People have been asking us all winter what we’ve been doing to pass the time during the MLB lockout. I’ll tell you what we do here at MMO — we come up with ideas that not only help us stay busy, but will help you all stay busy, too.
Talking about the best teams and/or players in New York Mets history is always a good debate to have — especially during the cold winter months — but what if we created our own teams with players from different eras? That’d be fun, right? Well, we thought it was, and we think you’ll agree. We’ve created eight different Mets teams, all of which consist of a catcher, first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, third baseman, three outfielders, two starting pitchers, one relief pitcher, and a manager. We took the top eight at each position (as well as the top 24 for outfielders and top 16 for starting pitchers) with the goal of splitting them up across eight teams and making them as evenly matched as possible.
We used four players twice, given their multi-positionality: Edgardo Alfonzo (2B/3B), Jeff McNeil (2B/OF), John Milner (1B/OF) and Dave Magadan (1B/3B).
What we’ll be doing over the next eight days is introducing each of the squads and taking a look at their perceived strengths and weaknesses. Once that’s complete, the fun will start with some good ol’ fashioned Twitter polls so you can decide which ones would be victorious if they faced one another. We’ll open up the voting on February 8th, so mark your calendars accordingly.
The Squad: Team 5
Strengths
First thought was who the heck put this team together, but digging a little deeper shows a team that could win a few games. The first thing that jumps out to be is that terrific double play combo with Felix Millan and Bud Harrelson. Dave Magadan was solid at first base and Hubie Brooks had his moments at third base as well. Having Lance Johnson and Bernard Gilkey in the outfield together would make pitchers pretty happy as well.
Offensively, they have a nice leadoff guy in Lance Johnson, then Bernard Gilkey to follow, and the slugger in Todd Hundley to drive them in. Two very solid bats in Kevin McReynolds and Dave Magadan –both had OPS+ around 120 with Mets– lengthen the lineup a bit. They wouldn’t have a ton of high-end speed outside of Johnson, but feels like a team that would run the bases pretty well.
Feels like Al Leiter and David Cone could be the two most underrated pitchers in Mets history with their rWAR ranking sixth and eighth in team history respectively.
Then you have one of the greatest closers in MLB history ready to secure these close games.
Weaknesses
Okay, I think I might have been a little too positive about the offense before. The 6 through 8 of this team is going to make a ton of outs, and there’s simply not enough power to consistently score runs.
Gil Hodges will have his hands full to try manufacturing runs from this offense.
Looking back at the other teams, I’d have to say Team 5 looks like the weakest one to this point.
Past Teams
