My Favorite Five, Fuck It, Let’s Make It Ten, Met’s Moments

         Some people think I’m too tough on the Mets (you know who you are).   And as someone who takes all criticism very seriously, I had to sit down and give the critique some thought.  Why do I always fall back on the Mets whenever I want to make fun of a baseball team?  There are many, many teams that have worse pasts (Cubs), worse presents (Astros), and worse futures (Padres - Omar Minaya is their new President of Operations.  Gasp.  This will become much more horrifying as you progress down this list), yet I always find the Mets more comical than the rest.  
So, I decided to put together a list.  A list to fully explain why the Mets are so fucking hilarious.  It started off as a top five list, but it was excluding too many classic Met’s moments, so I bumped it up to ten.  Let's do this.

The Top Ten

10.  1962: The Beginning

Hey, life is tough when you’re an expansion team, but the Mets did their best in 1962 and signed two big name players.  Two-time batting title winner Richie Ashburn and eight-time All Star Gil Hodges.  Things were looking up for the Metropolitans.  Hey, even check out this extraordinarily upbeat promo video!  The bad news: Ashburn and Hodges were both at the end of the career and didn’t have much left in the tank.  The good news: this started a long and illustrious Met’s tradition of signing players who are washed-up and/or on the verge of retiring (see almost every name listed below).  Anyways, besides their two stars, the Met’s roster was, shall we say, pretty thin.  The hitting actually wasn’t that bad - no one besides Ashburn hit above .275, but it wasn’t legendarily atrocious.  However, when it came to pitching and defense, my friends, this ’62 Mets team set the bar for how we define "bad" in a baseball context.  Take a look at these studs:

Name	W	L	ERA	R	ER
Roger Craig	10	24	4.51	133	117
Al Jackson	8	20	4.40	132	113
Jay Hook	8	19	4.84	137	115
Bob Miller	1	12	4.89	98	78
Craig Anderson	3	17	5.35	108	78

One might say, hey, those ERAs aren’t too shabby!  And that’s exactly what I thought! Which left me with the obvious question, how the fuck did these guys lose so many games?  And then I saw the number of unearned runs they were allowing and it all became clear.  And I almost pee’d my pants. Sitting at my computer.  By myself.  Unable to stop laughing.  And here’s the reason why:

Name	Position	Games	Errors
Marv Throneberry	1B	97	17
Frank Thomas	LF, 1B, 3B	145	14
Charlie Neal	2B, SS, 3B	135	28
Felix Mantilla	3B, SS, 2B	129	20
Elio Chacon	SS, 2B, 3B	113	22
Rod Kanehl	2B, 3B, CF, LF, 1B, RF, SS	112	32

Just to name a few.  Of course, the number of errors is hilarious, but let’s dig even deeper.  Look at how many positions each one of these dudes were playing.  Poor Casey Stengel.  He was literally trying anything to field a team that could make it through nine innings alive.  Imagine how excruciatingly long some of their innings must have been.  Time for another highlight reel.  God, that was a good one.  Can someone contact the Guiness Book of World Records to see if Stengel broke the record for saying “placards” the most times in one minute?  But that's neither here nor there.  
        As the video said, the Mets were still outdrawing the Yankees, even as they were the worst team in baseball.  And possibly all of human history.  How can this be?  How could fans still be piling in by the truckload to see this atrocity?  I think I’ll leave that explanation up to Al Pacino (just replace “gambling” with “Mets”).  More than anything else, this inaugural team established the most crucial factor about why the Met's are so hilarious:  fans that care a TON about a team that sucks.


9. Mo Vaughn’s Contract: 3 years, $46.5 million

Years	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
‘02-’03	566	77	141	29	87	73	0.249	0.346	0.438	0.784

When the Mets signed Mo Vaughn they thought they were getting a power hitter to fill out the middle of their lineup.  In the first ten years of his career, Vaughn won an MVP and averaged 30 homers a season.  I guess the Mets figured they could they to get that kind of production and then some.  However, I also guess that Steve Phillips must’ve been too busy sexually harassing any woman within a 100-ft radius to notice that Vaughn had become an injury-plagued, cancerous locker room presence who was 50 pounds overweight.  Vaughn never did get back to his 30 homer shape, in fact, he couldn’t even get to 30 bombs over the course of the entire contract.  Furthermore, he retired a year before it was up.  Thus, the Mets had to pay him $17 million for a season he did not even play in (you will soon find that this is a common theme on this list).  Actually, by Met’s standards, this was a pretty solid transaction.  Only $1.5 million per home run?  Not bad.  In celebration, I’ll bet Steve Phillips probably had a young intern...Jesus, who the fuck knows what Steve Phillips had that young intern do... 

