Dark Horse Met 2024 - Official Voting

[Centerfield]

I think we know how this ends up, but let's make it official.



As a reminder, here are the criteria for Dark Horse Mets:



1. Not reasonably expected to contribute this year. No projected starters. No big name free agents coming off a down year. So someone like Luis Severino would not qualify. Has to be someone we expect to be a fringe guy.

2. Can't be a premiere prospect (or at least, no longer one). No Drew Gilbert, Acuna, Clifford, etc. However, if Gavin Cecchini were to somehow resurface and make a contribution, he would qualify.

3. The type of player if he were hurt/released/traded prior to the season you wouldn't care. Jose Iglesias fits that bill. If he tore his ACL in spring training no one would have lost any sleep. If that happened to Mark Vientos, we'd have been upset.



Voting will stay open for 10 days! The winner will be declared Dark Horse Met 2024 and will be forever cherished in Mets history!

[Edgy MD]

This is good.



I had a series of post-season awards I wanted to put to a vote after the World Series, but I didn't have this one cued.



Related Question: Who should the Dark Horse Met Award be named for? José Valentin? Benny Agbayani?

[MFS62]

I wanted to split my vote because while Iglesias held the lineup together, Butto held the pitching staff together, first as a starter and then as a reliever. But I gave it to Iglesias because of his contributions both on and off the field.



As for naming the dark horse award, I don't recall anyone coming out of obscurity, (well, the bullpen) and becoming the leading starter, being more deserving than Terry Leach.



Later

[Centerfield]

Edgy MD wrote: Related Question: Who should the Dark Horse Met Award be named for? José Valentin? Benny Agbayani?

I think Jose Valentin captures the spirit of the Dark Horse as well as anyone. He's the one that comes to mind for me.



Some others off the top of my head.



1987: Terry Leach

1999: Benny Agbayani

2000: Timo Perez

2006: Jose Valentin

2008: Fernando Tatis Sr.

2010: RA Dickey

2014: Jacob deGrom



deGrom is maybe the most controversial one. Typically prospects don't qualify as Dark Horse candidates, but I feel like deGrom was so far off the radar. I think he was around 10-15 on most prospect lists. I think I follow prospects a lot more now than I did then, but I didn't really know anything about him until he was called up.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, R.A. Dickey is probably the darkest horse to come the furthest.

[Benjamin Grimm]

If we're going to name this award after someone, I'd vote Terry Leach. Jacob deGrom is going to be remembered for his two Cy Youngs rather than his surprising debut.



Leach was a pioneer among dark horses, and isn't really known for much else.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Butto was a higher rated prospect than deGrom was. I'm not sure he deserves to be a dark horse.



The right answer is Iglesias from this year

[Centerfield]

It occurs to me that I should have put an option for "None". I'll have to do that going forward. In most years, we don't have a Dark Horse Met.

[Benjamin Grimm]

This year we do, and Candelita is running away with it.

[Edgy MD]

I like awards that utilize the MVP voting system. Vote for up to 10 players with 14 points for #1, nine, points for #2, eight, seven, six, and so on.



It creates more back-end action on the leaderboard, and that usually makes for more excitement.



1) José Iglesias

2) Luís Torrens

3) Reed Garrett

4) Tyrone Taylor

5) Dedniel Nuñez

6) José Butto

7) Christian Scott

8) Sean Reid-Foley

9) David Peterson

10) Danny Young

[batmagadanleadoff]

Why isn't Vientos even on the ballot? Personally, I think he's the real Dark Horse and I don't think it's particularly close. He wasn't a prospect anymore by the time this season started. He was a prospect in 2022, maybe 2023. He wasn't on anybody's top prospects lists this season and if anything, he was "suspect". He wasn't even deemed worthy of holding a spot on the roster. He was Brett Baty's backup ferchrissakes. Roll that last sentence around in your head for a while. When he was first promoted from Syracuse earlier this season, it was for a little while. To the extent he would play, it would be off the bench and then only here and there. And as if all of that wasn't enough, then the Mets went out and got J.D. Martinez, pushing Vientos even further down the depth chart. How did it come about that Vientos finally got a chance to get some regular playing time without having to play with the fear of being benched again or even demoted by playing a few bad or uneventful games in a row? How? Only because Brett Baty was awful. Dreadful. Execrable. Horsehit. That's how.



Vientos is my Dark Horse. Iglesias had a fine season. But Vientos was way better and it wasn't particularly close. Pound for pound, Vientos was one of the top dozen hitters in the entire NL this season. Vientos was on pace to top 40 HR's had he gotten the same number of at-bats as Lindor or Alonso. Ohtani was the only NL'er to top 40 HR's this year. And only four NLers hit HRs at a greater rate than Vientos did in 2024.

[Edgy MD]

I certainly thought I had him on my ballot, but got messed up switching guys around.



My mistake and my apologies.



1) José Iglesias

2) Mark Vientos

3) Luís Torrens

4) Reed Garrett

5) Tyrone Taylor

6) Dedniel Nuñez

7) José Butto

8) Christian Scott

9) Sean Reid-Foley

10) David Peterson



And there really is a strong argument that Torrens doesn't belong among the eligible at all, as he started the season outside the organization, and so not only wouldn't have been anybody's bet going in, but sort of couldn't have been.

[ashie62]

Vientos is my pick

[Centerfield]

Ok. So I acknowledge that the Dark Horse criteria is subjective and something I completely made up, but on no planet is Mark Vientos anywhere close to a Dark Horse candidate.



The whole idea of Dark Horse is that a player comes in out of nowhere and lights the world on fire. Mark Vientos isn't even close to that. He's a consensus top 10 Mets prospect (#8 before he lost his eligibility following the 2023 season), had a .919 OPS over 200 AAA games, including 49 HRs, and was slotted to be the starting DH before JD was signed.



If anyone wrote him off after his first 250 ABs, that's on them. Not Vientos.



He was on everyone's radar. And if he had torn his ACL a week before spring training, it would have been big news, and people would have been upset about it. Just like we were upset about Ronny Mauricio.



Jose Iglesias? A career-ending injury before this year wouldn't even warrant a mention.



That's why next year Baty, Mauricio, Sproat, Butto. None of these guys are Dark Horse candidates. And I think that's what makes it fun. You never know if you're gonna get a Dark Horse, and in all likelihood, you wouldn't have been able to guess the guy in a million years.

[Edgy MD]

Perhaps the original Dark Horse:



https://metsrostercentral.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/grote.jpg>

[MFS62]

If you're going to include Grote, how about Ron Hunt?

He had hit .191 for a full season in the minors. And when a Mets reporter questioned him about it, Ron replied (I paraphrase), "How much would you hustle if you were in the Texas League?



Later