The New York Mets
I grew up on Long
Island, New York. I used to take the subway from the
Babylon train station in to Flushing Meadow. Although I saw
a bunch of games at Shea during my teenage years with my
brother, we almost never missed Banner Day. My brother and
I, with our mother's help, would fabricate simple
paint-on-bedsheet banners in order to get the privilege of
going on field and parading around in a big loop between
games of the double header. That was when you could still
bring in a cooler to the stadium. We brought our lunches
and sodas had a great time.
Anyway, I thought
I would put together a list of the best 20 New York Mets
players of all time. I've been reading a lot of Bill James.
He's the most influential baseball writer of the era and
probably the most influential baseball writer in the
history of the game. He is so thought provoking. I've read
a book called
Win Shares
So, I'm going to
use the Win Shares ranking system for my analysis as it was
delineated in Bill James' The New Historical Baseball
Abstract, published in 2001. The system was explained on
pages 339 to 358 in that book. The rating system is split
into six categories of which one category won't apply to my
analysis. Below are the categories considered in the
ranking system and a brief explanation of what each
category means.
To qualify to be
considered as one of the all-time best New York Mets you
need only one qualification; you have to have played at
least parts of five seasons as a Met.
How many players
have been in a Met uniform for at least parts of five
seasons? Not many for a team with 51 years of baseball
history. It is a sign of our modern times that a player
doesn't stay on one team for long. The number of players
who have spent a least parts of five seasons in a New York
Met uniform is ninety-eight (soon to be ninety-nine as soon
as Johan Santana steps onto the field in 2013).
Here they are in
alphabetical order: Tommie Agee, Rick Aguilera, Neil Allen,
Edgardo Alfonzo, Bob Apodaca, Wally Backman, Carlos
Beltran, Armando Benitez, Bruce Boisclair, Bobby Bonilla,
Ken Boswell, Hubie Brooks, Gary Carter, Ramon Castro, David
Cone, Ron Darling, Duffy Dyer, Len Dykstra, Kevin Elster,
Nino Espinosa, Pedro Feliciano, Sid Fernandez, Doug Flynn,
George Foster, John Franco, Matt Franco, Dan Frisella,
Wayne Garrett, Tom Glavine, Dwight Gooden, Jerry Grote, Bud
Harrelson, Tom Hausman, Aaron Heilman, Keith Hernandez, Ron
Hodges, Todd Hundley, Jeff Innis, Jason Isringhausen, Al
Kackson, Gregg Jeffries, Howard Johnson, Bobby Jones, Cleon
Jones, Mike Jorgensen, Jeff Kent, Dave Kingman, Jerry
Koosman, Terry Leach, Al Leiter, Skip Lockwood, Ed Lynch,
Barry Lyons, Dave Magadan, John Maine, Teddy Martinez, Jon
Matlack, Lee Mazzilli, Jim McAndrew, Roger McDowell, Joe
McEwing, Tug McGraw, Kevin McReynolds, Felix Millan, Keith
Miller, John Milner, Randy Myers, Bob Ojeda, Rey Ordonez,
Jesse Orosco, Jay Payton, Mike Pelfrey, Oliver Perez, Mike
Piazza, Todd Pratt, Rick Reed, Jose Reyes, Grant Roberts,
Nolan Ryan, Brett Saberhagen, Ray Sadecki, Mackey Sasser,
Tom Seaver, Rusty Staub, John Stearns, Darryl Strawberry,
Craig Swan, Ron Swoboda, Ron Taylor, Steve Traschel, Alex
Trevino, Turk Wendell, Mookie Wilson, Vance Wilson, David
Wright, Pat Zachary.
Notably missing
is John Olerud and Lance Johnson. These two players had
some great seasons with the Mets, but it just doesn't make
sense to me that two or three seasons makes you one of the
all-time best Mets in team history. I'm willing to be wrong
about this.
