At approximately 1:02 pm on Monday April 3rd, the Met roster will be individually named by Citi Field announcer Alex Anthony. As each player climbs the steps and is greeted by the faithful fans adorned in orange and blue, they will assemble along the first base line and peer out to the capacity crowd tipping their caps and waving their hands.
The customary introductions will be different this year for a unique reason; they aren’t different. Each of the 25 players have seen game action with the Mets before. While that in itself may not sound interesting, ponder this…
This will mark only the SECOND TIME in the history of the organization that no players will be making their Mets roster debut on Opening Day.
The above statement is taking into account each of the 25 names (formerly 24) on the roster. Keeping an entire roster together is an incredible feat. Usually at minimum a bench player or bullpen cog will be changed out in an off-season, but not this year.
It took some digging and some research, but I was able to only find one other season when this had occurred.
The other season? 1974.
The Opening Day roster in 1974 did not include a single player that had service time with another team in the previous season. You may remember the ‘Miracle Mets’ of 1973, who made it all the way to the World Series by only accumulating an 82-79 record and winning the NL East. The organization doubled down on that squad, which would result in an epic flop and a 71-91 record.
See how far you can go back in your mind to name the new face(s) on the squad every year. We will start you off…
2017: NONE!
2016: Neil Walker, Asdrubal Cabrera, Alejandro De Aza, Antonio Bastardo, Jim Henderson.
2015: Michael Cuddyer, John Mayberry Jr., Alex Torres
