Kuzul

To fans of other teams, it probably doesn’t sound so bad.

Sure, the New York Yankees look to be on the verge of blowing the ALCS.  Down 3 games to 1 with two remaining games on the road, a Cliff Lee start to look forward to and Mark Teixeira’s bad hammie to overcome, one could even call the Yankees’ 2010 chances “bleak” as of Wednesday afternoon.  But they’re still in their second straight ALCS after winning the World Series last year, and they’ve still got a shot to make their fourth Series in the last ten years.

To fans of the Kansas City Royals, that sounds like Nirvana.  Fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates would sell Mean Joe Greene’s spot in Canton for that kind of success.  I can personally attest that a Mets fan would swap destinies in about 0.5 seconds.

But you know, it’s not always easy being the Yankees.  Big stars and big payrolls bring big expectations.  When you’re perpetually cast in the role of Goliath, even against teams like the Red Sox and Dodgers who are not exactly bringing slingshots to the big fight, everybody’s rooting for you to go down.  And when you inevitably do– because it happens to every team, sooner to later– nobody lets you forget it.

It’s not even a little bit fair.  On the other hand, like I said, I’m a Mets fan.  So let’s rub it in, shall we?  I suggest you find your favorite Yankees fan, buy him or her a drink to drown the sorrows, and try to suppress the gleeful chortle that will threaten to emerge as you scan this list of the New York Yankees’ ten greatest choke jobs of all time…

Remember, we kid Yankees fans because we love them.  And because they root for a malevolent force of evil.  Mostly the love.

Begin Slideshow

The 1980’s cannot be thirty years in the past already, can they?

Surely there’s been some mistake; say it ain’t so, Peter Ueberroth.  Please tell me Cheers and The Cosby Show are still atop the ratings, Bruce Springsteen is still The Boss, and Major League Baseball still has 26 teams, four divisions, no interleague play and no wild card.  Or if you can’t say all that, at least pretend for the sake of argument.

Have you got it yet?  That’s right, all you have to do is forget steroids, imagine Roger Maris and Hank Aaron still reign supreme atop the home run charts, and mentally switch the Brewers back to the American League.  There you go.  See how much better that is?

Well, your mileage may vary as to better or worse, but the 80’s were definitely a different time in baseball.  Whiteyball and Billyball led to record-setting stolen base seasons, teams carried nine or ten pitchers… and the players you’re about to see dominated the diamond.

I’ve spent the last week sifting stats to determine the roster for the ultimate 1980’s team.  I ranked the top 100 players per year, then added those rankings together to find players who excelled consistently throughout the decade.  Remember: We’re looking for the players who performed the best overall, not necessarily the best players to step on the field.  In other words, Roger Clemens might have remained dominant through the 90’s and Tom Seaver might have starred in the 70’s, but that doesn’t matter for our purposes.  All that counts is what happened between 1980 and 1989.

Ready?  Then it’s time to meet the starting lineup…

Begin Slideshow

In most respects, 2010 has not been a great year to be a Mets fan.  The team will finish under .500 for the second straight year, and it now appears that the height of the Wright-Beltran-Reyes era may have come and gone with a disappointing loss in the 2006 NLCS.  Philadelphia won the division again, the Atlanta Braves have re-emerged as a threat now and for the future, and yesterday’s headlines exploded with rumors that the manager and GM were on thin ice.

That’s not to say there haven’t been bright spots. Whatever the outcome of the Mets’ final two games, this season has been a distinct improvement on the punchless 2009 Mets that lost 92 games.  The most obvious factor has been David Wright’s resurgence, but another big reason has been the emergence of 23-year-old Ike Davis as the first baseman of the future.

But what kind of future will that be?  All manner of systems and statistical formulas exist to try to make that prediction, but I thought a bare-bones comparison might be useful.  Using the National Pastime Almanac, I searched for first basemen who have finished the year close to Davis’ stats in at-bats, doubles, homers, RBI, bases on balls, batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, and OPS.  (Of course, Davis’ stats can still change, but probably not remarkably so in two games.) 

I came up with only two close comparisons:

In 1986, Pirate first baseman Sid Bream was 25 years old (he turned 26 in August) and finished very close to Davis’ numbers: four more doubles, three less homers, six more RBI, 13 points lower in on-base (a significant difference), but six points higher in slugging.  Bream had more speed than Davis—hitting more triples and stealing bases in the double-digits—and played in a tougher hitting era, but he was also two to three years older, giving Davis much more time to develop.

Bream went on to enjoy a solid career, starting for the National League Champion Braves in the early 90s (and scoring the winning run on Francisco Cabrera’s NLCS-winning hit), but he didn’t even get to 1,000 base hits in his career.  Presumably, Mets’ fans are hoping for a bit more from Ike Davis.

The other close comparison was Brewers’ first baseman Lyle Overbay in 2005. In his second full season, he finished with one more double than Davis and the same number of doubles and triples.  He got on base more (12 points higher in batting, 13 in OBP), but his stats in all other categories were nearly identical.  Like Davis and Bream, he was a left-handed batter.

Overbay’s a more promising sign for Davis, not only because he remains a productive first baseman (if not a star) to this day but also because he was 28 years old in 2005, his developmental years done.  Davis has much more time to improve.

Since neither comparison seemed to really get at Ike Davis’ potential, I lowered the minimum at-bats for comparable players to 450 and searched only for players between 20 and 25 years of age, and there I found another left-handed batter, who is perhaps the best evidence in the case for Ike Davis having a bright future.

In 1991, the Toronto Blue Jays employed a young first baseman who turned 23 years old that August.  His extra-base hits were comparable to Davis, his runs scored and RBI a little lower, his batting average, on-base, and slugging all within a few points.

His name was John Olerud.  As Mets’ fans may recall, he turned out to be pretty good.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

In their 49 years of existence, the Mets have had trouble filling some positions: They never really boasted an outstanding shortstop before Jose Reyes, and David Wright became the best third baseman in team history the moment he eclipsed Howard Johnson– which, truthfully, wasn’t that hard.

One thing the Mets have rarely lacked, however, is a quality man behind the plate.  They’ve been unusually blessed in that regard, in fact.  Starting with Jerry Grote in the 1960’s, they’ve had at least one solid performer behind the plate in every decade, and some of those have been among the all-time greats.  In this article, we’ll look back at the ten most outstanding catching seasons in New York Mets history.

(The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet.  Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at www.retrosheet.org.)

Begin Slideshow