Ken Griffey Jr. Once Rejected a Trade to the Mets For a Rejected Met

Imagine if a scene like this had happened at Shea Stadium with Griffey wearing a Mets uniform.  (Elaine Thompson/AP)

With today's news that Seattle legend Edgar Martinez failed to garner the votes necessary for Hall of Fame election, that leaves Ken Griffey Jr. as the only player with a Mariners cap on his plaque in Cooperstown.  But nearly two decades ago, a deal was in place that could have seen Griffey change the "S" on his cap to an interlocking "NY".  That is, if Griffey hadn't rejected the trade.

According to the Seattle Times, Mariners general manager Pat Gillick and his Mets counterpart Steve Phillips had discussed a trade in December 1999 that would have brought Griffey to New York to join fellow 2016 Hall of Fame inductee Mike Piazza in the middle of a formidable Mets lineup that had come within two wins of a National League pennant just two months earlier.  But Griffey was adamant about only playing in Seattle or Cincinnati, where he grew up and went to high school.  As a 10-and-5 player (ten years in the majors, the last five with his current team), it was Griffey's right to reject any trade he didn't approve of, which he did after the Mariners asked for his approval of a potential move to New York.

Who would the Mets have sent to Seattle for the future Hall of Famer?  Well, Roger Cedeño would have taken his .313 batting average and then-club record 66 stolen bases to the Pacific Northwest in the nixed deal.  So would Octavio Dotel, who ended up pitching for a major league record 13 teams in his 15 major league seasons.  A third player would also have been jettisoned to Seattle to go with the speedy Cedeño and the peripatetic Dotel.  That player would have been Armando Benitez.

Yes, that Armando Benitez.

Benitez had become the Mets' closer in 1999 after John Franco was lost for two months with an injury.  Although Benitez had a dominant regular season (22 saves, 1.85 ERA, 128 Ks in 78 IP), he was just ordinary in the postseason, blowing a save in the division series (a game the Mets eventually won in extra innings) and failing to hold a one-run lead in the tenth inning of Game Six of the NLCS (the Mets lost that heartbreaker to the Braves).

Booooo!!!   (Gregory Bull/AP)

Had Griffey just said yes to the Mets, Benitez would have been in Seattle in 2000.  That means he wouldn't have allowed a game-tying three-run homer to the Giants' J.T. Snow in the ninth inning of Game Two of the 2000 NLDS.  And he certainly wouldn't have blown a ninth inning lead to the Yankees in Game One of that year's World Series, which completely changed the course of that Fall Classic.  And let's not forget how Benitez allowed eight runs in two late-season appearances against the Braves in 2001, coughing up a three-run lead and four-run advantage in those ill-fated outings, all but ending the Mets' unlikely post-9/11 push to a potential division title.

Benitez remained a Met until 2003, which was more than enough for him to incur the wrath of long-time Mets fans as well as recent converts.  Dotel and Cedeño, who were two-thirds of the rejected trade for Griffey in 1999, were eventually traded that winter to the Houston Astros for Derek Bell and Mike Hampton, with Hampton eventually being named the Most Valuable Player of the 2000 National League Championship Series.  Fortunately for Hampton, Benitez didn't blow any of his leads in his two NLCS starts, although Benitez did allow two runs in the ninth inning of Hampton's first NLCS start, turning a comfortable 6-0 lead into a 6-2 final.

Could the Mets have won the 2000 World Series if Griffey had okayed the trade?  Would John Franco have gone back to being the Mets' closer and would he have held the leads that Benitez blew in so many crucial situations?  We'll never know.  But the thing we can say with certainty is that every person who booed Benitez would have cheered for Griffey.  And Mets history would have looked a whole lot different.

How Do They Do It? ... How Do They Do It? ... Mirrors!

Hot Foot from 1986 Mets: A Year to Remember from The Wright Stache on Vimeo.


In 1986, the New York Mets steamrolled their way through the National League East en route to a World Series victory.  After the season, the Mets produced a VHS tape (for all you kids out there, a VHS tape was a rectangular prism that was inserted into a bulky machine called a video cassette recorder - or VCR for short - for video playback) featuring highlights of their historic campaign.

One memorable segment in the "1986 Mets - A Year To Remember" video cassette features Roger McDowell and Howard Johnson sharing the secrets of how to make a perfect hotfoot - a practical joke that usually ended up with a teammate or coach's shoe catching fire.  (This practice has since been discontinued because current Mets trainer Ray Ramirez has enough problems on his hands messing up other treatments of injuries.  If you were a Met, would you trust him with a fire extinguisher?)

When McDowell rolls a wad of gum onto the hotfoot to use as an adhesive, Johnson asks him, "How does he do it?  How does he do it?", referring to McDowell's gum-rolling technique.  Without missing a beat or taking the sticky gum out of his mouth, McDowell candidly says, "Mirrors".

