Chicks dig the long ball, Babes hit them
Bill Hanstock introduces us to Darin Ruf, the righty-swinging counterpart to Daniel Vogelbach acquired by the Mets at the deadline to mash dingers; Roger Cormier celebrates new friends with a poem
Project ShaqBox Trivia: Donn Clendenon was the Mets’ big trade acquisition in 1969, and paid big dividends, with 12 home runs and a .777 OPS in 72 games, then of course was World Series MVP after hitting three home runs in the upset of the Orioles. The Mets got Clendenon from the Expos in a trade for Jay Carden, David Colon, Kevin Collins, and Steve Renko. (Always trade prospects, kids!) But New York wasn’t the Expos’ first choice as a trade destination for Clendenon. Where did Montreal initially trade Clendenon, in January of 1969, only for him to refuse to report?
Hint: The trade eventually went through, with Montreal sending $100,000 to the club that had wanted Clendenon, along with Jack Billingham and Skip Guinn.
Getting to know Darin Ruf
By Bill Hanstock
Hey there, Mets fans. You may have noticed that one of the Mets’ few moves at the trade deadline was to acquire Darin Ruf. Maybe you’re underwhelmed by that. As your resident San Francisco Giants diehard, I can promise you that there were MUCH more underwhelming trade deadlines out there, so don’t feel too bad!
I’m also here to tell you a bit about Darin Ruf, and why you should love him.
Grant Brisbee over at The Athletic has a good set of words about why J.D. Davis will be a better fit for the Giants than for the Mets, and why Ruf is a better righthanded complement for fellow beloved beefboy Daniel Vogelbach, but it doesn’t get into why Ruf is such a cult hero for both Giants fans AND Phillies fans, and why I own a Darin Ruf jersey.
After being picked by the Phillies out of Creighton in the 20th round of the 2009 draft, Ruf broke out a couple years later, to the point that he earned the nickname “Babe Ruf” and belted 38 dinger for Double-A Reading in 2012, skipping Triple-A entirely to earn his first major league callup that September.1
Ruben Amaro’s Phillies squads never quite figured out how to integrate prospects and extend their window, and Ruf wound up moving all over the field, trying to find a position where he wasn’t blocked, then was deemed too much of a defensive liability to start every day. Cool, cool.
After stalling out through a combination of underuse and injury, Ruf was sent back down to the minors (where he again mashed) before being flipped to the Dodgers in 2016 for eternal Phillie Howie Kendrick. The Dodgers sold his contract to the Samsung Lions of the KBO, and he once again became Babe Ruf in Korea, mashing at least 20 homers with 100 RBI for three straight seasons.
That makes it a Babe platoon now for the Mets in the DH spot.
Overall, Ruf hit .313/.404/.564 in 404 games in the KBO, with 86 home runs, not that it did any good for the Daegu club, which finished under .500 all three years.
In 2020, genius-at-the-time Farhan Zaidi saw the value in Ruf as a righty platoon bat and bench weapon, and brought him back to the majors as a Giant. He was solid in the shortened 2020 season, but really found his form in 2021, with an OPS of over .900 as a strict righty-against-lefty guy. He contributed mightily to the 107-win team last year, being part of the all-time team pinch-hit homers record …
And delivered one of the biggest homers of the year, a game-tying shot late in the instant-classic Game 5 of the NLDS. We won’t talk about how that one ended.
Unfortunately for both Ruf and the Giants, he had a slow start to 2022, combined with contributing to the 2022 Giants’ team-wide inability to catch or throw a baseball under any circumstances. He reverted back to being extremely good against lefties, but he should thrive on a stacked, playoff-bound team where that is the only thing required of him.
He was also the subject of the single greatest Giants announcer call of this season.
Things were going so well at that point!
But I digress. Ruf is on the move now, for real, to the Mets, where I genuinely hope he can help those guys win a World Series. Anyone but the Braves and Cardinals, really, but more success for Darin Ruf is a great thing regardless.
Enjoy him. He could very well be a treasure.
The Final 26
By Roger Cormier
Back in the day, the trading deadline was fake. The clock would strike proverbial midnight and the writers would tweet "pencils down" and the front offices would rub their eyes and scratch their stubble, take a breath and see what they got, and for whom2. Then they'd relax and get some sleep because it was merely the "non-waiver" trading deadline. It would be yet another month before the for-real, super-duper, drop-deadline would go down. That was the true sweaty moment when you knew the real score.
No more. There is now only one deadline and it passed this week, with the Mets making two whelming moves on the final day after a month of hype and dreams, bringing in Darin Ruf to create the lefty-righty hybrid DH, Danin Vogelruf, and reliever Mychal Givens. The former cost the Mets America's hype man, J.D. Davis, and three minor league hurlers, which seemed like a lot. Givens was dealt for a non-prospect named Saúl González, so, S’aul Good,man. Atlanta and the Phillies made splashier moves, the latter picking up the tall, flaxen-haired, weirdo who used to pitch in Queens. So, Tuesday wasn't great.
But this is what it is. The Mets today are the Mets of September and October and, dare I say, November. The only way these guys can escape now is through a demotion or an assignment of a designated nature. We're rolling with these 26 motherfuckers, and these 26 motherfuckers only.
To the newest members of The 26, I humbly present to you the following poem:
Somebody New
Hello new guy
Welcome to the jungle
We have fun and games
So will you help us?
Or hurt us?
Do you help us slay righties?
Or is it for southpaws
You are our savior?
Are you here to replace a chum?
Will you be my new best friend?
You must understand
I can't tell if the GM
Considered all of those things
Does your game play in Toronto?
What kind of personal decisions
Do you make?
Will you work hard?
Or will you hardly work?
Can all of your ills be cured
By math majors?
Will you fit hand in glove?
Or will the ball clank off yours?
I just don't know
Your true intentions
Or what the baseball Gods
Have in store for you
And how that mixes with
Our karmic balance
I suppose
That's how it goes
The guy you replaced
He just couldn't cut it
As much as you
It wasn't his fault
He was a good teammate
Hopefully an influence
The children we coldly
Swapped for your services
Do you think about them?
Do you wish them the best?
Do they haunt you now?
The human beings of supposed
equal value to your talent
To your body
Of what it can do
Or will they haunt us?
The ones we gave up on
The ones that will use us
As motivation
The cruel God who gave up
On them
Do you have a nickname?
Something our fans
Would agree with?
Do you resemble
A member of
The animal kingdom?
Does your face
Invite cheers or boos?
Do you tend to curse?
Drop an F bomb or five?
Do your numbers
Make it not matter?
Do you know
The history of this team?
Do you care to?
Well I'll tell you
There is a lot
And I possess it all
In my squirrel cage
I cautiously welcome you inside
To add a few pages
It's not like
I have a choice
Trivia answer: Imagine how different Mets history might be if, instead of refusing to report after the Expos traded him, Donn Clendenon went to Houston, in a deal with Jesus Alou, for Rusty Staub. It’s because of this that Staub and Clendenon were teammates on the Expos, but never in New York. The Mets released Clendenon after the 1971 season, and traded for Staub on April 5, 1972, sending Tim Foli, Mike Jorgensen, and Ken Singleton to Montreal.
And now, yes, Atlanta is the Mets’ enemy this weekend (and forever), but let’s appreciate the organization’s most important contribution to our culture in the last 30 years.
That’s your other reason to be happy about Ruf on the Mets: it makes Phillies fans sad that he didn’t come home. Somewhat of a reverse Syndergaard.
In the old days, literally midnight, but that was before Twitter.