All-time NYM Line-up

[Frayed Knot]

MLBN is doing some thing with their pre-season previews where they're naming a team's all-time best lineup.
I've only seen one or two of these in passing (I don't think they've done the Mets yet) but I believe their guidelines involve picking not the best all-time player at each position but who had that team's best season at each. And if that isn't what their rules are it's what mine are so we're going with that.

So the only real rule here is to pick one player per position based on the best ever NYM season with the provision that he had to play the majority of the team's game at that spot - IOW, no choosing Kevin Mitchell in 1986 as the SS just because he started a handful of games there. I'm not so interested in a batting order (although we could concoct one of those too) just on which player-seasons should constitute the starting nine.

I'll kick it off with the pitcher's spot and nominate Gooden's 1985: 24-4; 1.53; 0.965 WHiP; 268-to-69 K/BB

Chime in with either a counter argument to that one or make the case for the best of the best at one of the other 8 positions. Take base-running and/or defense into account if you want or at least argue that the offense (for a position player) was so much better that it overcomes any deficiencies elsewhere.

Edited March 16, 2011 by Guest

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'll nominate Carlos Beltran, 2006, for center field.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

No argument with either.

No. 9 on your scorecard, Darryl '87. 39 homers, 76 XBH, 36 steals (at a 75% clip), 97 walks, 310 total bases, .284/.398/.583 over 640 PAs.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Gilkey '96 kicks the ass of McReynolds '88 and Jones '69 with one of baseball's great outlying seasons. His .317 / .393 / .562 // .955 with 30 homers and 117 RBI and he's the leftfielder on any team I run out there.

[Willets Point]

Fonzie '99 for second base.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Oly '98 (.354/.447/.551, defense so sick it infects antiseptic) for [crossout:vfey8995]President[/crossout:vfey8995] 1B.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Wright '07 for third base: 325/416/546, 30 bombs, 42 dubbles, 34 steals, Gold Glove (yeah, I know).

[Guest Edgy DC]

What did you do in 1985? I'm Dwight Gooden and I did this.

W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	GS	GF	CG	SHO	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	IBB	SO	HBP	BK	WP	ERA+	WHIP	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB	Awards
24	4	.857	1.53	35	35	0	16	8	0	276.2	198	51	47	13	69	4	268	2	2	6	229	0.965	6.4	0.4	2.2	8.7	3.88	CY-1, AS, MVP-4

[Frayed Knot]

I'd probably argue for Fonzie 2000 over 1999 (although either was awesome)

80 more ABs in '99 and 14 more RBIs - but higher BA (20 points), OBA (40 pts), & Slg (40 pts) the next year.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Sorry, just realized you already got Doctor Eighty-Five.

Yeah, that's a tough call between the two Fonzes.

[Frayed Knot]

Not the final answers by any means, just a running look at what's been submitted so far.

POS	PLAYER	YEAR	STATS
P	D. Gooden	1985	24-4; 1.53 ERA; 0.965 WHiP; 268 K
C
1B	J. Olerud	1998	.354/.416/.551
2B	E. Alfonzo	1999/2000
3B	D. Wright	2007	.325/.416/.546; 30 HR; 42 2Bs; GG
SS
LF	B. Gilkey	1996	.317/.393/.562; 30 HRs; 117 RBIs
CF	C. Beltran	2006	.275/.388/.594; 38 2Bs; 41 HRs
RF	D. Strawberry	1987	.284/.398/.583; 39 HRs; 104 RBIs - AS, GG, SS

Edited March 16, 2011 by Guest

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Fonzie was a better offensive player in 2000.

Catcher... will be a bit complicated. '85 Carter (6.7-7.0 WAR)?

[Guest The Second Spitter]

SS = Reyes 2006.

With no apologies to those with Rey-Rey (or Elster) nostalgia

[Guest The Second Spitter]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Fonzie was a better offensive player in 2000. Catcher... will be a bit complicated. '85 Carter (6.7-7.0 WAR)?

It really shouldn't be that complicated at all, unless character or personality or intangibles is relevant to the conversation.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

You know how UZR and other defensive metrics are a little... inconstant?

Catcher D's the most nebulous.

So... a couple of Piazza years are in the conversation, as are the Hundley Ripped Fuel years.

[Guest The Second Spitter]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: You know how UZR and other defensive metrics are a little... inconstant? Catcher D's the most nebulous.

I know you're too knowledgable to be implying that defensively, Piazza '00 was comparable to Carter '85 so I'm not exactly sure what you're implying?

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Piazza '98 or '00 were probably a bit better than Carter offensively... and latter-day (as in, Mets-tenure) Carter wasn't necessarily better enough on D to make up the gap. It's tough to say accurately, much less anything like exactly.

[Guest The Second Spitter]

Fair enough. I disagree with your second comment, but without reference to defensive stats it becomes a subjective argument. Since I never saw Carter 85's defense, outside empirical arguments I have no real leg to stand on.

[Guest Edgy DC]

As someone who watched it, Carter's 1985 defense was nothing special.

That said, I can't say the Mets' superior pitching performance can't be credited in small part ot him. (Keith Hernandez might be able to say that. I won't.)

