I already did two articles last week on Mets killers named Willie:
Willie McCovey and Willie Stargell, both Hall of Famers.
Now it's time for a 3rd Willie Hall of Fame: Willie Mays.
He did not "kill the Mets" as much as Stargell and McCovey did - in part because he was already a veteran of many major league campaigns starting in 1951.
Oh, his stats against the Mets were excellent, don't get me wrong:
In 553 at bats, 17 doubles, 11 triples, 39 HRs....
And 122 runs, 106 RBIs, .298/.369/.581.
Not bad for a guy who was in his age 31 season when he first faced the Metsies.
He thundered against mediocre-at-best early 1960s Mets' guys like Jack Fisher and Jay Hook, going 33 for 76 (.434) with 9 HRs, but he was getting older by the time much higher quality pitchers in Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman arrived and the duo held him to 15 for 74 (.203), albeit with 6 HRs from Willie the HR machine.
But it got me looking at how he did against other teams - in fact , against one team in particular:
The Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers.
From Willie's first year in 1951, the Dodgers won a good 60% of their games. As many know well, much of that Dodger success was due to terrific pitching.
For example, in 1951, when the Dodgers won 97 games in a 154 game schedule, pitchers Newcombe, Roe, Branca, King and Erskine combined for 85 wins.
In 1953, the Dodgers won a tremendous 105 games, losing just 49, with Erskine, Meyer, Loes, Roe, Podres and Labine winning 80 games.
In 1956, Newcombe won 27, and he and 4 others won 74 between them. Future Met Roger Craig won 11.
In the late 1950s, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax joined in.
(Amazing point: in back to back years, Roger Craig, the guy who was 15-46 as a Met, went 11-5, 2.06 and 8-3, 3.27 for the late '50's Dodgers, while in the same two years, Sandy Koufax was 8-6, 4.05 and 8-13, 3.91. How about dem apples?
Anyway, rolling into the 1960s, the Dodgers maintained pitching preeminence, with Koufax, from 1962-66, putting up arguably the best 5 year pitching stretch of any pitcher ever, and Don Drysdale being highly dominant as well. One year, reliever Ron Peranoski even went 16-3. Hall of Famer Don Sutton joined the staff after Koufax retired.
In short, Dem Bums could sure pitch the lights out. For pretty much all of Willie Mays' career.
Sometimes, great hitters suffer against great pitchers.
Against such great Dodger pitchers spanning most of Mays' career, though, what did he manage to do?
1,414 at bats, 75 doubles, 18 triples, 98 HRs, 273 runs, 251 RBIs
.309/.400/.596.
Considering the extreme level of difficulty, of facing so many great Dodgers pitchers for so long, how incredibly great is that??
Ask me, go ahead, and I'll tell ya...he was the greatest of all time.
Amazing fielder, tremendous hitter, 660 HRs, lost a ton of homers in ridiculously windy Candlestick Park, and missed 4 months on 1952 and all of 1953 in the military. Put him in a normal home park, and not Candestick, and give him back the nearly 2 seasons he missed early in his career in the service, and he probably hits 800 HRs.
156.3 career WAR, despite those adversities. And DURABLE - in one 13 year stretch in his career, he missed just 40 games. He played until he dropped from exhaustion. Which only happened very rarely. Some players miss 40 games in a season these days and think they did pretty well.
If the expansion Mets had started in 1951 instead of 1962, and he did what he did against great Dodgers pitching, what would his career numbers have looked like against years of weaker Mets pitching while in his prime? Incomprehensible.
What an honor that Mays got to play for the Mets at the tail end of his career.
We love Tom Seaver. He was superb.
Willie Mays? To me? Even greater.
The Great Willie Mays. Met Killer. G.O.A.T.
3 articles - McCovey, Stargell, and Mays.
That trio sure gave me the Willies.
P.S.
How did the great history of the Dodgers in Ebbets Field come to an end? Pretty much in a ghost town, according to this snippet from Baeballhall.org (Craig Muder):
The end came quietly, with just 6,702 fans watching the final Brooklyn Dodgers game at Ebbets Field. The cheers, however, resound to this day.
The Dodgers defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-0, on Sept. 24, 1957.
Danny McDevitt went the distance for the Dodgers, allowing just five hits and striking out nine to pick up his seventh win of the season.
Gil Hodges and Elmer Valo drove in runs for Brooklyn, and Gino Cimoli scored the final run on Hodges' RBI single in the third inning.
Hodges was also the final Brooklyn batter to come to the plate, striking out to end the eighth inning.
Lots of Gil Hodges in there - how fitting.
Say Hey - send a comment Willie's way.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Tom. Willie was the best ever.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever read "The Baseball 100" by Joe Posnanski? A great read. I could do a book report if you are interested.
A book report would be great. Somewhere along the way, I stopped reading books, so have at it.
ReplyDeleteI have another Met killer article coming up - he did not kill them for long due to his age, but he showed them that he was a man against boys. One virtually on a par with Willie.
Tom is it Stan the Man? His was my first baseball mit.
ReplyDeleteGary, I think Willie was better, but it was certainly close between the two. If I had to choose one, I'd take both. Willie and Stan. That's the plan.
ReplyDelete