The MMO team will be going all around the field, sharing our favorite Mets players by position.
Next up, second base.
Jeff Kent was a childhood favorite, and Fonzie was a thrill, but Jeff McNeil may very well be my favorite Mets second baseman. Such a pure hitter. Absolutely gritty defensive player. He’s gonna be a great one by the time he hangs them up.
The answer is and always will be Edgardo Alfonso. As soon as my brain was developed enough to remember traumatic events, the Subway Series rolled around. My brother’s favorite player was Mike Piazza, and I took on the scrappy, do-everything guy. I eventually owned two bumblebee fish named Edgardo and Alfonso. I cried in a Publix parking lot when I read in a newspaper that he signed with the Giants.
As our own Marshall Field looked at in 2020, he had the two best offensive seasons by a second baseman in Mets history. He had the best single game by a second baseman for the Mets, too, going 6-6 with three home runs in a late-August game in 1999. He accumulated more WAR for the Mets than Piazza and Jose Reyes. He’s my favorite Mets second baseman, and he honestly might be my favorite Mets third baseman (where he played more innings), but give me a few more weeks to think about that. My biggest ask to the new administration? Make sure Fonzie is back in the organization as soon as possible.
My all-time Mets second baseman is Wally Backman. Backman will always have the halo effect because he was on the 1986 team, but beyond that, he was a gritty player, a team player, and a true table setter. With Backman and Dysktra/Wilson at the top of the order, as Tim McCarver would say, “the Mets could first-and-third you to death”. Backman was an outstanding bunter, a switch-hitter (though much better from the left side) and a good fielder. Backman had many key hits in the 1986 post season.
It was disappointing when he was traded to Minnesota before the 1989 season. As a Met, Blackman hit .283 with a .353 OBP over nine seasons. He was a true “throw back” player, a guy who was small of stature but huge in determination and grit. I’d like to see more players like that on the current team.
My favorite Mets second baseman of all-time is Daniel Murphy, as he was one of the player’s you just loved (and sometimes hated) to watch. Murph played the game with a reckless abandon that could often decide a game for either team, but when that aggressiveness paid off for the Mets, it was a thrill to watch.
The epitome of this was in the 2015 NLDS, when Murphy went from first-to-third on a walk. That play turned the tides of an elimination game and eventually helped bring the Mets to the World Series. At the beginning of his career, Murphy was a man without a position as his natural third base was already taken by a guy named David Wright.
We all watched his struggles in the outfield before finally finding a home at second base in 2012. Two years later he was playing the position in an All-Star Game. Daniel Murphy’s heroics in 2015 will always define his legacy as a Met, but it was the entirety of his wild ride with the franchise that endeared him to me as a fan.
Even though he played a good share of his games at third base, “Fonzie” is remembered most fondly by me (and by other Mets fans) as a second baseman — and well he should be. He came to the organization as an undrafted free agent in 1991, made it to the majors in 1995, and was an integral part of the franchise’s best days under Bobby Valentine.
It’s impossible to think of the Mets’ postseason triumphs in 1999 or 2000 without recalling some of Alfonzo’s best performances: the first inning homer to jump-start New York in the one-game Wild Card playoff in Cincinnati followed a night later by two homers (including the ninth inning grand slam) versus Arizona in October 1999. And, of course, the memorable 6-for-6 night in Houston in August of that same season — still, in my mind, the greatest single-game hitting performance in Mets history.
Mike Piazza deservedly garnered the headlines from that team, but Alfonzo consistently delivered in an understated manner which New Yorkers truly appreciated.
That Daniel Murphy 2015 postseason run will remain one of the first things I will think of when I think of second base. His homers in six straight games helped lead the Mets to their NL Championship. Am I biased because this was just one of two Mets World Series runs I’ve witnessed in my life (and I was only 10 for the first one)? Maybe, especially as we all know he was not known for his defense.
