By Jesse Spector
In addition to grabbing Keelin’s words from yesterday’s show notes, I’m not going to try to duplicate that format! I’m going to expand a little bit on Jeff McNeil’s batting crown and other end-of-season stats.
McNeil is the first Met in 11 years to win a batting title, and the first Met ever to lead the majors in average. Miguel Cabrera batted .344 in 2011 to edge the Mets’ shortstop who won the club’s first batting crown.
Pete Alonso tied Aaron Judge for the major league lead with 131 RBI, and his National League-leading total of 16 intentional walks trailed only Judge (19) and José Ramírez (20) in the majors. The only other time a Met won the National League RBI crown was 1991, when Howard Johnson knocked in 117 runs, again trailing a Tiger — Cecil Fielder (133) — for the major league lead. It’s the first time a Mets slugger has led the Senior Circuit in intentional walks, and the first time for a New York NL leader since Duke Snider’s 26 in 1956… or, if you want to be pedantic about “New York NL” and not “Brooklyn,” Mel Ott’s 13 in 1934. Ott trailed Jimmie Foxx, who was intentionally walked 17 times for the Philadelphia A’s.
It might have been a #markcanhasummer, but it obviously involved Mark Canha getting hit by a lot of pitches. Twenty-eight, to be exact, the most in baseball, as part of a team that set a modern record by getting in the way of 112 pitches. Canha can comiserate with teammate Brandon Nimmo, who got plunked 22 times to also lead the majors four years ago — also with a former Mets prospect leading the American League: Andrés Giménez (25) this year, Carlos Gómez (21) in 2018. Canha’s HBP total was the most by any major leaguer since Anthony Rizzo got drilled 30 times for the 2015 Cubs. Nimmo was “only” hit 16 times this year, tied for fourth-most in the NL with Jake Cronenworth and Kyle Farmer. Along with Starling Marte (unlucky 13), Alonso (12), McNeil (11), and Francisco Lindor (10), there were six Mets in double figures for getting hit by pitches. Out of a total of 24 players in the National League.
Those six men — Canha, Nimmo, Marte, Alonso, McNeil, and Lindor — now walk together (and rub some dirt on it) into baseball history, as they have joined (per Stathead) only one other such group in baseball history: the 1899 Baltimore Orioles, whose manager had to wince at Steve Brodie getting hit by 23 pitches, Jimmy Sheckard 18, Bill Keister (what an aptonym) 16, Ducky Holmes 15, and Candy LaChance 10 times.
That’s only five players, because the manager was, like Buck Showalter, a Baltimore Orioles manager who made his way to New York’s NL club a few years later: John McGraw, at that time a 26-year-old player/manager — his first season in the role he’d win the 1904 pennant and 1905 World Series in with the Giants.
McGraw didn’t just get hit by 14 pitches in 1899, he led the league with 124 walks, 140 runs scored, and a .547 on-base percentage. He also stole 73 bases, and did one more thing that Showalter didn’t do this year: got ejected five times.
It may not last, but for now, Showalter not only has the highest career winning percentage as Mets manager (.623 — Davey Johnson is the multi-season leader at .588 from 1984-90, he was tossed 13 times), but the most games managing the Mets without getting the heave-ho.
The man who once succeeded Showalter in the Bronx, Joe Torre, is the Mets’ managerial ejection leader with 24 during his 286-420 tenure in Flushing. When and if Showalter does get the business end of an ump’s thumb (guess who), the Mets’ no-ejection record will revert to Roy McMillan and his 53 games in charge after succeeding Yogi Berra in 1975.
McMillan got the Mets in striking distance by Labor Day, when Tom Seaver, on the way to his third Cy Young, pitched a four-hitter (in a tidy hour and 55 minutes) against the Pirates to close the division gap to four games and pick up his 20th victory of the year. But the next night, Pittsburgh blitzed Jerry Koosman for eight runs in 3.2 innings (homers by Bill Robinson, Manny Sanguillen, and Rennie Stennett) and rolled to an 8-4 win. Felix Millan and Mike Vail got the Mets on the board with back-to-back one-out doubles in the first inning of the rubber game, but after a walk to Dave Kingman, Rusty Staub bounced into a 4-6-3 double play. Bud Harrelson made an error on a Willie Stargell grounder to allow the Pirates to tie the game in the fourth, and Robinson’s homer off Jon Matlack in the seventh effectively ended the Mets’ season. The next series against the Cardinals was a repeat: Seaver winning, Koosman and Matlack losing, and a sweep in Montreal meant that when the Mets got another crack at Pittsburgh, out at Three Rivers, they were nine games back. They wound up 10.5 games out in third place.
These Mets? They wound up with 101 wins, same as the team that now gets a bye to the division series.
That’s where you can get on the train to the playoffs.
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