Casual Diehard

Yesterday, Pete Alonso had the 186th game in Mets history with a home run and a caught stealing. It was the first time that Alonso has done this in his career, which makes him the 91st Met to post such a performance.

No Met had homered and been caught stealing in a game since last July 4, when Brandon Nimmo did it in Cincinnati. Nimmo has had three of these games, and the Mets have won nine of the 10 games since the start of the 2019 season where they had a player go deep but also get nabbed.

The somewhat dubious team record for a single-season is four, set by Lee Mazzilli in 1978 and matched by Darryl Strawberry in 1985. Strawberry is the franchise leader at 16 games with a homer and caught stealing, with Mazzilli at 11, followed by Howard Johnson at eight, José Reyes at 7, and David Wright and Joel Youngblood at five apiece.

What Alonso would like to have done yesterday is have his seventh career game with a homer and a steal, which would snap a tie with Lenny Dykstra and tie Lindor and Cleon Jones for 11th on the Mets’ franchise list. Ahead of them, and more in Lindor’s sights in the years to come? Strawberry’s team record of 35 should be safe for a while, with Johnson (28), Reyes (27), and Wright (20) all far above the rest of the field. Then it’s Carlos Beltrán and Mookie Wilson (13), Kevin McReynolds (12), Tommie Agee (10), and Mike Cameron and Dave Kingman (9).

According to Stathead, the career leaders for homer/steal games are…

* Barry Bonds, 102

* Rickey Henderson, 87

* Álex Rodriguez, 65

* Bobby Bonds, 61

* Joe Morgan, 60

* Willie Mays, 58

* César Cedeño, 48

* Beltran, 44

* Bobby Abreu, 43

* Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Alfonso Soriano, Larry Walker, 42

* Strawberry, 40

And to get back where we started, the leaders for homer/caught stealing combo games…

* Mays, 29

* Babe Ruth, 27

* Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, 25

* Bobby Bonds, 24

* Henderson, 22

* José Canseco, 21

* Cedeño, Lou Gehrig, Mike Schmidt, 20

* Morgan, Gary Sheffield, Strawberry, 19

One more note on Alonso. As he tied Keith Hernandez on the Mets’ career RBI list, he also tied Mex in homer/caught stealing games. It was also against the Pirates, but at Three Rivers Stadium, on April 21, 1987: Hernandez was caught stealing by the battery of Brian Fisher and Junior Ortiz, but took Bob Walk deep for an insurance run that helped lessen the impact of Barry Bonds’ three-run homer off Bob Ojeda in the eighth. Hernandez singled and scored in the ninth, and Jesse Orosco closed out the 9-6 contest, getting Bobby Bonilla to ground out to end it with Bonds, who would have represented the tying run had he gotten the chance to hit, left on deck.

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Hail to the CBA and the Yakima Sun Kings forever. And also hail to the corner of the record book where David Peterson now finds himself: the first pitcher in major league history, according to Stathead, to post a line with at least six walks, five strikeouts, a hit batter, and a home run allowed — with the homer accounting for the only run against him — in fewer than five innings.

Or four innings, for that matter. Or, in fact, had the exact combination of six walks and five strikeouts with their one run allowed on a homer and their hit batsman. Peterson is the very first.

Peterson did all that while throwing 91 pitches to get 11 outs, and the Mets didn’t come completely unglued until the seventh inning, after which the back-to-back home runs by D.J. Stewart and Jonathan Araúz weren’t enough.

The previous record for fewest innings pitched in a game with at least six walks, five strikeouts, a hit batter, and a lone run on a homer was 5.2 for Jonathan Sánchez, for the Giants in Arizona on June 11, 2009. A Justin Upton homer and Max Scherzer on the (plus an Upton RBI single off Brandon Medders) lifted the Diamondbacks to a 2-1 win in that game.

Sánchez, who walked seven in that game 14 years ago, was the first pitcher to crack the six-inning barrier, and until last night was the only other pitcher at all to have a six-walk, five-strikeout game with a hit batter and the only run on a homer, in the entire 21st century. Sánchez remains the only pitcher ever to have such a line and be the losing pitcher.

The only other time that a pitcher’s team lost one of these games was April 15, 1942, when the Pirates scored five runs against Elmer Riddle in the first inning, and Ray Starr came in from the bullpen and kept things respectable, going the rest of the way with seven strikeouts and seven walks, and allowing the only other Pittsburgh run in a 6-2 affair on a Bob Elliott dinger.

