I was inspired by Eric's comment that Olerud had the best 3-year run as a Met outside Carlos...

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I was inspired by Eric's comment that Olerud had the best 3-year run as a Met outside Carlos Beltran to look at a few different Mets, and when I noticed that two of my all-time favorite players (Alfonzo and Strawberry) were kinda screwed by having (relatively)bad seasons in between some really good seasons, I decided to see which Mets had the best 3 seasons, period (non-consecutively). Beltran still comes out on top, but my all-time favorite player Alfonzo comes in 2nd place, and him and Straw are the only two to have three 6.0+ WAR seasons. Also interesting that Hundley comes out ahead of Gary Carter, Cleon Jones almost finishes ahead of Mike Piazza, and Joe McEwing doesn't make the list.

over 2 years ago cjmulrain 17 comments 5 recs |

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Well done

Grission and Husart - that is either the non-union Mexican equivelant of "Starsky and Hutch" or the key to winning the World Series.

by IanB in MD on Jun 26, 2009 8:14 AM EDT reply actions

Nice chart

by Sokojoe on Jun 26, 2009 9:09 AM EDT reply actions

Piazza

didn’t have a single 6+ WAR season. Interesting!

by TheBigStapler on Jun 26, 2009 9:27 AM EDT reply actions

yea

that kinda blew my mind. I guess he really was pretty bad defensively.

by cjmulrain on Jun 26, 2009 9:40 AM EDT up reply actions

Just a minor note

Piazza’s ‘98 is included in here (5.6) and that only accounts for about 70% of his season. If you add in his time in LA/Fla, he’s at 6.2 for the whole season. And of course he easily surpassed 6 WAR in a few of his years with the Dodgers, including his legendary ’97.

by Zwill on Jun 26, 2009 10:47 AM EDT up reply actions

that's very true

I wasn’t even thinking of that about his ‘98 only being a partial season. Still, I was slightly surprised that Alfonzo was more valuable in both ’99 and 2000 according to WAR. The Fonz was my favorite, but I never would have thought he’d come out ahead of Piazza.

by cjmulrain on Jun 26, 2009 10:58 AM EDT up reply actions

I looked at the components of their WARs

and Alfonzo has the expected edge in fielding and baserunning. Total Zone loves his ‘97 (+17) and the additional games played gives him an edge in replacement value (57 to 46). However it was very surprising that their batting runs were so close (100 to 96) and the fact Alfonzo’s baserunning/GIDP (7 to -9) actually made him more a valuable offensive player. It’s hard for me to believe that. If you look at their RAR/PA (.100 for Alfonzo, .096 for Piazza), it becomes a bit clearer that the most significant advantage Alfonzo had was his ability to play every day.

by Zwill on Jun 26, 2009 2:21 PM EDT up reply actions