1) Career Win Share total as a Met
What is a Win Share? To quote page 2 of Bill James'
Win Shares
Players are
assigned a Win Share total that is commensurate with their
contributions toward making their team win- as a hitter,
pitcher, and fielder. The bigger the Win Share assigned to
the player's contribution, the more he had to do with
creating wins for the team. A Win Share total of 40 or more
for a specific year is an exceptional, historic year. A
player garnering a Win Share total of 30 and above had an
MVP / Cy Young Award-type year. A year between 20 to 30 Win
Shares is an All-star-type year. A year of approximately 15
win shares is a run-of-the-mill year for a full-time
player. Below 15 Win Shares would be below par for a
full-time player.
Adding all these
Win Shares up from a player's career, dividing by 10, then
taking the harmonic mean between that number and 25, and
you have the first component of the player analysis to
determine the best 20 Mets of all time.
2) The player's Win Shares in his three best years as a Met
You find the player's three best Win Share years and
average them. This is the second part of the analysis. This
part of the analysis is designed to enumerate how good a
player was when he was at his best. For example, at his
best did a player average 15 Win Shares per season, or 25?
Big difference.
3) Five best consecutive seasons as a Met
You find all the Win Share totals for a player throughout
his career as a Met, locate his five best consecutive
seasons, and determine the average value for those five
years. This is meant to get an indication of sustained
performance level.
4) Career Win Shares per season - Not Applicable
This is the one Bill James categories that does not apply
to my analysis. This was designed by James to analyze
players who played in 154-game seasons along side of
players who played in 162-game seasons. Of course, all Met
players played 162-game seasons so we needn't bother with
this category.
5) The time line adjustment
Bill James points out that players, on the whole, have
gotten better over time. Although this is something hotly
disputed by some, it is not disputed by me. I have no doubt
that a well-conditioned average player of today is bigger,
stronger, quicker, and smarter than a player of 1880. This
factor accounts for the betterment of players with time and
thus accounts for the difference between a Met of 1962 and
a Met of 2009.
6) The subjective factor as a Met
To keep this category simple I am considering two things
here: on-field leadership and World Series play. I am
judging on-field leadership as follows; if you led the Mets
in Win Shares for a specific year, I'm calling that
on-field leadership and a player will be awarded 2 points
to his ranking total. For World Series play, if a player
had a great World Series they get 2 points onto their
ranking total, a good World Series gets 1 point. That's it.
Subjective rankings can cause mischief, so I am trying to
keep it measurable and real.
Let's take an example. Tom Seaver's ranking breaks down
like this:
25.78 (Career Win Share total) + 31 (Win Share average of
best three seasons) + 28 (average of best five consecutive
years) + 14.4 (Time Line adjustment) + 16 (Subjective
Factor) = 115.18 total ranking points. Tom Seaver ranks as
the #1 best Met of all-time. This makes lots of sense to
me.
Ranking Method Update (Feb 2011):
I’m a big
fan of Baseball-Reference.com. It is a terrific
site. I’ve recently been giving the player ranking
method on that site, Wins Above Replacement (WAR), a lot
of thought and I like it. I don’t like it more
than BIll James’ method used above, but I do think
it has a lot of value. Its another way of looking at
player value. It measures how many wins a player is
responsible for above a typical replacement player for
that league and year. A WAR of between 0-2 means a
substitute (or replacement) player, a WAR of 2+ is a
major league starter, a WAR of 5+ is an All-star type
player, and a WAR of 8+ is an MVP-type player.
I’ve
decided to also list the B-R WAR for each of the Met
players and to combine the two scoring methods into one
player score. I know there is no statistical rationale for
doing this, but the results do make sense. So, what I am
calling a “player’s score” is the sum of
the Met players career Win Share Analysis a la Bill James,
added to the players career Wins Above Replacement value a
la Baseball Reference.com.
Click here for the 20 best Mets players of all
time.
Update:
I am currently working on an analysis of the five best New
York Met player seasons of all time.
