Valadius

I honestly could care less. If either one wins, great, good for them. Win the damn pennant and come talk to me.

29 - Orel Hershiser, 1999.

6 - Nolan Ryan, 1971.

24 - Bruce Boisclair, 1979.

It would be a massive project, to be sure, but it would at least offer a far more comprehensive ranking system and would allow our Schaefer totals from this year to fully integrate with the rest of Mets history. We could do them quite quickly if we set our minds to it.

40 - Dwight Gooden, 1994.

42 - Rey Ordonez, 2002. I was SO happy to see him go after his attack on the fans. Never learned to bloody hit.

4 - Roger Craig, 1963.

That makes sense. Quite a good deal of sense, actually. Now that we've finished this season, and will have some time on our hands come winter, maybe we ought to go through the All-Time Mets Rankings all over again and Schaefer-ize them.

Urdaneta was released a couple of weeks ago. I mentioned it somewhere. By the way, Joe Hietpas has a scary resemblance to Al Leiter.

36 - Ron Darling, 1991.

B.J. Ryan would be the PERFECT Mets closer. Throw everything at him.

Your recollection is correct. I remember the 0.01 difference vividly. The recap idea is great. We should also list our Players of the Month in the press release, plus the Schaefer Rookie of the Year.

I love Hot Stove season. I once wrote an essay for a Creative Writing class about how much I love the Hot Stove. I'll be yakking it up all winter.

17 - Amos Otis, 1969.

13 - Cleon Jones, 1975.

44 - Mike Piazza, 2005. 7- Jeff Reardon, 1981.

I just watched the video. This is one terribly painful farewell...

It looks like you still have a Schaefer point to give, baseballtalk.

Mike Piazza will probably always be my favorite Met. I first became a die-hard Mets fan towards the end of 1997, if I remember correctly when I was 10 years old, although I do remember parts of '96. So 1998 was my first full season as a Mets fan. I'll never forget the day Piazza was traded - I was playing in a Little League game when one of the dads tells his son on my team that the Mets got Piazza. I refused to believe it, reasoning that the Marlins wouldn't trade him after a week, but leaving the door open in my mind because I knew all about Huizenga's crazed purge of his team. It took my father turning on the TV after the game to convince me. Mike Piazza was the Mets icon I grew up with, in much of the same way some of you guys and gals grew up with Seaver, Koosman, Cleon, Agee, and Tug, or Swan, Mazzilli, Kingman, and Milner, or Strawberry, Hernandez, Gooden, Carter, Orosco, Fernandez, and Wilson, or Bonilla, Bobby Jones, and Hundley. I believe that you become most attached to the players you grew up with, even as you grow older and teams and players change. So more so than most of you, I think, the departure of Mike Piazza is a very sad day for me. He's been a Met since I was 11 years old and in fifth grade. Here I am, 18 years old, and a freshman in college. He's been the face of the franchise for more or less the whole time. I grew up with Piazza, Leiter, Franco, Alfonso, Ordonez, Ventura, Olerud, Benitez, Wendell, and the rest of the late '90s-early '00s Mets. It was a sad day watching Leiter go. It's the end of my childhood dreams, in a sense, seeing Piazza walk off into the sunset.

Benson 4 Jacobs 1.75 Anderson 1.75 Heilman 1 Reyes .5 Floyd .25 Wright .5 Beltran .25

10,000?!?!? Cripes, talk about setting expectations high. Let's see him at least get a full season in before we start talking about him joining an elite club of 23 other players in history.

Some slight differences, but: Craig Swan = Al Leiter? Darryl Strawberry = David Wright? George Foster = Cliff Floyd? Mookie Wilson = Jose Reyes? I don't know, parallels can be drawn, but this situation is unique.

That was Piazza's last at-bat. Now it's Mets soda.

So... um... when do we start debating the Schaefer totals for entry into our rankings?