Mets Score Empty Netter

Well anyone with interest knows this already — I was vacationing! — but the promotion of Eric Hanhold from AAA and his appearance the other night wearing No. 70 marked the arrival of the 55th Met of 2018, breaking a 51-year-old record of 54 Mets used in 1967.

That club, by the way, had 55 guys on the active big-league roster but one of them — a young fireballer named Nolan Ryan — didn’t make an appearance.

Do you guys follow hockey? I never really did till recently, I think a midlife crisis of some kind forced me to confront my childhood and I realized I’d been walking around with a dormant NY Islanders gene. Perhaps if the Mets were better, or if I could still pretend I cared about the NFL, I wouldn’t have noticed it.

Anyway, I was struck this morning by an article suggesting the new general manager of the Islanders just went and assigned a bunch of guys new uni numbers without their input — at least four guys, young guys but with some equity like Anthony Beauvillier (72 to 18), Adam Pelech (50 to 3), Scott Mayfield (42 to 24) and Josh Ho-Sang, whose 66 was already attracting attention, now skating in 26. All the numbers, you’ll notice, went down. And there’s no more 91 wearing the C.

While a unilateral change of that magnitude is unlikely to occur in baseball it might be an interesting move for whoever general-manages the Mets next season to execute a similar reordering, just to send a message that the kind of unprecedented revolving-door roster the Mets had in 2018 — and the results that accompanied it — could be a part of the change they seek. To the extent the Mets approach to uni numbers sends a message currently, it’s either “we don’t care that much” and/or “we lack a true identity” and/or “these guys aren’t for real.”

 

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11 comments

  1. Chris Sullivan says:

    Wonder if Ho-Sang will demand #66 back, a la Sid Fernandez refusing to switch to #10.

  2. Larry says:

    Who is number 11 who greeted Nimmo after his 3 run homer at Fenway?

  3. Larry Attia says:

    Who is #11 in the Mets Dugout? Good view if you look at Nimmo’s Saturday HR highlight.

  4. Greg says:

    Spotted during the Fenway series: Tony DiFrancesco, recently Las Vegas manager, on the Mets bench wearing No. 11. Hadn’t read any mention of his September appointment.

  5. Gene F. says:

    I know we’ve talked about coaches wearing low numbers before, and specifically Pat Roessler, who either has adopted his number as his nickname, or vice versa. Another example today, from The Athletic.

    The crowding of the plate is intentional, Nimmo says. “This year is probably the closest I’ve been to the plate. I know when I first came up, Six [hitting coach Pat Roessler] always told me I was 5½ or six balls off the white line, and now I’m one or two. ….”

    Anyone else you can think of whose name and number became interchangeable? Chad Ochocinco, obviously.

  6. Chris says:

    Lance Johnson (#1) was nicknamed One Dog.

  7. Chris says:

    Will you count Ozzie Virgil Sr. among those who’ve worn #17?

    • Jon Springer says:

      I’m not even sure I get the context!

      • Greg says:

        Virgil was designated an honorary coach on September 26 for Hispanic Heritage Month (first Dominican native in the majors, grew up in the Bronx) and as such sat in the dugout during the game in uniform, wearing No. 17.

  8. […] the jersey numbers themselves? I thought it was interesting earlier this year when Lou Lamoriello unilaterally changed the jersey numbers of five or six […]

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