Which Met opened up your eyes?

[roger_that]

Or made a light bulb appear above your head, or flipped your brain, or [anatomical reference of your choice], showing you some principle or truth about baseball through a characteristic of his?



For me, it was Al Leiter, late in his Met career going to three balls on batter after batter.



Very slowly I realized that this wasn't a loss of control on his part but rather a deliberate policy, meant to compensate for his fastball not being as fast as it once was. Leiter was (in my memory, anyway) deliberately putting his pitches outside of the strike zone all the time in the hope that batters would swing at bad pitches. He had decided (in my view--I have no documentation) to waste pitches until he had no more pitches to waste, so his games went on and on, and he had reached 100 pitches by the fifth inning typically, when he got removed from the game.



I believe this began a trend of pitchers caring much more about the quality of each at-bat, and if they got taken out early, so be it, but they weren't going to pitch in the strike zone until they were absolutely forced to do so. The principle of "A pitcher's job is to last through the 9th inning, or at least to last until the closer could come in to finish off the other team" went right out the window.



Of course, it may well be that I just noticed this first in regard to Leiter, but in my mind he was the first one to start slowing down the game on purpose.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Until I saw Keith Hernandez play every day, I thought first base was just a position where you put your foot on the base and catch the ball.

[roger_that]

Especially because he succeeded Dave Kingman at first base, whose principle was "put your foot somewhere near first base if at all possible, and hope the ball hits your glove."

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I admired watching Leiter pitch too. The topic of his getting into 3 ball counts with every hitter was something we used to argue about here.



I can be surprised by anything today. I'm as much about watching baseball for the physical things they do than the results of them these days. There are guys whose aesthetics and body language I like more than others

[Fman99]

I remember watching Timo Perez during his brief tenure as a featured member of the Mets lineup. It seemed like as soon as he got 2 strikes on him he swung at everything, no matter how close or far off of the zone a pitch was. I remember thinking also that if I noticed it, surely other pitchers have also. And probably they did. He flamed out pretty quick.

[Cowtipper]

I was born with a natural squint; after being hit in the face by a Jorge Velandia foul ball in 2003, my squint was gone.

[MFS62]

When he came to the Mets, Eddie Murray had the reputation of a badass.

When he got here, I saw that you can be a badass who your teammates and fans like, as long as you take it out on the other team.



Later

Edited February 27, 2025 by Guest

[Cowtipper]

I loved him in Dr. Doolittle.

[Benjamin Grimm]

=MFS62 post_id=186178 time=1740693045 user_id=60]
When he came to the Mets, Eddie Murphy had the reputation of a badass.

When he got here, I saw that you can be a badass who your teammates and fans like, as long as you take it out on the other team.



Later

[Centerfield]

Carlos Beltran showed the world that you can play great defense without making highlight reel diving catches.



And that taking the right route to the ball is a lot better than taking a roundabout route then diving at the end.

[MFS62]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: And he really rocked the Gumby costume!

Fixed. Thanks.

Later