I try to teach my young coworkers about the Mets and they know so little. One 24 year old talked about “Davey Anderson” the manager. That’s how long it has been since we’ve had a trophy in Flushing. Full fledged adults with no recollection of Doc and Friends.
I was trying to explain just how bad the 1981 Mets were, so I looked up the numbers on Baseball Reference.
81 was a weird year with two half-seasons, and a long strike in the middle. For the numbers you’ll need to add about a third to compare them to anything, but the averages speak for themselves.
1B. Dave Kingman. .221 and 22 Home Runs. That’s like 44 if you take steroids. 60 if you take steroids and play 162 games. 22 HRs got him a whopping 59 RBI. He would hit them high up the scoreboard. We called him Kong. He wanted us to call him Sky King. He might as well have asked us to call him the Home Run Fairy, it would have sounded less corny. 105 strike outs when 105 Ks was like 200 is now. One dimensional player, and grumpy too.
2B. Doug Flynn. Awesome…he came over in the Seaver deal….he must be good….oh wait he hit .222 never mind.
SS Frank Tavares. He hit .230 We’re three starters deep and the best guy hit .230 Think about that
3B Hubie Brooks. It was always “Hubie and Mookie” in those days. Hubie was a star in Montreal, not so much with the Mets but he did hit .307 with four count them four home runs so don’t blame Hubie.
LF Lee Mazzilli. Mets Police readers know I love my Lee. Lee hit the second most homers on the team with six. That wasn’t a type. Six. Sky King hit 22 and Lee hit 6. He also hit .228! That the Mets were able to turn Lee into Ron Darling and (eventually) Howard Johnson shows that Frank Cashen was a little smarter than Steve Phillips.
CF Mookie Wilson. Mookie Hit .271. Don’t blame him.
RF. Pick Someone. Right Field was a toss-up, but for sake of argument let’s call it Joel Youngblood who was the All-Star that year hitting .350 in 43 games.
You know those years where they have to pick someone to be on the team? That was Youngblood.
C The always hurt John Stearns got in 80 games and batted .271.
Pitchers: Mike Scott (before he learned how to cheat – this Mike Scott was 5 and 10). Pat Zachry, for whom you lost Seaver, 7 an 14. Randy Jones who had a good career elsewhere, 1 and 8. Ed Lynch turned a 2.71 era into 4 wins. Neil Allen saved 18 and would soon get you Keith Hernandez (again proving Cashen was the clever man Omar thinks Omar is.)
The leader of this Mess – Joe Torre. Joe’s less of a genius when people hit .230 or less for him.
These kids with their September collapses don’t know how good they have it.
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