Metsblog reports that over Johan Santan’s last six decisions, the Mets are 0-6, although Santana has an ERA of 2.48.
Even by Mets historical standards, this is impressive. I know that these numbers aren’t directly comparable, since Santana himself is not 0-6 over those six starts, but this reminds me of:
1962 Roger Craig 5-22, 3.78 ERA
1973 Jerry Koosman 14-15, 2.84 ERA
1974 Jon Matlack 13-15, 2.41 ERA
1977 Jerry Koosman 8-20, 3.49 ERA
We used to call someone who pitched well but wasn’t getting wins a “hard luck pitcher.” Somehow, though, I would find it hard to call Johan Santana a hard luck anything. I think things are going to be fine in the long run, but we are definitely in one of those old-fashioned Mets vortexes here.
Ah, Koosman and Matlack. Remember when Matlack got clocked by a line drive? That was one of the scariest things I had yet seen at my tender age.
Who should be the poster children of the Seventies Mets Syndrome? The Koosmans and Matlacks, bless their hearts?– if they didn’t make the Hall of Fame, they sported serious credentials for sainthood. They stubbornly kept pushing a Sisyphean rock of a team uphill. Remember the season George Stone had in ‘73? Bob Apodaca? Tug McGraw? And of course, the Franchise?
Or should it be the Ellis Valentines? Or Mazz? Or Dave Kingman? Oh, I don’t want to think about it anymore!
Speaking of something I don’t want to think about, Dana, I wanted to ask you your thoughts about all this static surrounding Jose Reyes. It’s making me very upset, not least of all because of the confusion of my own feelings about it all. I seem to feel a different way every moment!
For whose sake do all these middle-aged, mostly white people, me included sometimes, want him to “grow up”? Why does he have to “be a man”? He’s batting almost .300. The mistakes he’s making are mistakes not of lassitude, but of effort. The emotion he’s showing comes from the engagement that all us old farts have been saying all season that we want to see from this team.
I firmly believe that is this team was rolling, with a record like that of the White Sox or Angels, we would all be continuing to be charmed by Jose.
Theresa. Yes I want to write about this Reyes thing and I want to do it soon. It is interesting and it is another one of these old Mets vortexes (the guy with immense talent and a somewhat unusual personality who starts getting pushed a little too hard by people who don’t really understand him and it’s hard to defend him completely but it isn’t too much for people to try not to misinterpret his quirks as if he were a different sort of person, i.e. Strawberry, Mitchell, Milledge maybe maybe not). The only reason I haven’t done it yet is, to be prosaic about it, I’m trying, along with my wife, to get my 17-year-old daughter ready for a 3-week study abroad gig in Paris. The weirdness of the bloggers life is that we have to fit all this blogger stuff sideways into our real lives. But I love Jose Reyes and the way he plays even though few people have made me curse at the screen more frequently than he has this year.
Thanks, Dana, for replying. Good luck to your girl. Paris at 17!!!