#10- 1986 Mets Rewatch: May 24, The Great Escapes
How the heck did the Mets survive this one in San Diego?
The 1986 Mets Rewatch Newsletter is a newsletter for Mets fans who say ‘I know I saw something unusual yesterday. Show me something more unusual.’
Let us talk for a bit about hotfoot-giving, rubber-armed reliever Roger McDowell.
McDowell pitched a club record 128 innings in the regular season and another 14 1/3 innings in the postseason. That followed a 1985 season in which he pitched 117 innings. His 1986 and 1985 seasons are the top two seasons in Mets history for innings pitched in relief.
This kind of thing happened then. Heck, the Blue Jays used Mark Eichorn, a rookie pitcher with a submarine delivery for 157 innings that season (he was great, a 1.72 ERA).
I wouldn't expect that mark to be broken anytime soon given that McDowell is the last Mets reliever to even reach 100 innings.
Most Innings Pitched in Relief – Single Season- Mets History
Pitcher | Year | Innings Pitched |
Roger McDowell | 1986 | 128 |
Roger McDowell | 1985 | 117 |
Larry Bearnarth | 1963 | 116 1/3 |
Jeff Reardon | 1980 | 110 1/3 |
Jesse Orosco | 1983 | 110 |
Tug McGraw | 1973 | 107 |
Tug McGraw | 1972 | 106 |
Tug McGraw | 1971 | 105 |
Eleven-year-old me remembers McDowell as someone who would get the first two outs of an inning and then put himself in a mess. That recollection is erroneous. A more accurate recollection would be that McDowell would be really tough with no one on base, but if someone got on and got into scoring position, things could get hairy.
And yet, McDowell was pretty good. He wouldn't have pitched that many innings if he wasn't. He even got 5 MVP voting points that year. In particular, over a 25-game stretch from May 4 to July 1, he posted a 1.07 ERA and let only one of 11 inherited runners score. He had 6 saves, 5 holds and 2 blown saves. And he didn't allow a home run in 50 2/3 innings pitched.
That brings us to the Mets game of May 24 against the Padres (no video to rewatch unfortunately), when McDowell had one of the oddest box score lines you'll ever see.
He pitched 2 innings in relief and allowed no runs. Nothing weird about that until I tell you he yielded 6 hits.
No pitcher has had a 2-inning, 0-run, 6-hit line line since McDowell did it that day. Throw in the 2 walks that McDowell issued and he's the only pitcher with such a line as far back as Baseball-Reference goes (1901).
This happened on a Saturday in San Diego. Leading up to McDowell's appearance, Bruce Berenyi allowed 4 runs in 5 1/3 innings, including two home runs to future Met Kevin McReynolds. But the Mets led 5-4 entering the seventh, the key hit being a two-run double by Rafael Santana in the fourth inning.
I wish there was video from this one because then Mets survived a pretty hairy seventh, eighth, and ninth innings. The Padres started the seventh with back-to-back hits and then a ground out put runners on second and third. Davey Johnson had McDowell walk Terry Kennedy to pitch to McReynolds, who had already homered twice.
This was a ballsy move by Johnson, but it was grounded in reason. There are McDowell's splits against left-handed batters (which Kennedy was) and right-handed batters (McReynolds)
Hitter Splits vs Roger McDowell, 1986 Season
Vs LHB | Vs RHB | |
BA | .248 | .210 |
OBP | .342 | .245 |
Slug | .367 (4 HR) | .230 (0 HR) |
Sure enough, McDowell struck McReynolds out, then got a different left-handed hitter, Graig Nettles, to ground out to second base to end the inning.
One jam gone, two more to go.
In the eighth inning, McDowell gave up a pair of hits with one out, then walked Tony Gwynn with two outs to load the bases. And again McDowell survived, getting Garvey to ground out to third baseman Kevin Mitchell, who stepped on the bag for the force out (Ray Knight was out to be with his wife Nancy, who was due to give birth).
So McDowell got out of bases-loaded jams against two pretty good hitters in Nettles and Garvey.
With the score the same entering the ninth inning, Johnson pushed his luck and sent McDowell out again. And once again the Padres threatened. Kennedy and McReynolds got the 5th and 6th hits against McDowell and Johnson finally pulled the plug bringing in Jesse Orosco to close.
This might have been a lot simpler if Orosco had come into the game earlier. He got Jerry Royster to fly out, struck out Tim Flannery and got pinch-hitter Bruce Bochy to pop out to end the game.
The Padres stranded 14 for the game, 8 in the last three innings, and went 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position. "We had no business losing that game," McReynolds told reporters.
Final score, Mets 5, Padres 4. Berenyi got the win, Orosco got the save, and McDowell got one of the strangest holds in MLB history.
Innings Pitched | 2+ |
Runs | 0 |
Hits | 6 |
K-BB | 1-2 |
Batters Faced | 14(!) |
Wrote John Shea of the Daily Times-Advocate "These are the games that try men's souls."
One final note. Had the Padres won they would have been in first place in the NL West. But they lost this one and the next one to the Mets and while they bounced back a little bit after that, things eventually went south. From this game to the end of the season they went 52-69, the fourth-worst record in baseball.