There have been a bunch of different walk and strikeout totals among the now dozen pitchers in this group, but only one man hit two batters: Scott Garrelts plunked Brett Butler and Glenn Hubbard while also walking seven, striking out six, and outdueling Pascual Perez, who went the distance for Atlanta in a 2-1 loss (Chris Chambliss hit the homer) to Garrelts and the Giants at Candlestick Park on September 7, 1983.

Before Garrelts, there was Mike Torrez (1976 Orioles), Tom Griffin (1969 Astros), Ken McBride (1961 Angels), Pedro Ramos (1956 Senators), Bob Turley (1954 Orioles), Bobby Shantz (1952 A’s), and Rankin Johnson (1914 Chi-Feds), all in winning efforts of their own — sloppy games that were somehow one swing from being shutouts. Shantz went 14 innings at Yankee Stadium, striking 11 and walking seven in his game, while giving up the homer to Mickey Mantle and drilling Johnny Mize.

The one other pitcher on the list, the one between Garrelts and Sánchez? Dwight Gooden, against Atlanta at Shea on April 26, 1989. Ron Gant homered in the third inning, but the Mets scored two in the fifth for a 3-1 lead, and homers by Kevin McReynolds and Howard Johnson provided a 6-1 cushion. That was the final score, but Gooden provided some stress by walking his last two batters to load the bases in the ninth. Gerald Perry then made Randy Myers work for the last out, a 10-pitch battle finally ending with a foul tip into the glove of Gary Carter.

You can see that game now, thanks to the internet!

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Francisco Lindor joined the 20-20 club for the third time in his career last night, becoming the first Met to do so since Carlos Beltrán in 2008, and a moment he took pride in. There are more footsteps that Lindor can follow from Beltrán, an elite group that he’ll have the chance to join in the next few seasons.

Beltrán hit 435 home runs in his career and stole 312 bases, making him the only switch-hitter to go 300-300 in his career. Lindor is currently at 206-145, and he’s 29 years old. More than doubling his career steals on the back end is a huge ask, but with the new bigger bases and his great speed and baseball sense, Lindor should have a good shot at going 200-200.

Only four other switch-hitters have joined that club with Beltrán: charter member Howard Johnson, Devon White, Roberto Alomar, and Jimmy Rollins.

Soon enough, there will be another player in the club near and dear to Lindor: his former Cleveland teammate José Ramírez is just eight steals away from getting to 200 to go with 210 dingers. Ramírez is two homers and two steals away from matching Johnson with five 20-20 seasons. The only switch-hitter with more is Beltrán, who did it seven times.

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For all the maps of the conferences discussed during this episode, including the draft picks, please see the original post… having a glitch in the space-time-podcast continuum on an episode that was “about college football 300 years from now” is too funny. We had such a blast doing the episode, and we’ll just laugh about it taking an extra day to come out with the right audio!

We’ve not only fixed the audio now, but we’ve come up with a new TV show idea: K33LIN, where Keelin is 33 minutes in the future. She was 22 on the original pod, but this lets the title work with all due RE2PECT.

Thanks again to Commish from the Sickos Committee for joining us on another pod!

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Editor’s Note: Apologies for the unscheduled break. Between illness and a computer that suddenly borked, it made sense to just skip last week. Now we’re back with fresh We Can Pod It Out as well as the new Willets Pod that dropped this morning, our college football “preview” with the Sickos Committee.

Hey, Tim Locastro is back healthy after hurting his thumb in April. Just in time for the Mets’ stretch r—okay, here’s Tim’s home run chain.

* Tim Locastro hit his first home run off Nestor Cortes Jr., 7/31/19

* Nestor Cortes Jr. gave up his first home run to Josh Reddick, 4/3/18

* Josh Reddick hit his first home run off Brian Bass, 8/2/09

* Brian Bass gave up his first home run to Casey Kotchman, 4/1/08

* Casey Kotchman hit his first home run off Doug Waechter, 8/5/05

* Doug Waechter gave up his first home run to Josh Phelps, 9/9/03

* Josh Phelps hit his first home run off Jason Johnson, 7/17/02

* Jason Johnson gave up his first home run to Mike Piazza, 8/27/97

* Mike Piazza hit his first home run off Steve Reed, 9/12/92

Ten years after that, Reed, who debuted with the Giants, and Piazza, who of course was a Dodger to start his career, were united as Mets, with the reliever working in 15 games where Piazza was his batterymate. They worked together to record 10 strikeouts, with Reed allowing no home runs to any of the 63 batters he faced with Piazza behind the plate.

