Unlike in the 80’s, These Mets are Built to Last

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Some ballclubs are so transcendently good that their successors can never escape them. To this day, Cincinnati fans measure the home nine against the Big Red Machine, and always find them wanting. Tony LaRussa’s Cardinals may have been the best team in the league this decade, but they aren’t Whitey Herzog’s Cardinals, and if you spend any time in Busch Stadium, the people will let you know it.

Not only were the Davey Johnson Mets of the mid-to-late 80s such a team, but they are deeply imprinted in the franchise’s DNA.You can, for instance, trace the failures of the 2001-04 Mets directly back to the organizational obsession with character that grew out of the failure of that team to become a dynasty. Only this year, the 20th anniversary of the Mets’ great 1986 campaign, has the franchise really begun to embrace that team’s legacy in various ways, from the prominent place of Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling on the team’s network, to the signs all over Shea recalling the last Mets team to win a World Series.

With this year’s edition dominating the National League,it’s hard not to draw a comparison between them and their forbears. That isn’t necessarily going to flatter Willie Randolph’s team – while they’re as good as anyone had hoped, the 1986 Mets are one of the best teams of all time. Even should this year’s team win 100 games and a World Series, they’re not going to be as good as that team.

They do have a chance, though, to surpass them in a far more important area – sustained success. With a brilliant manager, an awesome collection of young talent, shrewd executives making great trades, a productive farm system, and plenty of money flowing in from ticket sales and cable TV, the late-80s Mets should have been the best team in the game for years. They weren’t. The Mets under Randolph and Omar Minaya not only have a chance to do what their predecessors couldn’t, they may have a better chance than that team ever had.

This may seem a convenient argu ment to make with 20 years’ hindsight. The 1986 Mets were, after all, a staggeringly talented team. Dwight Gooden was 21, Sid Fernandez 23, Ron Darling 25, and Bobby Ojeda 28, and the four pitchers combined for a 66-23 record and averaged well over 200 innings apiece.

Lenny Dykstra was 23 and Darryl Strawberry 24,and while their raw numbers weren’t impressive by today’s standards, they hit about as well as Houston’s Lance Berkman (.315 AVG/.393 OBA/.599 SLG) is this year. They might not have had spots for them yet, but the Mets had Howard Johnson and Kevin Mitchell, both of whom were clearly ready for substantial roles, on the bench.And Davey Johnson was the canniest manager of his day,able to take advantage of every player’s strengths while protecting him from his weaknesses. Even leaving aside great veterans like Hernandez and Gary Carter, this team was stocked.

The usual argument is that the Mets would have gone on to be a dynasty were it not for drugs, but I don’t buy that. The real problems were various. One was that veterans faded early – Carter and Hernandez were at an age at which you’d expect them to start declining, but they broke down much faster than expected. Another was that some players just didn’t develop as they might have – Dykstra in particular didn’t fulfill his potential until he left New York, but Johnson also had only one season in which he was a star and Fernandez never became anything more than a Steve Trachsel type.

The biggest problem, though, was that what made those Mets exceptional was young pitching talent, and they blew it because they worked the young pitchers too hard. Neither Gooden nor Darling were ever the same after the 1986 season, and Fernandez never took the step forward that might have been expected. While that might have had something to do with their nightlife, what we know now about pitcher workloads makes it seem a lot more likely that routinely pitching 250 innings a year before they were 25 had a greater effect than anyone thought at the time.

The current Mets, meanwhile, are built in more or less exactly the opposite way – with exceptional young positional talent and veteran pitchers, and with more of their talent tied up in young players who have realized their potential than those who have started to show it. Because young hitters are at a smaller risk of getting hurt, it’s far more likely that David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and Lastings Milledge will be the heart of a good Mets team in 2009 than it ever was that Gooden, Darling, and Fernandez would be at the heart of one in 1989.

The Mets’ best veterans – Delgado and Pedro Martinez – are also much likelier than their counterparts to hold their value for another few years. In sum, even if these Mets aren’t quite as talented, the distribution of that talent is more stable and likelier to keep the team in contention through various ups and downs over the next few years, whether or not they come close to equaling their predecesors’ accomplishments for the rest of the year. They aren’t as flashy and they aren’t nearly as fun, but the Mets may actually for once be in it for the long run.

tmarchman@nysun.com


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