This is a frivolous story.
Sure, just about any story that takes baseball as its primary topic could be categorized as such, but I’d like to emphasize that even within that milieu, this story stands out for its lack of seriousness. (And it may have been inspired by Twitter exchanges in May.)
The 2010s have not been a banner decade for the Mets, even if they did get to raise one pennant. But at least they exit this decade in a better spot than they entered it. Because man, do you remember the 2009 Mets?
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There are a lot of ways for a baseball season to become, at its core, unfun — many of which have been explored in depth by major-league executives this past decade. But there may not be a more unfun season than when a team expecting to contend with a veteran core doesn’t, thanks to injuries to just about every member of that core — injuries bad enough to impact the team’s contention status moving forward — and a lack of exciting young players to fill in.
Such was life for the 2009 Mets, who after consecutive late-season fades still entered the year as PECOTA’s NL East favorite, pegged for 91 wins. Instead, New York won just 70 games, thanks largely to injuries to Carlos Delgado, José Reyes and Carlos Beltrán.
But it was more than just a run-of-the-mill unfun season for the ’09 Mets. This wasn’t like, the 2003 Mets. By the second half of the ’09 season, New York started discovering new ways for players to get hurt, new ways to lose and new ways to make the wrong kind of headlines.
How weird was the 2009 Mets season? Let me count those ways.
1. Gary Sheffield became the first Met to ever hit his 500th home run. Sheffield’s first 499 came with other teams.
As I mentioned throughout the 2019 season, the Mets are not exactly known for their power hitters. Darryl Strawberry is the franchise leader in home runs with 252; only two franchises have a home-run leader with fewer long balls. The best home-run hitter the Mets have ever employed, Willie Mays, hit just 14 of his 660 career dingers with the club.
And so it was fitting that the first person to ever hit his 500th home run as a Met was someone who’d hit the previous 499 elsewhere. Sheffield was a late addition to the New York roster, signing with the Mets just before Opening Day after he’d been unexpectedly released by the Tigers. He hadn’t collected a hit yet when, leading off the seventh as a pinch-hitter on April 17, he took Milwaukee’s Mitch Stetter deep to left field to tie the game.
It wasn’t just that Sheffield was not yet established as a Met when he reached this milestone. It’s that he’d spent a large part of his career crushing New York pitching as a heart-of-the-order cog for a rival, be it the Marlins, Braves or Yankees. Sheffield hit 30 homers in 131 career games against the Mets; he hit more against only one other team. His career OPS against them was .973.
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Sheffield actually had a solid season with the Mets, posting an .823 OPS in 100 games and being a positive clubhouse presence. Things soured in September, though, when the team declined to either trade him to a contender for the postseason or extend his contract into 2010. Sheffield didn’t start a game after Aug. 25 in what became his final major-league season.
2. Omir Santos hit a home run that everyone still remembers.
The entire point of this exercise is to remember weird stuff that happened a decade ago. But if you’re a Met fan who experienced the 2009 season, you probably don’t need to be reminded of this moment.
Santos’ two-out, two-run go-ahead homer in the ninth inning off Jonathan Papelbon at Fenway Park may be the only part of the 2009 season you remember — and if so, congrats. It lifted the Mets to 23-19, and while sure, Carlos Delgado and José Reyes were on the injured list, it wasn’t yet clear — and wouldn’t be for some time — that neither would play again all season.
After starting the year in the minors, Santos eventually supplanted Brian Schneider as the Mets’ everyday guy behind the plate. New York brought in Rod Barajas a year later, and Josh Thole was on his way to more regular playing time. But Santos and the Mets will always have that Saturday at Fenway.
3. Luis Castillo dropped the popup.
Oh, you had started to think this was going to be the good memories? Sorry.
Dropping a pop-up at any time is an egregious offense for a major-leaguer. Dropping it to allow two runs to score? A travesty. Dropping it to allow two game-winning runs to score? A catastrophe. Dropping it as a Met to allow two game-winning runs to score for the Yankees? They haven’t come up with that word yet.