By that time, Piazza had homered three more times off Reed: at Coors Field in 1995 and Dodger Stadium in ‘95 and ‘96 while Reed was on the Rockies. Piazza was the only batter that Reed allowed more than two homers to in his career, and after the 2002 Jason Bay-Bobby Jones trade that brought Reed and Jason Middlebrook from San Diego to the Mets, Reed returned to Colorado. In 2004, he faced Piazza one last time, at Shea Stadium, inducing a 4-6-3 double play to end the seventh inning.

The real drama that day involved Piazza on the other side of the ball, as Tom Glavine was working on a no-hitter, having allowed just a walk to Denny Hocking in the top of the seventh. After Jeromy Burnitz flied out and Matt Holliday struck out to start the eighth, Kit Pellow spoiled the bid for history with a double.

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Editor’s Note: Oops! Keelin is 22 minutes in the future on this episode. We will be posting a new one, so you can actually hear the episode and not feel like you’re having a stroke, but a time traveling kind of goof… kind of fits?

Three hundred years have passed since the El Assico point-shaving scandal, an incident which started a series of revelations that Iowa-Iowa State may not have been disaster football simply because of its nature, but because players like Arland Bruce IV were allegedly betting the under and then falling down, tackled by nobody, a few yards short of touchdowns. Already, college football has been realigned into conferences based on teams’ nicknames (see below), and now it’s up to Keelin, Britt, and Commish from our friends the Sickos Committee to step up, as requested by President Yeshaha Hayes, and pick one team from each of those conferences to make their own leagues, the only surviving FBS football for the 24th century.

Or something like that. We had fun. Here are the conferences that Jesse made for the podcasters to draft from.

And here are the conferences that will move forward, for 2332 and beyond:

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He hasn’t homered as a Met yet, and Jonathan Araúz went 0-for-3 yesterday to fall from .333 to .167 (DJ Stewart now has a .259-.256 lead on Brandon Nimmo for active roster batting average, regardless of plate appearance totals), but let’s go ahead and head into the weekend with Araúz’s home run chain.