[metsmarathon]

per baseballreference, gary carter's offense in '85 was better than any seasonal effort piazza put up as a met.

carter had 5.9 offensive WAR, 6.7 total
piazza in 98 had 5.7 offensive WAR, 5.5 total

note that this would exclude the florida and la portions of piazza's '98. for the whole of 1998, piazza was a better offensive player than gary carter. but he wasn't here the whole year. and using bbref's WAR formula, carter was still better for the whole year, per their catching defense methodology.

fangraphs roughly concurs, with carter at 6.7 WAR and piazza98 at 5.9 WAR. fangraphs would tell you that piazza00 was better by 0.1 WAR, but that still doesn't approach carter.

...

i'd like to nominate strawberry90 as a possible alternative to strawberry 87. fangraphs seems to have a higher opinion of his 1990 season than does bbref. they value him as a 6.7 WAR player in 90, which far eclipses his 5.6 WAR effort in 87. bbref calls the 1987 season at 6.7 WAR, 1990 at 6.5.

87 was his best offensive season, for sure, but his defense was not great, costing 9 runs. in 90, however, in addition to smacking 37 homers and driving in 108 runs, with an A/O/S of .277/.361/.518, he also saved 18 runs defensively. both baseball reference and fangraphs use total zone to evaluate defense prior to 2002, so they're on teh same defensive footing, however shaky.

the difference, then, comes down to offense. bbref has strawberry at 74 offensive runs above replacement in 87, 44 in 90. fangraphs has him at 66.3 in 87 and 46.2 in 90.

27 defensive runs is a huge swing, and would seem to call into question the validity of the total zone metric. the edge would seem, then, to belong to strawberry 87, but 90 may still belong in the conversation.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I'm surprised his 1988 doesn't come out more highly. Offense was down all through baseball, except when Darryl was up. He led the league in OPS!

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Forgive the ignorant nature of what I'm about to say but I'm suspicious of a stat that would suggest Strawberry was much better defensively in 1990 than 1987. I just am.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Offensive WAR is a nice shorthand... but it isn't necessarily THE be-all/end-all. Some other kitchen-sink offensive-value stats suggest that Piazza put up the superior offensive season in 2000. Their wOBAs (Piazza's .422 w/ a league avg. of .341 VS. Carter's .369/.318) seem like a blurry push, only when you look a bit closer... Piazza's significantly superior in wRAA and wRC+, both of which adjust for the league strength/run environment (wRAA counts runs created over the league average hitter, while wRC+ scales for league AND park, right?).

Plus, even if you leave aside the actual defensive evaluation*, Carter seems to get a much bigger positional-difficulty run-bump for '85 than Piazza does for '00 (8.3 to 3.0), leading to a(n iffy?) 0.5-0.6 of the difference in Fangraphs WAR. Eliminate/deemphasize the fact that Piazza caught among some better-hitting catching compatriots, and it's a dead heat in WAR, even.

*And yeah, TotalZone's like a spare tire-- it's better than riding on nothing... but not much better. (TZ and a few variants are pretty much the standard in the minors.)
That said, Straw had quite a few more putouts in '90, so it could be presumed that he got to a lot more flies (which could be due to a few factors-- because more were hit to him, e.g.-- but suggests he may have been a little more fleet or hardworking in '90).

[Benjamin Grimm]

I don't recall Darryl being especially hard-working in 1990.

[Guest Edgy DC]

We put too much into the moral aspects of defense. Some years you can not work on offense, but the hits fall in.

Well, maybe he was making his catches that year and getting good throws off, despite not committing any more to his defense than usual.

It's important that we recognize the difference a few missed (or made) catches means to an outfielder. Jose Reyes fails to get a ball, and it's a single. Angel Pagan fails to get to a ball, and it's a double or triple.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

'89 actually seems to be his pinnacle as a defensive player-- best RF in the league, TotalZone Runs-wise, his second-most putouts ever (271), and a dWAR that rivals '90... in about 20 fewer games and a few dozen fewer chances.

Straw also had, by a couple different measures, his best baserunning year in '87.

[Valadius]

Catcher is Piazza '00. I mean come on, he was nearly MVP that year.

Sorry David, but HoJo's '89 is probably tops.

[seawolf17]

Completely agree on Piazza 2000, but Wright's 2007 was better than HoJo's '89 by any metric.

[Frayed Knot]

My recollection of Straw's defense was that it simply never got any better and that one year was virtually indistinguishable from the next.

The expectation when he came up was that of a great athlete who would eventually excel at all aspects of the game. Maybe that was always a bit of wishful thinking and never totally true but he certainly seemed to have the tools of an above average defensive player at the very least. I guess as time went on all his time NOT spent fighting with the wife and/or nursing hangovers was dedicated to his offensive game and the defensive side never got much work and therefore plateau-ed early on.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

seawolf17 wrote: Completely agree on Piazza 2000, but Wright's 2007 was better than HoJo's '89 by any metric.

Say what you will about Jimmy Rollins, but it takes a hell of a guy to take care of David Wright's 2007 MVP award for four years and ask nothing in return, y'know?