8.  Johan Santana’s Contract: 6 years, $137.5 million

Years	W	L	ERA	IP	H	BB	SO	WHIP
08-’12	46	34	3.18	717.0	658	203	607	1.201

Unfortunately, I can’t blame Steve Phillips for this one.  This was the unmistakable handiwork of Omar Minaya.  And, to be honest, there’s a part of me that does feel like a dick for second-guessing trading for Santana.  Up to the that point in his career, he had won two Cy Young’s, and had averaged 230 IP for the five seasons prior to being traded to the Mets.  But, as is tradition, Santana immediately started having injury problems once he put on the Met uniform.  He’s been brilliant when he’s been healthy, but unfortunately, that hasn’t been too often.  The numbers up to this point?  Slightly under $3 million per win and slightly under $200K per inning pitched.  My god, I am having so much fun doing this list.  It makes the searing pain of the Zito contract feel just a little bit better.  But wait, it is not over yet Met’s fans, Santana still a team option for $25 million in 2014.  Knowing the Met’s front office, they’ll probably think this is a good deal and pick it up.  But who knows?  Maybe Santana will win 50 games next season and make the whole contract worth it.  No.  It still wouldn't be worth it...

(I was going to put Mo Vaughn ahead of Santana until I discovered this little gem: the Mets traded away Carlos Gomez to the Twins for him.  Yes, the same Carlos Gomez  who leads the Major Leagues in WAR this season and is better than every Met’s outfielder combined.  Sorry, Johan, you didn’t deserve this.)


7. The Transcendent Nucleus of Ike Davis & Lucas Duda

If I had a nickel for every time one of my Met’s friends blew these dudes up over the years.  That should have been the first red flag.  Let’s take a peak at Ike Davis first.  
Davis came out of the gate strong.  He was a monster at ASU, a first-round draft pick, and flew through the Met’s system into the Major Leagues (playing only 65 above single-A).  In his first season, he was seventh in the Rookie of the Year voting.  Met’s coaches, players, and fans alike hailed him for his phenomenal defense and freakish power.  He entered the 2011 season with expectations sky high.  However, he rolled his ankle on a routine pop-up and only played 36 games that year.  But they were a solid 36 games.  Here were his career numbers up to that point:  

Years	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
’10-’11	652	93	177	26	96	89	0.271	0.357	0.460	0.817

Essentially a full year’s worth of playtime.  Awesome numbers.  Here’s what has happened since:

Years	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
’12-’13	769	90	163	38	115	96	0.212	0.300	0.403	0.703

Ouch.  The home run numbers and the lack of roster depth are keeping him in the lineup, but, good god, that batting average...
Now to Mr. Duda.  Although Duda did not have as much collegiate hype as Davis, but once he got into the Met’s farm system, he was a smashing success.  In 2010, he was named Met’s Organizational Player of the Year (who won in 2009, you ask?  None other than Ike Davis) and got called up for a cup of coffee.  In 2011, his first full season in the Majors, Duda looked just as good as advertised:  

Years	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
2011	301	38	88	10	50	33	0.292	0.370	0.482	0.852

Duda’s big, powerful physique (6’4” 255 lb) projected for great future power numbers, and looked to add a third piece to the middle of the order, alongside Davis and David Wright (oh, David, I’m so sorry for all you have had to go through.  Just so you know, the Giants are waiting with open arms).  Unfortunately, the progression hasn’t really gone as planned:

Years	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
’12-’13	627	72	149	26	80	89	0.238	0.338	0.407	0.745

These mediocre numbers, coupled with trips to the DL and brutal defensive metrics (-3.9 dWAR over the past two seasons.  That is a difficult territory to reach in only 189 games), has dampened the expectations for Duda.  As a Met’s fan, I would be more scared of Duda than Davis as he seems more ripe for the ridiculously overpaid contract extension.


6. The Bernie Madoff connection

Things the Met’s used Madoff’s money to pay for:

Team Payroll (from approximately 1998 to 2008)
Their Minor League affiliate in Brooklyn
Their TV network, SportsNet New York
Citi Field

That is quite a shitload of money.  As I am far too dumb to figure out which of the many conflicting reports about the depth Met’s owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz’s involvement with Madoff is true, I don’t have much more to say about this one. Some reports say they lost $700 million.  Some said they made out like bandits.  The fact that they had to take out loans from both the MLB and Bank of America after the collapse of the Madoff Empire makes it look like the Met’s owners lost out.  But, then, the fact that they had to pay out $162 million in reparations to Madoff fraud victims seems to send the opposite message.  Either way, the mere symmetry of Met’s on-field and off-field lack of financial sense titillates my sense of humor enough to put this at Number 6.  

