games.  But the Mets still had not played back-to-back five-hour games.

After their 1974 marathon, New York played a handful of five-hour games.  They played exactly five hours in a 1979 game against Houston (an 18-inning loss) and competed for five hours and one minute versus San Diego in 1980 (another 18-inning loss).  The Mets played two five-plus hour games in 1985 and they actually won them both.  Of course, who can forget Fireworks Night in Atlanta on July 4 (and 5), when the Mets neeeded six hours and ten minutes to end the 19-inning rain-soaked slugfest?  That memorable game took place two months after New York claimed an 18-inning affair against Pittsburgh in five hours and 21 minutes.

The Mets came close to playing back-to-back five-hour games in 1986, when they lost to Houston in 15 innings on July 20 and defeated Cincinnati in a fight-filled 14-inning contest two nights later.  Both games lasted at least five hours.  However, the Mets played a game in three hours and seven minutes on July 21, making that game the meat in a five-hour marathon sandwich.  Those were two of the three five-hour matches the Mets played in their storybook 1986 campaign, as they played a long-since forgotten five hour and three minute game on April 12, when they lost in 14 innings to the Phillies.

From 1987 to 2012, the Mets played a total of 11 five-hour games, which includes Game 5 of the 1999 NLCS against the Braves and Game 3 of the 2000 NLDS versus the Giants.  Then in 2013, the Mets played five such games, including a notorious 20-inning affair against the Marlins on June 8 that took six hours and 25 minutes to complete.  The following day, the two teams squared off again and played another extra-inning contest.  However, that game ended in ten innings, taking three hours and 35 minutes to complete.  Still, it was the third time in franchise history that the Mets needed at least ten hours to play consecutive games.  But they still hadn't played back-to-back five-hour games.

Then May 30 and May 31, 2014 happened.  And history was made at Citizens Bank Park.  This tweet by yours truly says it all.

Congratulations, #Mets fans! You're watching history! This is the first time the team has played back-to-back games of five hours or more!
— Ed Leyro (@Studi_Metsimus) May 31, 2014

It took until the team's 53rd season, but they had finally done it.  At last, the team played consecutive games in which each contest took over five hours to complete.  And by playing a total of ten hours and 55 minutes over the two days and nights, the Mets shattered the team record of ten hours and one minute needed to play two straight games.  That record was first set in 1964 and then matched ten years later.

As the old adage goes, "You win some, you lose some."  That's exactly what the Mets did over the last two days.  They lost a game to the Phillies on Friday night (and Saturday morning) and then followed it up by defeating Philadelphia in their next game.  But they needed forever and a day (and some of the evening) to win one and lose one against their division rivals.

Baseball is beautiful because the game is not timed, unlike the other major team sports.  But just because there's no clock attached to it doesn't mean time is completely ignored.  If it was, then you wouldn't have just found out that the Mets just played back-to-back five-hour games for the first time in team history and needed nearly 11 hours to do so.  You also might not have known that it was just the second time in club annals that they needed to play 14 or more innings in consecutive games.

The Mets never make things easy for their fans.  But they do make things fun.  That's assuming you have the time for it.

Eric Young, Jr. Sets An Incredible Mets Record

Forever Young does what had never been done.  (AP Photo)

On Thursday, the Mets defeated the Atlanta Braves, 6-4, giving them just their fifth series win at Turner Field in their last 19 series there.  As rare as a series victory has been for New York in the house that Ted built, the Mets had won four series there since 2008 prior to Thursday's win.  But something else happened Thursday night that was even rarer than the Mets taking two-of-three in Atlanta.  And it made Eric Young, Jr. the answer to a fascinating trivia question.

Young was a true tablesetter in the series finale, going 3-for-5 and reaching base a fourth time on a fielder's choice.  Young stole three bases for the Mets and scored all four times he reached base, becoming the first player in team history to score four runs and steal three bases in the same game.

Prior to Thursday, the only Mets with as many as four hits and two steals in a single game were Bob Bailor, who accomplished the feat on September 8, 1982 against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Luis Castillo, who scored five runs and stole two bases on June 27, 2008 versus the Yankees.  That was also the game Carlos Delgado produced a club-record nine RBI.

The only time an opposing player ever manufactured a four-run, three-steal game against the Mets was on July 1, 1998, when Toronto's Shannon Stewart turned the trick in a 15-10 shootout lost by the Mets at the Skydome.

Congratulations to Eric Young, Jr. on defining what a tablesetter does.  He stole three bases to set up run-scoring opportunities and he crossed the plate four times, almost single-handedly defeating the Braves.  In doing so, Young became the first Met in history to put up those numbers in the same game.

In the words of the late, great Mel Allen, "How about that?"