Chad ochoseis

Albies and Bryant were both on my radar, but I finally went with "nah" on both of them. How about consistently annoying phormer Phillie Rhys Hoskins?

Mike Trout?

Giancarlo Stanton

I think Jim Hickman had some good years for the Cubs.

Ray's - Scott Kazmir

Got to think Dykstra had better WAR than that as a Met. But Juan Samuel probably didn't.

Guardians - Lindor

I'd guessed it already. Apparently, he's conineteenth on the Marlins list, which is surprisingly low. Roberto Alomar, Guardians Oops... Conine is sixteenth. I would have bet some serious Cranebucks that Mr. Marlin was at least top ten.

Jeff Conine, Marlins

Jim Fregosi, Angels

Gary Carter, Expos I'm assuming that the actual Mets WAR leaders aren't part of this kwiz.

Willets Point feels Metlier to me. I know the ballpark is just off Grand Central Parkway, but we always took the Van Wyck to get to Shea when I was a kid, though I suppose we still had to be on the Grand Central momentarily. In any event, I've never associated Grand Central Parkway with Shea/Citi, and I still think of Grand Central Station first.

Billy Williams, Ron Santo, and some guy named Seaver. For most of my life, I thought the first game I ever saw was a Cubs-Mets game with Jenkins facing Seaver. Sometime in the pre-BBRef days and in the early days of the internet, I mentioned this to a friend of mine, who researched it and noted that Jenkins and Seaver didn't face each other at Shea in 1971 or 1972. I did remember clearly that Rick Monday had hit a home run mid-game and that the Mets were shut out, so we concluded it must have been this one. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN197209050.shtml

The fact that there were seven guys like that from your list, and you might be able to throw Jim Perry into that pile as well, argues against any of them getting in. Tommy John has the strongest case. You get a widely used surgical procedure named after you, you probably belong. Jim Hunter would've never gotten in, either. He owes a huge debt to Charley Finley for naming him Catfish.

I don't know if it's about being the best player, because that probably would be Viola. It's more the Pavlovian response, which has a lot to do with the era when you were a kid and read the sports pages first thing in the morning. This is why Jerry Grote is my eternal #15, even if Beltran was objectively a far better Met, and why Kong will always and immutably be my #26.

- It's not that hard, Jorge. Tell him, Wash. - It's incredibly hard. - Hey, anything worth doing is. And we're gonna teach you.

Very late to this party, but thanks to Edgy and Grimm for keeping this place alive.

Asdrubal Cabrera

Carlos Delgado

Marvelous Marv Throneberry

Lindor

Mike Cameron

Joe Foy

I think this topic comes up occasionally when talking about Keith Hernandez. BBRef dWAR really, really, really discounts the defensive contributions of first basemen. Table of 1B dWAR below. With the exception of Alonso and Goldschmidt, these players have had long and complete careers. Goldschmidt is near retirement, and I added Pete out of curiosity, but over a career that -6.3 probably projects to about a -11, assuming he starts DHing in a few years. No system to these choices except "Chad named a bunch of first basemen", though I went out of my way to pick several reputed great gloves. So this group likely skews better than average. [TH]Player[/TH][TH]dWAR[/TH][TD]Chief Keef[/TD][TD]1.3[/TD][TD]JT Snow[/TD][TD]0.0[/TD][TD]Chris Chambliss[/TD][TD]0.0[/TD][TD]Doug Mientkiewicz[/TD][TD]-0.7[/TD][TD]Wes Parker[/TD][TD]-3.0[/TD][TD]Gil Hodges[/TD][TD]-5.4[/TD][TD]Nick Johnson[/TD][TD]-5.7[/TD][TD]Paul Goldschmidt[/TD][TD]-6.0[/TD][TD]Don Mattingly[/TD][TD]-6.2[/TD][TD]Pete Alonso[/TD][TD]-6.3[/TD][TD]Adam LaRoche[/TD][TD]-10.1[/TD][TD]Rafael Palmeiro[/TD][TD]-10.7[/TD][TD]Ed Kranepool[/TD][TD]-11.0[/TD][TD]Cecil Fielder[/TD][TD]-12.1[/TD][TD]Steve Garvey*[/TD][TD]-13.6[/TD][TD]Prince Fielder[/TD][TD]-20.7[/TD] *Garvey was primarily a 3B for the first three years of his career, and I excluded those years. Keith is the only first baseman I could find with a positive career dWAR, and 1.3 isn't all that good. Wayne Garrett's was better. Ken Boswell's was better. You get the point. I was surprised that Chris Chambliss, who I always thought of as a good but not great first baseman, is as high as he is, and that Palmiero and Garvey are quite that low. And I don't remember Prince Fielder as being particularly bad at first. Edgar Martinez, who was primarily a DH for 12 seasons, had a dWAR of -11.5 for those seasons. So a guy who never plays the field is considered comparable in value to several actual first basemen. I never played baseball, not even Little League. I've maybe played ten softball games in my life. I'm not even an especially observant fan. So I'm looking to the group. Are first basemen really that valueless defensively? At the very least, they have to be able to field batted balls about as well as third basemen, given that a ball pulled by a left handed hitter to first behaves about the same as a ball pulled by a right handed hitter to third. A first baseman never has to make long throws, is almost always behind the play, seldom has to make tags, and almost never has to deal with runners sliding in to the base. They're involved in most plays, but their involvement is limited to being able to catch, which is important but something most professional athletes should be able to handle. So I can see that 1B has significantly less value than other positions on the field. But this little, where Ken Boswell is considered more valuable defensively than Keith Hernandez? Any explanation besides "dWAR is bogus"?

John Stearns came from the Phillies organization, but I'm guessing he didn't play in the majors until he joined the Mets.