Regular Season
The Mets had never finished higher than ninth place in a ten-team league in their first seven seasons. As an expansion team, they went 40–120 in 1962, the most losses by an MLB team in one season in the 20th century, and the 1962 Mets' .250 winning percentage was higher than only the .248 posted by the 1935 Boston Braves.
The Mets never had been over .500 after the third game of any season, except in 1966. Seven years after their disastrous inaugural season, "The Amazin' Mets" (as nicknamed by previous manager Casey Stengel) won the World Series, the first expansion team to do so.
With great pitching and decent defense, but not much offense, the Mets were an uninspired 18–23 through their first 41 games. They then reeled off a club-record 11 straight wins, equaled on several occasions. Starting with their 42nd game, the Mets went 82–39, an impressive .678 winning percentage, the rest of the season.
Despite that performance, the Mets suffered two mid-season three-game series sweeps at the hands of the Houston Astros, and were also no-hit by Bob Moose of the Pittsburgh Pirates on September 20, five days after becoming the first major league team to strike out 19 times in a nine-inning game, which they won, 4–3, on a pair of two-run home runs by Ron Swoboda, against the Cardinals' Steve Carlton.
In second place most of the season behind the Chicago Cubs—who were having an unusually good season themselves—the Mets were in third place, 10 games back, on August 13th. They won 14 of their last 17 games during August, and 24 of their 32 games during September and October, to surge past the Cubs, finishing 100–62, eight games ahead of the Cubs. That 18 game differential is one of the largest turnarounds in MLB history.
The remarkable aspect of the Mets regular season was the large number of players who went on a hot streak, and arguably played the best ball of their careers over the last 49 regular season games:
Ken Boswell hit .407 with 7 doubles and 3 triples in 91 at-bats, and had 17 walks for a 50% on base percentage
Bud Harrelson hit .287 (39 for 136) with 4 doubles and 3 triples
Don Clendenon hit 9 homeruns in 106 at-bats, with 7 HR's during his last 79 at-bats
Jerry Grote averaged .311 on 33-for-106 hitting
Tom Seaver won 9 games without a loss and had a 1.24 ERA
Jerry Koosman was 8-1 with a 2.35 ERA
Tug McGraw won 4 games with one loss, and had a 0.61 ERA in 29 2/3 innings of relief
Ron Taylor won 3 games and lost one, with a 1.62 ERA in 16 2/3 innings of relief
Don Cardwell had a record of 4-1 with a 1.53 ERA during 47 innings
Jim McAndrew won 3 of 5 decisions with a 2.00 ERA in 63 innings
Gary Gentry won 4 of 6 decisions and had a 2.59 ERA during 73 innings
Despite the individual batting achievements during the last 49 games, the team scored more runs per game during the first 113 contests (3.94 versus 3.82). One major key to the late season winning pattern was a turnaround in the pitching staff, where the pitchers held the opposition to 2.37 average runs per game over those 49 games compared to 3.76 through August 13th play.
The Mets defense on the whole also excelled during the last 49 games, making only 11 errors while winning 14 of 17 during August, and committing just 16 errors during the last 32 games.
The above stats were developed using box scores on the Baseball-Reference.com site which were produced by Sports Reference LLC.
Read more about this topic: 1969 New York Mets Season
Famous quotes containing the words regular and/or season:
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are important, like the town clock. A village that has them not will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is wanting.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)