5. Omar Minaya

Finally.  I’ve been giddy to get to this point of the list.  Literally, I cut the Madoff section short just to get into the top five.  This is where things get so comical, so out of hand, that it literally seems like the Met’s ownership is purposefully running the franchise into the ground.  Omar Fucking Minaya.  I really gotta give this guy props.  How he got the General Manager job with the Mets is single greatest mystery in the history of baseball.  Bigger than the goat story from Chicago.  Or whether or not the Bambino actually called his shot.  Or how Mariano Rivera has thrown the exact same pitch for 19 seasons, yet no one can hit it.  Or how fat Bartolo Colon would get if he wasn’t on PEDs.   I have two theories:  (1) Minaya has a flash drive chalk-full of pictures and high-definition videos of Fred Wilpon engaging in every depraved sex act imaginable, or (2) the lingering stench of previous GMs Jim Duquette (mastermind behind the famed Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano deal) and Steve Phillips was so blinding that Wilpon was simply unable to read Minaya’s resume and he hired him on the spot.  I only say this because if Wilpon had been able to read Minaya’s resume and he saw:

1997-2001: Assistant GM to Steve Phillips 

(I probably would have been the ended of the interview there, but, hypothetically, if Wilpon had continued...)

2002-2004: Montreal Expos GM

Trades Included:  (A) Jason Bay (the good version, not the old washed up version.  This will not be the last time he gets brought up) for Lou Collier (who went on to play 13 games with the Expos and hit .091)
(B) Chris Young (the big ass pitcher, not the outfielder) for Einar Diaz

(C) And, the grandaddy of them all: Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore, and Brandon Phillips for half a season of Bartolo Colon, who he then flipped for a 38 year-old Orlando Hernandez who had rotator cuff surgery and missed the entire season, Rocky Biddle, and Jeff Liefer (PLEASE, someone find me a trade in the past 25 years that’s worse than this)

There is no conceivable world (outside of the hilarious circus that is the Met’s organization) where a guy like this gets hired...

...because he’ll do stuff like this: 

4. Jason Bay’s Contract: 4 years, $66 million (+$3 million for releasing him early)

Years	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
’10-’12	986	128	231	26	124	116	0.234	0.318	0.369	0.687

No, your eyes are not deceiving you.  I shit you not, this is the same Jason Bay that Minaya for Lou Collier while he was with the Expos (see what I’m saying about the deliberate destruction of this franchise?).  Seriously, Omar, just out of pure pride alone how do you go out and re-sign a guy that you gave away seven years prior?  This is just one of the many burning questions in life that we will never know the answer to.  Anyways, how bout some fascinating Jason Bay math.  The Mets paid $2.65 million per home run and just slightly less than $300k per hit over the course of these brilliant 3 years.  But, wait, there’s even more good news.  It only cost the Mets $18 million to watch him play for the Mariners this year.  And it will only cost them an additional $3 million next year to watch him hang out on his couch and play golf on the weekends (If you think that it would be impossible for Jason Bay’s name to somehow pop into this article for a third time.  Think again).   

Good shit, Omar, you’ve somehow managed to keep that heater going from your Expo days.  However, we haven’t even gotten to Minaya’s Sistine Chapel of terrible signings yet.  And here it is.  The climactic conclusion of Omar Minaya’s bid for worst GM of all time:

3. Oliver Perez’s Contract: 3 years, $36 million

Years	W	L	ERA	IP	H	BB	SO	WHIP
’09-’10	3	9	6.18	112.1	123	100	99	1.985

Omar, Omar, Omar.  When are you going to learn?  After Perez went 10-7 with a 4.22 ERA, and led the league in walks, Omar Minaya once again lost his mind and gave Perez a huge contract extension.  Minaya really outdid himself on this one: $12 million per win, over $320k per inning pitched.  And, keeping the trend alive, the Mets paid $12 million to watch him play in 2011.  Furthermore, Perez has gotten his career back on track as pitching out of the bullpen for the Seattle Mariners (to play with none other than JASON BAY!).  


2. EVERYTHING about Steve Phillips

I can’t imagine that there is a bigger Steve Phillip’s fan on planet Earth than Omar Minaya.  If I made a similar list with any other team in the MLB, a character like Minaya would fucking guaranteed to be the highest rated GM.   However, the Mets aren’t “any other team.”  They’re special.  
Here’s the Steve Phillips highlight reel:

1997-1998, Part 1 as Met’s GM: “The Rise.”  Phillips builds a strong nucleus of players, the Met’s are looking well set up for the future.  In ’98, he gets sued for sexual harassment by a former Met’s employee.  Phillips (who’s married) admits to a consensual relationship with the woman, as well as a few others.  Hey, what can you do?   It’s alright big guy, we’ll let that one slide.

1999-2000, Part 2 as Met’s GM: “The Glory Days.”  After a brief hiatus during the whole “harassment” thing, Phillips returns and the Mets miraculously make the 2000 World Series, but are brutally swept by the Yankees.

