Mets Merized Online writers do read the comments, and a frequent comment recently has been a consistent ruing that the Mets did not re-sign Bartolo Colon this last offseason. Why, the persistent refrain asks, did a team with Zack Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, and Steven Matz coming off arm surgery decide to jettison the fun-loving 44 year old who led the team in victories in 2016? Well,...
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Statcast provides baseball fans many useful hitting attributes for free. While the information is available freely, fans can reverse engineer some of the vasts data in different combinations and analysis in order to make sense of what their favorite players and teams are trying to do. For example, at Launch Angle Graphs, statcast provides and reports all members of Team Elevate dutifully....
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Wally Backman is known by younger Mets fans as the now-former manager of the Triple-A Las Vegas 51s. Older Mets fans remember him, though, as a spark plug at second base on Mets teams in the 1980s. Backman was the Mets’ first round pick (16th overall) in the 1977 draft and signed very quickly on June 7, 1977. Wally advanced quickly though the minors, making his Major League debut on...
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He was 23 years old and he threw hard. So hard, as described on the back of the baseball card (No. 414 from the 1981 Topps set) shown above. “John has the unique habit of losing his cap after each pitch.” That was okay, because he threw hard. The card above is a perfect in-action shot of the young fireballer the Mets had developed. There wasn’t much to cheer for during the...
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Before Travis d’Arnaud, before Mike Piazza, before Gary Carter, John Stearns or Jerry Grote, there was Hobie Landrith, pictured above on card number 279 of the 1962 Topps set. The expansion draft for baseball’s two newest franchises, the New York Mets and the Houston Colt .45s, was held the day after the 1961 World Series ended. Picking first, the Mets selected Hobie Landrith, a...
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