4. Daniel Murphy’s move to the outfield was aborted after two months.
While the Mets endured another September fade in 2008, Murphy had emerged as an offensive spark plug late in the season. The question was where Murphy could fit defensively for a full season.
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New York was hopeful that Murphy, who had played just four minor-league games in the outfield before the Mets stuck him there in ’08, could handle left field full time. On the spectrum of Mets’ outfield transitions, it wasn’t as bad as Todd Hundley nor as good as Jeff McNeil. When Delgado hit the IL in May, though, Murphy became the everyday first baseman. He’s played two innings in the outfield ever since.
5. Carlos Beltrán’s bone bruise was worse than that.
The season spiraled during a 9-18 June, when the absences of Delgado and Reyes were exacerbated by Beltrán’s trip to the injured list for what had been diagnosed as a bone bruise. He didn’t return until September, by which point the season was effectively over. The drama dialed up in January 2010, when Beltrán underwent surgery on that knee; the Mets argued he had not yet cleared the surgery with the team.
Ten years later, it seems they’re back on the same page.
6. Fans chanted “We want apple!” after a malfunction in center field.
In Citi Field’s first season, the new apple in center field did not get much of a workout. A year after the Mets slugged 95 home runs at Shea Stadium, they hit just 95 total in 2009 — and only 49 in their new home park.
So it was apt on July 12, when after back-to-back homers from Ryan Church and Fernando Tatis, the apple refused to rise from its home. Fans first started to boo before switching to a chant of “We want apple!” (As it turns out, a chant that properly summarized both that Mets season and the technological advances of the last 15 years or so.)
After the game, manager Jerry Manuel smiled: “It was good to see the apple finally come up.”
7. While announcing the dismissal of an assistant, Omar Minaya publicly alleged that beat writer Adam Rubin angled for a job with the club.
Oh, man, this one was a doozy. The Mets had announced they were firing vice president of player development Tony Bernazard for a series of tantrums, the most recent occurring when he challenged members of the Double-A Binghamton affiliate to a fight after tearing off his shirt — an incident reported by Rubin in the New York Daily News. Minaya said during a July 27 press conference that he was initially skeptical of Rubin’s reporting about Bernazard, because Rubin had previously expressed an interest in working in baseball.
“Adam, you’ve got to understand this, for the past couple of years has lobbied for a player development position,” Minaya said. “So when these things came out, I had to, a little bit, I had to think about it.”
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“It’s despicable to say that,” Rubin said during a back-and-forth with the general manager.
After a win over the Rockies, Jeff Francoeur summed it up: “It’s only my second week and there’s been a lot of crazy stuff already.”
8. Luis Castillo injured his ankle slipping on a glove on the dugout steps.
If June wrecked the Mets’ chances at contention, August pushed the season into the surreal. Castillo, who despite the dropped pop-up in June actually had a pretty good season overall for New York, took the team’s injury woes to the next level when he hurt his ankle slipping on a glove on the dugout steps at Citi Field. He’d miss three games because of it.
9. Jon Niese tore his hamstring covering first base, then collapsed on his warmup pitch.
A day later, the news was worse for Niese. In the midst of a small but encouraging sample of success in the starting rotation, Niese appeared to hurt his hamstring covering first base on an infield single. When he tried to test it out on a warmup pitch, he fell to the ground in pain and had to be helped off the field. His season was over.
10. David Wright was hit in the head.
For most of the season, only Wright had managed to avoid New York’s plague of injuries. That changed on Aug. 15, when he suffered a concussion from a Matt Cain fastball off his helmet. Wright lay motionless on the ground for a frightening minute before walking off on his own.
He missed two and a half weeks — during which the Mets batted guys like Cory Sullivan and Jeremy Reed fifth in the order — before returning with a comically oversized helmet. Wright ditched the new helmet after just two games.
11. Francoeur ended a Mets comeback by lining into an unassisted triple play.
I’m not sure I’ll ever cover a game weirder than the one between the Mets and Phillies on Aug. 23, 2009. In Pedro Martínez’s return to Queens, Oliver Pérez stole the show early by allowing a pair of three-run homers in the first inning. When he fell behind his counterpart Martínez 3-0, he was mercifully pulled from the game.