Twenty-eight years after Mets fans were educated on the McDowellian way to make a hotfoot, the current generation of Metropolitan boosters are asking how the 2014 squad are doing it this year.  Mirrors must certainly be involved.  After all, how else can this team be 13-10 with the following things not going as planned?

• Jenrry Mejia is the only starting pitcher with a winning record.  Dillon Gee has a 1-1 record, while the other three starters (Zack Wheeler, Jonathon Niese, Bartolo Colon) are all one game under .500.

• Four different relief pitchers have recorded a save for the Mets.  And none of those "closers" is named Bobby Parnell, who was the the Mets' ninth-inning man on Opening Day.

• The only Met hitting above .290 is Juan Lagares, who hasn't played in nearly two weeks.  Four of the eight regulars in the lineup (Eric Young Jr., Travis d'Arnaud, Ruben Tejada, Curtis Granderson) are hitting .225 or lower.  Of those four, d'Arnaud has the highest slugging percentage at .295, which doesn't even qualify as a good on-base percentage.

• New York is one of six teams in baseball to have as many as four pitchers with one or more blown saves, as Bobby Parnell, Jose Valverde, Scott Rice and Gonzalez Germen have all coughed up late-inning leads.  Four of the other five teams on this list do not have winning records and are all either in last place or within one game of the cellar.

• The Mets have played ten games in which their hitters combined to strike out at least ten times.  They are one of eight teams who can claim this.  But somehow, they've gone 7-3 in those high-strikeout games.  None of the other seven teams is above .500 in their 10+ strikeout games.

Curtis Granderson has a low batting average and a high strikeout rate, but he also has a high walk-off celebration rate.

No one is confusing the 2014 Mets with their 1986 counterparts.  The '86 team was supposed to be good, coming off back-to-back 90+ win campaigns.  This year's model, on the other hand, is trying not to post the franchise's sixth consecutive losing season.

Two years before becoming world champions, the 1984 Mets went 90-72 despite allowing 24 more runs than they scored.  This year's team has been outscored by three runs, yet they have a 13-10 record.  Only five other teams in baseball (Detroit, Oakland, Texas, Atlanta, Milwaukee) can claim a higher winning percentage than the .565 mark posted by the Mets.

Are these Mets trying to become the second coming of the 1984 team?  Will they make Sandy Alderson look like a prophet by reaching 90 victories, just like the '84 squad did?

Roger McDowell might have used mirrors to create the perfect hotfoot, but the 1986 club needed no such help to win the way everyone expected them to.  The 2014 Mets are clearly using something to rack up win after win.  It's not pine tar (that's the Yankee way) and it's certainly not because they're loaded with All-Stars.  But there's certainly something special coming together at Citi Field in 2014.  And if the team continues to win the way they have over the past three weeks, they just might mirror the squad that brought life back to Flushing thirty years ago.

Plaque Is Wack: Armando Benitez & The Hall of Fame

The Baseball Writers' Association of America announced its Hall of Fame ballot for 2014 earlier today, with 36 players named.  Among the most prominent returnees are Mike Piazza, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio and Jack Morris.  There are also 19 first-timers on the ballot, including Greg Maddux, Frank Thomas and former Mets Jeff Kent and Tom Glavine.

Both Kent and Glavine have excellent chances of making it into the Hall, as Kent is the all-time leader in home runs for second basemen and Glavine surpassed the magic 300-win plateau.  But as divisive as Kent and Glavine were to Mets fans, there is another former Met on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time whose picture can probably be found next to the word "divisive" in the dictionary.  That player is Armando Benitez.

Please do not throw darts at your computer screen.

Armando Benitez pitched for seven major league teams during his 15-year career, including five years with the Mets from 1999 to 2003.  Benitez had 289 lifetime saves, which is currently the 26th highest total in baseball history.  The right-hander also recorded three 40-save campaigns, including a league-leading 47 saves in 2004 as a member of the Florida Marlins.  In addition, Benitez struck out 946 batters in 779 innings, averaging 10.929 strikeouts per nine innings.  That's the third-highest K/9 IP ratio for all pitchers with at least 700 innings pitched, behind only Billy Wagner (11.920 K/9 IP) and Francisco Rodriguez (10.931 K/9 IP).

As a Met, Benitez saved 160 games (second on the team to John Franco's 276 saves).  He also posted a 2.70 ERA and 1.133 WHIP in 347 innings.  Of all Mets with at least 300 innings pitched, only Tom Seaver posted a lower ERA (2.57) and only Seaver (1.076 WHIP), Bret Saberhagen (1.079), Sid Fernandez (1.113) and Skip Lockwood (1.114) had a lower WHIP than Benitez.

Perhaps the most amazing number posted by Benitez was his batting average against.  As a Met, opposing hitters hit only .182 against him (225-for-1236), and for his entire 15-year career, that number was still just .195, a figure that would cause Mario Mendoza to shake his head.

Those look like the Hall of Fame numbers of a dominant reliever.  But Benitez has as much chance of making it to Cooperstown as Ike Davis has of winning a batting title.  In fact, Benitez will probably fall well short of the 5% needed to remain on the ballot for a second year.  Why is that?  It's all about the timing of this rare hits against him.

