1986: The New York Metropolitans

1986: The New York Metropolitans

1986: The New York Metropolitans

To the victors go the spoils, except when the victory is spoiled by the losers. At least, that’s how it must seem to the 1986 New York Mets.
I’m guilty of it myself. I’ll admit it. I’ve devoted far more ink, and far more thought over the years, to the 1986 Boston Red Sox than I have to the 1986 New York Mets, despite the fact that it was the Mets who prevailed that year.

This is partly because it’s hard not to view this Mets team through the lens of what might have been, had its players not slowly broken down, fallen prey to self-destructive impulses, and been sold off. It wasn’t just Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden, either. Lenny Dykstra and Ron Darling didn’t quite ‘click’ in New York, and Gary Carter was already running down.

If we can, however, let’s forget about what came after 1986. Let’s live in the moment, some 30 years ago, when the Mets were poised to be the new force from New York. Let’s remember how:
• They won 108 games. That’s the most in franchise history. We’ll come back to this one.
• 9 of 11 pitchers that the Mets regularly used had an ERA+ of better than 100 (i.e., better than league-average), and the two exceptions had an ERA+ of 93 and 96. That’s a deep staff.
• 5 Mets had 4+ WAR that year. Gary Carter, in his last truly excellent season, had more than 3.5. Beyond that, four more Mets had at least 3 WAR. That’s a balanced team.

Remember those 108 wins? They were the most in baseball that year by twelve games, and the most since the Big Red Machine-era Reds won 108 in 1975. Since 1986, only two teams have won as many or more games: the 1998 New York Yankees (who won 114 games, on route to a World Series title), and the star-crossed Seattle Mariners of 2001 who won 116 games and got knocked out in the ALDS.

Only 8 times in history has a team won more than 108 games. The Mets won 98 the year before and managed to outpace themselves by 10 games.
Over the first half of the season, they went a mind bending 59-25 before settling into a more sustainable groove, going a somewhat more reasonable 49-29 after the All-Star Break. Lest you think they were slouching into the playoffs, however: they went 13-4 over the season’s last three weeks.
In a nutshell, yeah, these guys were pretty special.

They fought through a determined Houston Astros team in the NLCS, four games to two. It’s not fair to the Astros to reduce them to a footnote. They won 96 games themselves, behind a monster year from Mike Scott (8.2 WAR, a 2.22 ERA) and the aging Nolan Ryan. The series stood at 2-2 after four games, before the Mets and Dwight Gooden took down Ryan in Game 5. That set the stage for the sixteen-inning epic of Game 6, which some call the greatest playoff game ever played.

Once they got to the World Series, they faced a Boston Red Sox squad coming off a historic triumph, off their own, returning from a 3-1 deficit against a talented California Angels team.

Everyone reading this already knows how that series went. The Red Sox took a 3-2 lead into Game 6 and came within a Bucknerian inch of clinching their first world title in 68 years. We won’t dwell on any of that stuff right now, though, and we’ll end on this coda from John McNamara, the Red Sox manager, who said it best: ‘We lost Game Six, but they won Game Seven.’

That’s the truth, and it’s the only thing that matters. It doesn’t matter what happened in 1987, 1988, 1989, or on down the line. That Met’s team in 1986 won Game 7 of the World Series and, with it, immortality.