It was 25 years ago this week (the 22nd actually) that the Mets by the Numbers project first published on the Internet. The earliest versions of the site seem to have vanished but here’s an archived page from 2001 where I discuss the arrival of Jerrod Riggan and the demotion of Donne Wall. And then the return of Donne Wall. It was riveting stuff.
When I started this project I was single; today I’m married almost 20 years and my son is picking a college. I was anxious back then to participate in this new internet thing and was full of energy from the excitement of falling back in love baseball again after taking much of the 90s off.
I had been turned off by the fall of the Mets would-be dynasty. I was living outside the Sportschannel/WOR belt, and I was angry about the strike. When I moved to NYC, the Mets helped me find my way in the city and I fell hard for Bobby Valentine. I’d spent a few months combing through yearbooks and scorecards with the idea I could find the uni number of every one of the roughly 600 guys who played for the Mets through then. I badly missed that goal when I first published but it was better than what else existed at the time, which was nothing.
Against every rule of writing a blog, I’ve gone through period of frequent updates and months of nothing, then again “blogs” didn’t really exist in 1999. Purely by coincidence this site launched within weeks of the Ultimate Mets Database and when Paul Lukas started writing about sports uniforms for the Village Voice. Countless websites have come and gone since then, all three survive (although Paul is planning to retire).
Happy birthday to all of us.
In some ways that was a more radical teardown than even I anticipated. For a time I was hoping to keep Justin Verlander in the hopes that he, Kodai Senga and Jose Quintana could be the start of a decent rotation for 2024. He got us two promising hitters instead. And how about that Dominic Leone trade? This was a guy we got off the trash heap in May and he brought back the Angels’ No. 9 prospect.
The problem with all this in-season wheeling and dealing is we’re left with a club that can’t beat the Royals. Thanks the the depletions of Tommy Pham and Mark Canha we’re running out palookas like Rafael Ortega (30) and Jonathan Arauz (19). We have new dudes in the bullpen I’ve hardly ever heard of like Reed Garrett (75) and Phil Bickford (50).
I’ll miss David Robertson and his reliable socks more than I’ll ever miss Max Scherzer and his reliable gopherballs.
Up from Syracuse to take Max’s place is Vinny Nottoli. Reed Garrett, No. 75, replaced Robertson.
Once they did, there were six Mets who played in 24 before Willie Mays, and three since. We’ve addressed the first two of the latter group already in Kelvin Torve and Rickey Henderson. Today is for the most Mays-ish of the former group, Johnny Lewis.
Lewis hit just .193 in 1966 when he was farmed out midseason. By the time he’d resurfaced in 1967, the Mets had given away his uniform number 24 to newly arrived third baseman Ed Charles. Charles however gave it back to Lewis when he was called up in May. (Charles took the No. 5 belonging previously to Sandy Alomar (Sr.) who was sent down when Lewis was recalled). When Lewis was sent back to Class AAA in June of ’67, his big-league playing career was over and the Mets were still looking for their Mays.
I’m not going to recap it, just note that Sunday’s win came while we met new Mets: Jose Butto, the rookie who wore No. 70 and looked right away like he was doomed to an embarrassing defeat only wasn’t; and Nate Fisher, a lefty they invented in time to provide three innings of scoreless middle relief to mount the first big comeback. He wore 64.
How obscure was Fisher? Now that players and personalities dominate the game, his profile page looks like this.
Fisher as everyone knows by now was an undrafted prospect who signed with the Mariners, was released when COVID cancelled the 2020 MiLB season, became a banker in Omaha, hooked back up with Seattle in 2021 and was signed as a Minor League free agent with the Mets last offseason. He was primarily a starter at Syracuse and wouldn’t have been an option, presumably, had Steven Nogosek not gone onto the DL after his stint earlier in the Phillies series.
In two days, the momentum that seemed unstoppable ground to an abrupt halt, and we’ve been overpowered twice by the Braves who have the opportunity to make back all of what they lost during their humiliating 4-of-5 defeat in New York.
Alvarez last night removed himself from that list, still wearing 71, and in my mind enters a category something akin to an “Apparition Met,” being a Phantom Met whose disguise was yanked off him in the top of the third inning last night as though Walker’s back spasms were the gang from Scooby-Doo revealing Alvarez was not a ghost, but a shaggy-haired, bearded relief pitcher about to turn a 0-0 game into 3-0 game via tape-measure home runs and hard-hit balls everywhere, and he’d have gotten away with it were it not for those meddling kids. Marrero was unmasked as a flamed-out first-round draftee of the Red Sox with experience there and as a Marlin whom the Mets added from the roster of the Long Island Ducks in June.
