Remember 1969: Remember's Reminiscing

 

Remember 1969: Remember's Ramblings

 

Remember's Reminiscing – Volume 1, Article 5

November 12, 2024

 

Today’s Birthdays

 

Looking at the Mets birthday calendar for November 12, I decided that none of the three that are celebrating today piqued enough interest for me to do any research or writing, so a simple Happy Birthday to Al Schmelz, GaryThurman, and Aaron Heilman.   (Although when I did a quick look, I find that Schmelz pitched in 2 major league games - both with the Mets in 1967 - and threw 3 innings, striking out 2 batters and accumulating a positive 0.1 bWAR).   

But sticking with the birthday theme, as it is getting into mid-November, two of the greatest pitchers that have thrown off the Shea Stadium mound have birthdays on back-to-back days this week.    Dwight ‘Doc’ Gooden will celebrate his 60^th year on Saturday this week and Tom Seaver would have been 80 on Sunday.  

To honor these two greats with a few words here in the blogsphrere, I am not going to write about the great things that all Mets fans we all know they did such as their Rookie of the Year awards, their Cy Young awards, etc., but I’ll touch on some things that are a little less well known.

The Doctor, only because his birthday falls first on Nov 16.

·         His 24-4 season of 1985 is probably the best single season ever by any Mets pitcher.   

·         Arguably his rookie year of 1984 was just as good as his 1985 career year. 

·         While his nickname was Dr. K, Gooden only had one season where his strikeout rate was greater than 9 per 9 innings – his first year at age 19. 

·         His career strikeout rate was just 7.4 batters per 9 innings.   Free agents today with that kind of k-rate would be looking to just hang on wherever they can get a contract. 

·         His won-loss record in his first eight years was 122-53, a fantastic .697 winning percentage.

·         Doc ended up tossing one no-hitter after leaving the Mets, turning the trick with the Yankees in 1996.

·         He pitched for four teams in his career.   Only the most ardent fans of Doc would remember that he signed a free agent contract with the Houston Astros prior to the 2000 season and pitched in 1 game, throwing 4 innings while giving up 4 hits and being released a few days later.

·         He later pitched a handful of games for his hometown Tampa Bay Rays, none particularly effectively, compiling a 2-3 record with a 6.63 ERA.

·         Doc was not a terrible hitter for a pitcher and won a Silver Slugger award in 1992 – his first year with a losing record as a pitcher.   In 1992 he hit .264 with a .649 slugging percentage.    

·         He hit 8 home runs in his career in 741 at bats.  Compare that to Bud Harrelson’s 7 career home runs in 4744 at bats.   

·         In his career, Doc Gooden had more hits than strikeouts, finishing with 145 hits while only whiffing 135 times.   A lot of position players today dream of that stat.   He accumulated 4.8 (yes positive) bWAR with the bat in his 11 years with the Mets.   

 Tom Terrific

Tom Seaver would have been 80 years old this coming Sunday.  How is that possible?    Remembering #41 delivering those fastballs with his knee scraping the mound is etched in this Mets fan’s memory.

Some random factoids:

·         Tom Seaver pitched in parts of 20 years, including 12 with the Mets

·         Seaver is the Mets only ‘real’ Hall of Famer

·         Like Doc, Seaver waited until after leaving the Mets to throw his only MLB no-hitter, spinning the gem for the Reds in June 1978, almost exactly one year to the day after ‘the trade’.

·         In 20 years of major league service, Seaver never signed a free agent contract.

·         He was traded three times and, like Gooden, pitched for four major league teams.

·         Despite his pitching for some good teams (and some poor ones), Seaver only won one World Series game – Game 4 of the 1969 Series.   He did not earn a win in the ’73 series.

·         His only non-Mets post season was pitching one game for the ’79 Reds in the NLCS with a no-decision with 8 innings pitched.

·         Despite his Red Sox team advancing to the 1986 World Series, Seaver did not pitch in the post season that year.  His final career game was pitched for Boston on September 19, 1986, a couple weeks before the end of the season.

·         Like Gooden, Seaver’s ‘signature’ year (any Mets fan can tell you he was 25-7 in 1969 leading them to their first World Series) may not have been his best year.  

·         He was 20-10 in 1971, but set his career best in ERA (1.76), Strikeouts (289), WHIP (0.946) and K-rate (9.1 per 9 Innings).   How did he lose 10 games that year?  

·         In that fantastic ’71 season, he finished 2^nd in the Cy Young Award to Ferguson Jenkins. 

·         Like Gooden, Seaver only once exceeded one strikeout per inning over a season (1971 at 9.1/9).   He never again struck out more than 9 hitters per 9 innings.   His career rate, despite striking out over 3600 batters, was only 6.8 per 9. 

·         In an unfortunate year for Seaver, the 1981 Reds won three more games than any other team in the National League but did not make the playoffs because of the split season separated by the player’s strike.   The Reds finished second in both halves, so Seaver did not get to pitch in the post season. 

·         In that 1981 season, he had his best season winning percentage with a record of 14-2 (.875).

·         In a rather odd statistical season for him, he pitched 166.1 innings, yet only struck out 87 batters for the lowest k-rate of his career until his final season.    His WHIP was an outstanding 1.118.    He finished 2^nd in the Cy Young balloting despite the fact that the number of wins (and winning percentage) was the only pitching category he led the league with. 

·         Seaver was never a great hitter, but he did manage to hit 12 homers in his career (5 more than his roomie Harrelson).   He also added 5 triples,but struck out more than twice for every hit he had over his career.     

   

Happy Birthday Doc!    

And Happy Birthday in heaven, Tom.  You left us way too soon!