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 4
Strengths
Prime Jerry Koosman and Matt Harvey is a pretty damn good 1-2 punch at the start of any rotation. Then to have a big-game close like Tug McGraw at the end of the game, and your team won’t have to score a ton of runs.
Strong top of the lineup that will get on base, has a little bit of speed, and then Lucas Duda and David Wright for the big blasts.
Outfield defense looks like a solid group that will be able to track plenty of balls down for the pitching staff. Stearns behind the plate is a clear plus for the defense and the pitching staff.
Weaknesses
Team 4 could definitely use a little more power, particularly from the outfield where they only have one season of at least 20 home runs from the entire group.
I know some would like me to point to the infield defense here, but Wright had some great seasons at third, Kevin Elster is solid at shortstop, and Duda’s defense was underrated and just fine at first. But clearly, they have a defensive issue at second base in Daniel Murphy.
Looking at the bottom of the potential lineup with the likes of John Stearns, Cleon Jones, and Elster, and you don’t have much power again.
Past Teams