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Despite the 6-0 hole, the Mets rebounded thanks to two homers from Ángel Págan — the first a leadoff inside-the-parker when Shane Victorino thought the ball was stuck in the fence. Trailing 9-6 entering the ninth, New York built a rally on three balls that didn’t leave the infield, thanks to some shoddy defense from Eric Bruntlett at second base. The tying runs were on base with nobody out for Francoeur, when this happened:
Ten years later, Francoeur was still mad about it.
“It was like the worst game of my life. In that game in the eighth inning, I dove and caught a ball and I tore all the ligaments in my thumb,” he told The Athletic in June. “It had been swelling up, so the fact that I hit the shit out of a 2-2 pitch, and they’re going — it was a triple play that happened like this. It happened before you could even think. I remember thinking, ‘You’ve got to be shitting me.’”
12. Bobby Parnell was a starter, briefly.
The fireballing Parnell had emerged as a valuable reliever during his rookie season, compiling a 3.46 ERA when used out of the bullpen. But Parnell had been a starter in the minors, and the Mets wanted to see if he could sufficiently develop a third pitch to work out of the rotation. The end of a lost season was the right time to give it a try.
It did not go as well as hoped, even if Parnell did show flashes of excellence. Twice, he tossed shutout baseball for at least six innings in wins over the Giants and Cubs. In his other six starts, though, he allowed 34 runs (32 earned) in 23 1/3 innings, with more walks than strikeouts. Parnell never did get that changeup to be a viable weapon, but he was one of the Mets’ best relievers of the subsequent decade.
13. Fernando Martínez was a prospect until he debuted.
One of the benefits of Murphy’s move to first base? It would help clear a spot for Martínez, easily New York’s most hyped prospect at the time. Martínez entered 2009 as a consensus top 50 prospect in the sport, and he built on that with a scorching start at Triple-A Buffalo through the first two months. He was called up just after Memorial Day to make his big-league debut.
Martínez never found a rhythm in the majors — and I’m not limiting that to 2009. He hit .176 in 100 plate appearances that season, ultimately missing the second half of the year because of a knee injury. He’d never even get that much of a major-league shot with the Mets again: When injuries continued to plague him and his cameos remained just as ineffective, New York waived him in 2011. Martínez was OK in part-time play for a bad Astros team in 2012, but he was done as a major-leaguer after the 2013 season with a lifetime average of .206.
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14. Citi Field played like a graveyard — and it kind of looked like one, too.
Citi Field is generally held up as the better of the two New York ballparks that opened in 2009. But Mets fans did not exactly love it from the start in 2009, thanks to its enormous pitcher-friendly dimensions and its black instead of blue walls.
As mentioned earlier, the Mets hit just 49 home runs at home and 95 total in 2009; for context, the 2006 Mets had hit 200 homers at Shea. Mark Reynolds hit four homers in three games for the Diamondbacks in early August at Citi Field, nearly hitting more long balls there than any Mets. Murphy led the Mets’ in Citi Field homers with seven and total homers with, get this, 12 — the lowest total to lead a team in the 2000s.
The walls were eventually moved in on multiple occasions, and perhaps just as important, they were turned blue for the 2012 season.
15. Guys who played for the Mets in 2009 include: Jeremy Reed, Cory Sullivan, Anderson Hernández, Wilson Valdez, Nick Evans, Ramon Martinez, Ángel Berroa, Argenis Reyes, Emil Brown, Andy Green, Robinson Cancel, Liván Hernández, Tim Redding, Brian Stokes, Sean Green, Pat Misch, Fernando Nieve, Elmer Dessens, J.J. Putz, Ken Takahashi, Lance Broadway, Tobi Stoner, Casey Fossum, Jon Switzer and Darren O’Day.
Turns out, they should have kept O’Day.
(Top photo of Wright, Beltrán, Castillo and Sheffield: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)
