Posted on by Shannon Shark @metspolice

Mets “modern day” pitching records are unimpressive

Now that the pancakes have kick-started my brain….when I was growing up there were two groups of Mets teams talked about, 1969 and 1973.  Then 1986 happened and we had three teams to talk about.

As time has gone on, 73 (fair or not) has merged into a subset of the 69 team, and a third team circa 2000 has come into the discussion.

Let’s leave the Seaver years and the Gooden years in the distant past, where unfortunately they now are.

I want to look at the franchise’s pitching for the last twenty years.  There’s not much.

This will be unscientific, but I’m going to throw out anyone that my brain associates with the Seaver teams or the Gooden teams, and start roughly around 1990.

Most Wins: Leiter with 95.  Next are Bobby Jones and Steve Trachsel.   That’s not exactly Seaver/Koosman or Gooden/Darling.  The next two are Tom Cylon Glavine and then Rick Reed with 59.  Your next “modern day” winningest pitcher is Franco out of the bullpen.

Shutouts: Leiter’s 7 and Bobby Jones with 4.  That’s 20 years of stats folks.

Strikeouts: Leiter again, then Bobby Jones.

I just find it interesting…it doesn’t mean that the Mets haven’t had any good pitchers (that Santana guy seems good), but it’s just  further reflective that the franchise really hasn’t had anyone stay for a full 15 years.  Even The Franchise left the franchise, twice.

This post isn’t meant to be negative.  I just find it interesting that the two best Mets pitchers of the last TWENTY years are Leiter and Bobby Jones.

4 Replies to “Mets “modern day” pitching records are unimpressive”

  1. Bobby Jones and Rick Reed both impressed me for doing a lot with mostly “average” stuff.

    Pitching throughout baseball isn’t what it used to be, though. Remember when guys with ERAs around 4.50 might have to worry about losing their spot in the rotation? And the shutout figure doesn’t even matter anymore — the complete game is all but extinct, so how will anyone ever rack up impressive shutout totals?

    I would love to see the Mets return to a focus on pitching and defense, but I just don’t see it happening.

    1. You are right about the 4.50 ERA. I’m old enough to remember an ERA over 3 being “bad.”

      Bobby Jones was my favorite Met for a few years…it’s remarkable to me that he’s the best pitcher of the last 20 years.

  2. Bobby Jones was the ace of the Mets staff when they were really bad in the early ’90s (after the ’80s era players were all gone). He really was one of the greatest Met pitchers in the past 20 years. They kept bringing in better pitchers to make the team better (Leiter, Reed came up, Hampton later on), and Jones got bumped from number 1 to number 4 starter by 2000. There weren’t that many pitchers who stayed with the Mets for as long as Leiter and Jones did, which is why you see them at the top of the stats list. Same with Franco. Especially over the past decade, so many came and went really quickly (Trachsel was around for 5+ years I think, which is long for the era).

    A better look at the stats may be average wins per season to see quality (over time or short-term) rather than quantity (longevity will eventually win out).

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