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The Best Of Times

First off, I've added MLB Player Index links to the sidebar. Each one has a "search" option, which will prompt your for either the player's name or last name, and will perform an on-the-fly search of the corresponding player index. If you know of a good player index that should be added, let me know.

There's not much going on in Metsville these days. The Sox/A's series wrapped up in dramatic fashion last night, with Derek Lowe throwing two nasty pitches to backwards-k Adam Melhuse and T.Long. Lowe infuriated the A's bench by make a DX-style crotch gesture after pumping his fists. It didn't look like he was trying to disrespect the A's, but the A's were probably still upset from M-Ram's HR-stylin' earlier in the game. The Damon/Jackson collision was pretty horrific - thanks for showing it from 15 different angles FOX. Nevertheless, it was a very exciting series, and I think the Sox stack up much better against the Yanks, considering the A's may have been down to one-of-their-big-three starters. Go Sox!

Now that the A's are out of the playoff picture, the door will hopefully be open for the Mets to pry Rick Peterson back to his home in New Jersey. I'm of the belief that managers/coaches are typically given too much of the credit when a team succeeds and too much of the blame when a team fails. However, it's tough to argue with Peterson's results. The A's have been at or near the top of the bigs in ERA and WHIP each of the past four seasons. Sure, a lot of that has to do with their stable of big arms, but certainly Peterson deserves some of the credit for that. Peterson is a great coach because the pitchers are good, the pitchers are good because Peterson is a great coach. Regardless of how you spin the specious logic, the Mets should covet Peterson.

Since little else is going on, I present (IMO) the best individual Met seasons at each position over the past half-dozen years. I decided to go with three miscellaneous outfielders instead of one at each outfield position, mainly because the Mets outfield has been slim pickings in recent seasons. I was tempted to use wonderboy Jose Reyes at SS, mostly because Rey-O was so bad. In the end, I went with Boom-Boom and his one-September-homerun-a-year. (The inspiration for this list came from the great Ultimate Mets Database).


POS  Player           Year  AVG  OBP  SLG   OPS    R  HR  RBI  SB
C    Mike Piazza      2000 .324 .398 .614 1.012   90  26  113   4
1B   John Olerud      1998 .354 .447 .551  .998   91  22   93   2
2B   Edgardo Alfonzo  2000 .324 .425 .542  .967  109  25   94   3
SS   Rey Ordonez      1999 .258 .319 .317  .636   49   1   60   8
3B   Robin Ventura    1999 .301 .379 .529  .908   88  32  120   1
OF   Cliff Floyd      2003 .290 .376 .518  .894   57  18   68   3
OF   Rickey Henderson 1999 .315 .423 .466  .889   89  12   42  37
OF   Roger Cedeno     1999 .313 .396 .408  .804   90   4   36  66

If I left out your favorite, let me know.