* Jonathan Araúz hit his first home run off Josh Tomlin, 9/27/20

* Josh Tomlin gave up his first home run to José Molina, 7/31/10

* José Molina hit his first home run off Rocky Biddle, 5/10/01

* Rocky Biddle gave up his first home run to Joe Oliver, 8/10/00

* Joe Oliver hit his first home run off Ricky Horton, 8/18/89

* Ricky Horton gave up his first home run to Jeffrey Leonard, 4/7/84

* Jeffrey Leonard hit his first home run off Pete Falcone, 4/25/80

* Pete Falcone gave up his first home run to Vic Correll, 4/13/75

* Vic Correll hit his first home run off Randy Moffitt, 7/31/74

* Randy Moffitt gave up his first home run to Garry Jestadt, 6/25/72

* Garry Jestadt hit his first home run off Mike Torrez, 5/14/72

* Mike Torrez gave up his first home run to Adolfo Phillips, 4/19/68

* Adolfo Phillips hit his first home run off Barney Schultz, 9/6/65

* Barney Schultz gave up his first home run to Ernie Banks, 4/16/55

* Ernie Banks hit his first home run off Gerry Staley, 9/20/53

* Gerry Staley gave up his first home run to Sid Gordon, 7/11/47

* Sid Gordon hit his first home run off Jim Tobin, 4/27/43

* Jim Tobin gave up his first home run to Dizzy Dean, 8/22/37

* Dizzy Dean hit his first home run off Ed Brandt, 7/31/32

* Ed Brandt gave up his first home run to Andy Reese, 4/19/28

* Andy Reese hit his first home run off Bill Sherdel, 6/19/27

* Bill Sherdel gave up his first home run to Heinie Groh, 6/22/18

* Heinie Groh hit his first home run off Frank Allen, 7/28/13

* Frank Allen gave up his first home run to Owen Wilson, 7/15/12

* Owen Wilson hit his first home run off Johnny Lush, 4/23/08

* Johnny Lush gave up his first home run to Johnny King, 5/18/06

* Johnny King hit his first home run off Ed Poole, 4/29/03

* Ed Poole gave up his first home run to Elmer Flick, 5/16/01

* Elmer Flick hit his first home run off Red Ehret, 6/1/98

* Red Ehret gave up his first home run to Billy Shindle, 7/7/88

This was the first home run allowed by Ehret, pitching for the Kansas City Cowboys in the American Association against Shindle and the Baltimore Orioles. Ehret was sold after the season to the Louisville Colonels for $500, and stayed there for three years. In the 1890 proto-World Series against the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, Ehret pitched two complete games, winning both, and he closed out Louisville’s other win in the series, which went down as a 3-3-1 tie. Ehret also was 3-for-7 with a triple in the series, but the real hitting stars were Germany Smith with two triples and seven runs batted in for Brooklyn, and Chicken Wolf, who knocked in eight of Louisville’s 32 runs in the series, while going 9-for-25 with four extra-base hits and four more runs scored.

Chicken Wolf’s given name was William Van Winkle Wolf, and he led the American Association that year with 197 hits, 260 total bases, and a .363 average. He was Louisville’s all-time leader in games played, with 1,193, and collected 1,437 hits to lead the franchise, as well as 109 triples and 591 RBI.

Ehret didn’t stick around that long. In 1892, he joined the National League’s Pittsburgh Pirates, and in 1893 led the league with four shutouts — and 23 hit batsmen. He was traded to St. Louis after the 1894 season, and on to Cincinnati a year later. Finally, Ehret was dealt back to Louisville before the 1898 season, but the real prize for the Colonels in that deal was Billy Hoy, the deaf player who in his age 36 and 37 seasons racked up 29 triples and scored 221 runs. Hoy was previously a tangent at the end of the Jeff McNeil home run chain, so that’s fun. More fun than the Mets are having.

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Jonathan Araúz went 1-for-3 in his Mets debut last night, so he’s at .333 for a batting average, which puts him ahead of D.J. Stewart (.261, 6-for-23) with the highest batting average among active Mets. Michael Perez is 4-for-7 (.571) but in the minors now, while Tommy Pham (.268) got traded. Among qualified hitters, defending National League batting champion Jeff McNeil is tied with Brandon Nimmo at .256.

The Mets are hitting .239 as a team, with a .319 on-base percentage. It’s absolutely as bad as it sounds.

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Who knows how long Josh Walker will have to sit on being the last pitcher to commit a walk-off balk? Before last night, it had only been since July 8 of last year, when Rays pitcher Matt Wisler balked with not-yet-a-Met Tyler Naquin at the plate in the 10th inning in Cincinnati, but before that, it had been nearly four years since Dylan Floro, then with the Dodgers, balked with the bases loaded in Seattle to let Cameron Maybin come home with a 10th-inning winning run.

If Walker is lucky, he won’t have to wait until the end of the season. There have been a couple of other times that there were multiple walk-off balks in a single campaign: Ernie Broglio of the Cubs was called for one in the 14th inning on April 28, 1965, in Cincinnati, followed on June 8 by Astros hurler Hal Woodeshick balking with the bases loaded in the 11th inning in Pittsburgh. Also, in 2000, we saw Jeff Zimmerman balk in Baltimore to give the Orioles a 4-3 win over the Rangers — also on April 28 — and then just 10 days later, John Rocker gifting the Marlins a victory, with Danny Bautista scoring the winning run after pinch-running for Paul Bako. Last but not least, in 2011, there were walk-off balks by D.J. Carrasco costing the Mets a game in Atlanta on June 16, and then Aaron Crow with the Royals, as the White Sox won on the Fourth of July.

Walker is definitely lucky in one way: he’s on the 2023 Mets, and last night’s loss is just going to blend into the background of all the misery.

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It was 32 years ago yesterday that the Mets traded Ron Darling to the Expos for Tim Burke, who himself was then traded to the Yankees for Lee Guetterman while Darling went from Montreal to Oakland after just three starts for the ‘Spos, and wound up pitching Game 3 of the 1992 ALCS for the A’s.

That was after David Cone, traded from the Mets to the Blue Jays in that 1992 season, pitched Game 2 for Toronto. Could we soon see another playoff series with recently-dealt Mets pitcher? Max Scherzer already is gone, and today we’ll find out if Justin Verlander follows.

Cone got the win in Game 2, Darling took the loss in Game 3, and the Blue Jays won the series in six before going on to beat Atlanta in the World Series. There, Cone victimized another future broadcaster, John Smoltz, helping Toronto win its first championship.

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