• Who gave up the game-tying home run to Derek Jeter in Game 1 of the 1996 ALCS (the Jeffrey Maier homer)?  That was Armando Benitez.

• Who failed to protect a two-run lead by serving up a three-run homer to Marquis Grissom in Game 2 of the 1997 ALCS?  Señor Armando Benitez.

• Who allowed the Diamondbacks to tie Game 4 of the 1999 NLDS, only to be spared by Todd Pratt's walk-off home run in extra innings?  Armando the Destroyer.

• Who made Mets fans rain expletives when he allowed a game-tying three-run homer to J.T. Snow in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the 2000 NLDS?  It was Armando F. Benitez.

• Who prevented the Mets from taking Game 1 of the 2000 World Series by allowing the Yankees to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth?  That damn dirty Armando.

You want me to serve up another gopher ball in a big spot?  Sure, why not?

And that was just the postseason.  We don't really need to mention the regular season, like the blown save to the Phillies during the near-fatal seven-game losing streak at the end of September 1999.  Or the eight runs he allowed in two September appearances against the Braves during the final two weeks of the 2001 season that thwarted the Mets' unexpected late-season run.  Or even the game-tying home run he allowed to light-hitting Craig Counsell that set up the Mets' season-changing 12-game losing streak in August 2002. 

Armando Benitez allowed 39 home runs as a Met.  That means 17.3% of the 225 hits he gave up in a Mets uniform left the park - a number that overshadows the sub-.200 batting average against him.  And Mets fans got a good look at those home runs, as 31 of the 39 homers were hit at Shea Stadium.

On January 8, 2014, the Hall of Fame will get a new member or two.  Whether it be Mike Piazza, Jeff Kent or Tom Glavine, there is a good chance a former Met will be given that ultimate baseball honor.  Another former Met will be considered for enshrinement, but the only way he'll get in is if Brian Jordan hijacks the voting system or if the baseball writers decide to show their sick sense of humor.

Armando Benitez had a great Mets career.  When he wasn't pitching in a big spot, that is.  That being said, he should probably start saving his money for Cooperstown.  After all, the admission fee for visitors is getting higher year after year.

Exit Sandman - Studious Metsimus-Style

Screen shot courtesy of TBS Sports

Today at Yankee Stadium, Mariano Rivera's career was celebrated by the only team he's ever known.  The celebration included all the pomp and circumstance you'd expect for a player of Rivera's caliber, including a live performance by Metallica, whose "Enter Sandman" let opposing hitters know that Mariano was about to send them off to Never-Never Land.

As you all know, Rivera is the greatest closer in the history of the game.  His 652 regular season saves and 42 postseason saves are the most in major league history.  He also has a 2.21 ERA prior to October baseball and a 0.70 ERA during it.  Only 12 pitchers with 1,000 or more innings pitched have a lower regular season ERA than Rivera and no one has a lower postseason ERA.

To put Rivera's records in perspective, John Franco (276 saves) and Armando Benitez (160 saves) have the two highest career save totals as Mets.  The rest of the top ten (Jesse Orosco, Billy Wagner, Tug McGraw, Roger McDowell, Francisco Rodriguez, Neil Allen, Skip Lockwood, Braden Looper) have a combined 652 saves as Mets - the same number of saves Mariano Rivera had on his own as a Yankee.

Mariano has also registered nine seasons of 40 or more saves.  The Mets have had three - ever.  Furthermore, no Met has recorded more than 43 saves in a single season (Benitez saved 43 games in 2001).  Rivera has surpassed that number in six seasons, including this year at the age of 43.

But Rivera hasn't been infallible, especially against the Mets.

In 34 appearances against the Mets, Mariano Rivera has a 3.53 ERA, his highest against any National League team.  The only team in the majors against whom Rivera has a higher ERA is the Los Angeles Angels (3.75 ERA).  Since 2007, Rivera has allowed more earned runs against the Mets (7) than he has saves (4).  His ERA against the Mets since 2007 is 6.10.  And let's not forget his blown save and loss to the Mets this past May, which remains the only time Rivera has blown a save in his career without recording a single out.

The Mets have also defeated Rivera four times over his storied career.  Meanwhile, the rest of the National League has pinned just five losses on No. 42.  The only teams to beat Rivera more times than the Mets are the Orioles (9 times), Red Sox (7 times) and Rays (6 times) - all of whom play in the same division as the Yankees.  But Baltimore has faced Rivera 134 times, while Boston has seen him in 115 games and Tampa Bay has squared off against him 102 times.  That's far more than the 34 times the Mets have faced the Sandman.

Mariano Rivera has had his troubles against the Mets, but most of the time he's come through with the save.  Even with their success against him over the years, there's no question the Mets will not miss Rivera when the ninth inning comes around in future Subway Series matchups.  After all, they and mostly everyone else in baseball have been shipped off to Never-Never Land far too many times.