Reese Kaplan -- The Mets Best Managers

Buck Showalter is doing something to help make the Mets fans and the media understand the importance of having a strong manager in place.  In the past we often wondered about decision making, lineup decisions, riding the cold hand instead of the hot hand as well as various other moves the manager makes to help win ballgames.  

Certainly Mickey Callaway, Luis Rojas and (yes) Terry Collins failed to do so effectively.  In the short period during which the Mets have employed Showalter they are seeing why he was twice named manager of the year.  

Prior to Buck's arrival, if you'd asked folks who was the best ever Mets manager, if they were old enough to have seen the games they would almost uniformly answer Gil Hodges.  The former first baseman was brought over to the Mets in 1968 to
take over the perennial losers to see if he could turn chicken poop into chicken salad.  

During his first year at the helm he finished with a losing record of 73-89, but if you look past those numbers you would see that in previous seasons the Mets' high water mark for victories was just 66, so that improvement was significant.  The very next season Hodges led the Mets to their first ever World Series championship.  His players marveled at how he contended with really just 4 regular players and 4 positions that were being platooned.  

He had a very green group of young pitchers that he manipulated masterfully and he was able for the first time to bring respect to the New York Mets.

During his Mets managerial career Gil Hodges was a winner, sporting a record of 339-309, a .523 winning percentage.  That was an incredible improvement over what folks had come to expect and had witnessed by the Mets since their inception.  

Unfortunately, it all came to an early and unexpected end on April 2nd of 1972 when after a foursome of golf with his coaches, he had a massive heart attack and passed away at just age 47.

In 1983 the Mets had a combined total of just 67 wins between manager George Bamberger and his interim replacement Frank Howard.  The Mets took a chance, bringing in a 41 year old former All Star player in Davey Johnson for his first ever managerial gig.  

Apparently they rolled the dice accurately because in his rookie season at the helm he finished in second place with a huge improvement to a total of 90 victories.  The next year in charge was even better with 98 wins and only 3 games out of first place.

All the pieces fell together for Johnson in his third year when the Mets won 108 games on their way to the 1986 World Series.  To be fair, he had quite a bit of talent on the roster including newcomers Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, Sid Fernandez, Bobby Ojeda, Ron Darling, Kevin Mitchell and others.  Still, he shepherded the team to their best-ever record.  They sailed through the playoffs and engaged in the forever memorable Game 6 against the Boston Red Sox en route to a Game 7 World Series victory.

For his Mets career Davey Johnson delivered quite well, never falling further down in the standings than second place.  Yet somehow Frank Cashen felt it was time to axe the man as he started the 1990 season 20-23.  Bud Harrelson was hired as the new manager and things went from great to bleak in a big hurry.  Johnson finished his Mets career going 595-417 for a stellar .588 winning percentage.  Some might advocate he was even more productive than Gil Hodges.

The third contender in this pre-Buck bunch is former outfielder Bobby Valentine.  He certainly had the personality to deal with the New York media.  He seemed poised to motivate his players to win and engaged in a few memorable moments (such as sneaking back into the dugout when he'd been thrown out of a game wearing glasses with a fake mustache).  

Unlike Johnson, Valentine was not a rookie skipper.  He'd been handed the reins to oversee the Texas Rangers for a period of eight years.  He performed just below .500 during that era but apparently the Mets saw enough in him to take a chance to hire him as the head honcho in the dugout starting with the 1996 season.  

In the early going it was a bit rough starting off that first season with a 4th place finish.  The highlight to his managerial stint was a World Series against the crosstown New York Yankees.  Unfortunately, it was downhill after that resulting in his termination with a 5th place finish in 2002.  For his Mets seven years in charge he was a winner with a final managerial record of 536-467, a winning percentage of .534.

The list of bad Mets managers is quite long and sometimes you were left wondering why they kept any of them around as long as they did.  The biggest loser, of course, was Terry Collins whose managerial record in New York was 551-583, a percentage of just .486.  Even Casey Stengel without legitimate ballplayers only lost 402 games.  

Any other managers worth noting in the positive?