The Mets should have left Gooden alone

Man, if we had had blogs in the 1980’s you would have read a post like this:

Why are the Mets screwing with Gooden? Â Is 24-4 and striking out 16 guys a game not good enough? Â We’re going to worry about how his arm might feel in 2006?

Now you might be wondering what brings on this rant this morning? Â Osh41 sent me this article in SI.

…the Mets committed an unforgivable faux pas: They tinkered. GMÂ Frank Cashen, one of the era’s best evaluators of talent, worried about Gooden destroying his power arm, a laÂ Mark Prior two decades later.Â Mel Stottlemyre, the generally savvy pitching coach, thought Gooden could be even better with a second fastball — a two-seamer to dip down and result in more groundouts.

Hence, during spring training before the Mets’ world-championship 1986 season, Stottlemyre spent hours upon hours tutoring Gooden on the intricacies of the two-seam grip. “I always thought they should have left Doc alone,”Â Gary Carter, the Mets star catcher, once told me. “Mel thought teaching him a third pitch would be to his advantage, but he didn’t need it. He needed someone to say, ‘Hey, you’ve been successful. Just keep going at it.’ But they didn’t.”

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Â This still upsets me. Â It’s a great article and the article is really about Strasburg. Â If you’re say under 30 and are marveling at Strasburg, the Mets had such a pitcher once.

He was known as Dr. K and he had 60 wins at age 21. Â The team was going to be a dynasty…and would even have players like Magadan and Jeffries with which to re-load when our heroes got old.

I think I mention it about once a week. Â Shea never rocked the way it did when Gooden was young. Â Â Unless you saw it, you’ve never seen anything like it. Â Such a shame.