Mets360 - Mets did addition by subtraction on December 11, 1981

 

By Brian Joura December 11, 2020

Most of you can probably put a name/event to dates pretty easily in Mets’ history.

9/24/69 – Mets win first World Series
6/15/77 – Mets trade Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman
1/24/80 – Nelson Doubleday buys the Mets
6/15/83 – Mets trade for Keith Hernandez

You can probably cite half a dozen more, too. But one that’s probably not in the front of your mind is 12/11/81. It didn’t immediately resonate – although it probably should have – as a milestone date but it’s when the Mets announced definitively that they weren’t going to accept mediocrity any more. On that date, in two separate deals, the Mets cut ties with their double play combo of Doug Flynn and Frank Taveras.

In their Mets careers, Flynn amassed a 57 OPS+ over 2,269 PA while Taveras notched a 75 OPS+ in 1,583 PA. Actually, mediocre is probably too kind – they were downright lousy. The Mets sent Flynn to the Rangers for Jim Kern, who they subsequently dealt to the Reds in the George Foster deal. It’s remarkable that the Mets were able to get that much for Flynn. Sure, Kern had a bunch of injuries but when healthy he was pretty good. He did just fine in Cincinnati but he rocked the boat over the club’s facial hair policy and was sent out of town during the ’82 season despite a 2.84 ERA in 50 games with the Reds. For Taveras, the club got reliever Steve Ratzer, who spent a year at Tidewater but never pitched for the Mets.

My opinion at the time was hatred for Flynn and a sort of acceptance with Taveras. Flynn was easy to dislike. In addition to his complete inability to hit, a 57 OPS+!!!!, he was a constant reminder of the Seaver trade. People will bring up the Gold Glove Award he won and the fact that he had 61 RBIs batting eighth for a last-place club in 1979. What we didn’t know then – even if we had a strong suspicion – is that in 580 PA, Flynn had a remarkable 382 RBI chances. For a point of comparison, Eddie Murray had only 364 runners with 640 PA batting third in 1983. Flynn was about average (which was no small feat for him) in RBI situations in ’79 – he just had a bunch of them.

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