2001-2003, Part 3 as Met’s GM: “The Downfall.”   After the amazing run in 2000, the team (behind a series of atrocious decisions on Phillips’s part) progressively settles into the bottom of the NL East.  But wait!  Phillips pulls off the obligatory heist from Omar Minaya and gets Jason Bay for Lou Collier.  What a move!  Oh, no.  It is a short-lived moment of brilliance, as he then immediately flips Bay for Bobby Jones and Jason Middlebrook.  Forget Kevin Bacon, the game should be called “Six Degrees of Jason Bay.”  

2005-2009, ESPN “Analyst:”  “The Downfall After the Downfall.”  Once again, Phillips gets caught with his pants down.  This time with a 22 year-old production assistant who from all accounts seems like quite a whack job.  Their usual meeting place?  A Target parking lot.  Jesus Christ, Steve, a Target parking lot?  C’mon man.  Phillips is fired soon after the news leaks. 

One, how did Steve Phillips become an analyst on ESPN?  It’s the baseball equivalent of Jessica Alba teaching acting at Juilliard.  Two, and I’m really not trying to be mean here, but did you see the chicks that he got caught with??  Plus, he already had an attractive wife!  Stevie, Stevie, Steve.  We gotta sit down and have a serious talk.  You’re a decent enough looking guy, you’ve got some coin, and you’re a fucking former major leaguer for god’s sake!  Ok, your chemicals from your spray tan might be starting to effect your eyesight, but you gotta start being a little more judicious, man.  Wait, I’m asking a man who signed Bobby Bonilla, Mo Vaughn, Kevin Appier, Pedro Astacio, and Jeremy Burnitz to be more judicious. Probably barking up the wrong tree on that one.  And, three, the true shocker: selling out Van Pelt, Davis, Herbstreit, and Erin Andrews?  Are you trying to single-handedly destroy ESPN??  (Although, how can any be surprised about Herbstreit?  That dude is way too good looking). 


1. Bobby Bonilla’s Contract: 25 years, $29.8 million

I’m sure many of you have heard of this legend, but Bobby Bonilla (who retired in 2001) had the 11th highest salary on the Mets this season.  The good news?  His WAR of 0.0 is higher than Lucas Duda, Ike Davis, Omar Quintanilla, and Rueben Tejada.  So maybe this isn’t as bad of a move as it sounds.  Let’s go back in time and break this bad boy down.
The year is 2000.  Steve Phillips realizes that Bobby Bonilla is a total lemon.  Oops.  Instead of paying Bonilla the $5.9 million that the Mets owe him, Phillips and the crack-staff of Met’s executives comes up with the ingenious plan to pay him approximately $30 million over the course of the 25 years, from 2011-2035.  Therefore, Bobby Bonilla will be 72 years old once the Mets stop paying him.  So many questions come to mind.  Does he automatically break Satchel Paige’s record for oldest Major League player?  How did this make sense to anyone in the Met’s front office?  Actually, Bernie Madoff was integrally tied into this decision.  At the time, owner Fred Wilpon (I was going to give Wilpon his own ranking, but I figured it’d be overkill, as I have mentioned his name like half a dozen times) was reaping the benefits of those special-double-digit-Ponzi-scheme-returns, and, for those of you familiar with the Time Value of Money, calculated that he’d be saving a bundle (approximately $60 million) by investing the money now, and paying Bonilla later.   Obviously, that wasn't the case once the Madoff cookie crumbled.  
         If I am going to be fair, there is still a completely valid argument that the Mets actually made the right move by structuring Bonilla's contract this way.  But that does not change the fact that it is hilarious that they're paying him until he's a senior citizen.  And I think it is also I bit of a stretch to assume that Bobby Bonilla is financially well-versed enough to get 8% a year.  I could be wrong.  But from what I know about Bobby Bo, I wouldn't bet on it.  

Concluding Thoughts

Isn’t it amazing how all of these different moments are intertwined?  Number 1 was only possible because of Number 6.  Number 5 (who is responsible for 3, 7, and 8) is connected to 2 (who is responsible for 1 and 9) through their connection to Number 3.  This incestuous nature of Met’s ineptitude is exactly what makes so easy to make fun of.  I feel like Robert Langdon piecing together the various aspects of an elaborate Illuminati scheme.  Except the plot is not to take over the world, but rather, to provide me with a lifetime’s worth of laughs (which is an inherently more fun, lower stress, kind of investigation).  In conclusion, I do not think my use of the Mets as my go-to joke is unfair.  In fact, after writing this, I feel I should start incorporating it far more often.

*Bonus Question* 

Looking Into the Future, What Trade is More Possible?

(A) Matt Harvey for a pack of gum?

or

(B) Trading Zach Wheeler back for Carlos Beltran (a classic Met’s move), then they’ll kill two birds with one stone by getting rid of young talent before it blossoms and getting an overpaid player on the verge of becoming washed up.