I’ve covered Katoh before and somehow missed both Sam Clay and Kramer Robertson. Clay is lefty reliever who’s done a tour of the NL East’s farm clubs this season being DFAed first by the Nationals then by the Phillies before he arrived as a Met depth guy and remains on the 40-man roster where he’s assigned 46.
Kramer Robertson sounds like a made-up name to me but he’s a journeyman minor league infielder who was assigned 15 and called up to the Mets and DFAed a few days later, and re-signed by St. Louis, making him an Actual Ghost Met and not just a potential one. His number now belongs to Marrero, who is a flamed out one-time First Round Draftee of the Red Sox with experience as a reserve there, Arizona and Miami and whom we scooped up as AAA depth in late June when he was cut loose by the Marlins.
It’s not all terrifying though. Anthony DiComo has 
baseman Brett Baty, is reportedly en route to Atlanta. Baty was a No. 1 Mets’ draft pick in 2019 and has been compared to David Wright. He’s killing it wearing No. 2 for Syracuse; on the Mets’ 40-man roster, that number belongs to Baty’s current AAA teammate, Dom Smith, which should be frightening if only for Dom and what remains of his cheering section.
If you saw the SHaMs last night, you’d have also seen a new beginning of sorts for Travis Blankenhorn, who was called up from AAA for the first time this year, and given a dignified number at last–27. He was 73 last year, but I had to 
If you’re old, you’ll recall Carlton Fisk was the famous Red Sox catcher who was so damaged by a procedural contractural screwup by Boston that made him a Free Agent after 1980. The Red Sox tendered a contract too late for the deadline despite having agreed to terms, so when Fisk signed, he signed with the White Sox and not the Red Sox, and to stick it to them, he flipped his digits from 27 in Boston to 72 in Chicago, which was really unusual in 1981, not just the number, but any player disrupting tradition because he had the power to do so and be meaningful.
One way to show how unusual it was, when another player, with arguably more more juice and meaning to his squad, due to a similar procedural screwup that also landed him on the White Sox, four years after Carlton Fisk donned first that powerfully brutalist SOX uniform, put on his for the first time, but it didn’t have No. 14 on the back. Tom Seaver had other reasons of course, but the point is, here was a guy, with a 
There’s a lot of Mets fans walking around today thinking No. 7 is sacred and destined to be retired for Jose Reyes, not because of Reyes necessarily, but because, in 2019, Marcus Stroman decided it was. That was only 
But for the Mets at least, something else is also happening, and that’s the goalposts have moved. Retired numbers are cheaper, because there’s more of them. But actually, statues in front of the ballpark are the new retired number, the retired number is now the Mets Hall of Fame, and the Mets Hall of Fame is now what you pass on the your way to the concession shop, or a waiting room for the outfield wall, depending on which side of the retire-the-number debate you happen to be on, if everything else is to remain truly in perspective.
This was 
And it’s not just star players driving the change. It’s the effect of what happens with all the scrubeenies whom the clubs still rule. I want to argue that the Mets are just lazy when they 
An insightful commenter and a goofy companion for us as we watch Mets games 30+ years after he played in one.
Adonis Medina (who?) is a former Phillies prospect, purchased from the Pirates a few weeks ago, and appeared for the first time as a Met wearing No. 68; 
Yoan Lopez, a former Diamondback, did No. 44 proud in his first appearance when he took aim (perhaps a little too high) at Cardinals crybaby Nolan Arenado. We also got a brief glimpse of outfielder Nick Plummer wearing No. 18.
Hello from the most active offseason since Omar Minaya reeled in Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez.
Scherzer has worn 31 in Washington and in LA, but with Mike Piazza having taken that out of the Mets’ rotation, we’re tentatively anticipating he’ll take it up a notch the 32. That figure belonged most recently to Aaron Loup, who departed to Anaheim on a free-agent deal following Noah Syndergaard, who made the very same move.
One or both could be available depending on whether change-ofscenery trade candidates Dom Smith and Jeff McNeil survive Eppler’s dealmaking in the weeks ahead. Cahna has worn 20 