A dynasty in the making?

By Mike McGann
Posted Sunday, February 25, 2007

Dynasty. It’s a heady word, but it is one that is beginning to tossed around in regard to the Mets.

With a team that just won 97 wins and was one hit from the World Series in 2006, there’s little reason to think 2007 won’t be equally as interesting. But with the young pitching and position players in the pipeline ready to start replacing the older members of this team in 2008 and beyond, it might not be too early to wonder whether this team is about to embark on a run of dominance.

Those sort of runs have been all too brief in team history. 1969 was lightning in a bottle. 1973 was just two months of lightning in a bottle. Was 1997 to 2000 a run of dominance? Even with a World Series appearance, without winning a division title, it’s hard to be thought of as “dominant,” and the 1999 team was probably the only one that was truly special.

So how do we divine whether 2006 was another peak year, like 1969 or 1999, or like 1984, the start of something big?

From 1984 through 1988, the Mets were a power. They won only one title, 1986, but the 1985 and 1988 teams were monsters, winning 98 and 100 games. Even in 1987, when the entire pitching rotation got hurt, the team managed to limp to 92 wins. That was the best run in team history, pretty clearly, and one that may have started as early as 1983.

On April 5, 1983, Tom Seaver made his return to the Mets, pitched six innings, got a no decision and a young reliever named Doug Sisk pitched three innings for the win. The Mets swept the Phillies two games to open that season — and then both teams promptly reverted to form, the Mets going on a losing streak, the Phillies putting together a run that wouldn’t end until the World Series, where they lost to the Orioles. And while 1984 was the year things took off, it was the emergence in 1983 of players like Mookie Wilson, Wally Backman, the acquisition of Keith Hernandez, the debuts of Darryl Strawberry and Walt Terrell and Ron Darling that foreshadowed the big run to come. Ironically, the “accidental” loss of Tom Seaver, again, made Mets’ fans crazy and angry in a way they wouldn’t be for another 21 years.

In many ways, 2004 seems similar to 1983. Even though Mets’ fans might have been frustrated at the seeming lack of progress and irate about an awful trade, a lot of things were put in place by years’ end that led to bigger success the next year and a division title a year later. The Mets future began, ironically, the day they made a boneheaded trade of lefty Scott Kazmir to the Devil Rays for Victor Zambrano and Bartolome Fortunato. The blowback from the trade forced Mets’ ownership to end the internal feuding and bring in someone to run the baseball operation: Omar Minaya, who started making changes, little by little in how the Mets operated, evaluated players and worked as a team.

Those changes started with a new manager, Willie Randolph, a guy a lot of Mets’ fans were at best lukewarm toward, in part because of his Yankee history, in part because of his total lack of managerial experience. We’ll never know if Randolph was Minaya’s choice, the guess here is no. To be sure, Randolph had some bumps and bruises that first season and learned a lot about managing in-game. And it took time for Minaya and Randolph to learn to work together — but they did.

Other things emerged in 2005 that would impact the seasons to come: David Wright and Jose Reyes were now ready to play their first full and healthy seasons in the big leagues at age 22. While Wright’s year was the better of the two players, just managing to play in 161 games in 2005, after being limited to 53 game in 2004, augured well for Reyes’ future. Aaron Heilman emerged as a bullpen force.

And of course, Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran arrived.

By 1984: the full course of kids had arrived, Darling, Starwberry, Sid Fernandez, Terrell (who would be dealt for Howard Johnson), Rick Aquilera, Roger McDowell, Mike Fitzgerald (who would be dealt for Gary Carter), Kevin Mitchell and so on. Veterans would be added, with some of the kids dealt for them, but the lack of great prospects during the late 80s and early 90s helped doom a team suddenly old, injured and cranky.

The story is different now. Sure, Wright and Reyes are already here. And maybe Lastings Milledge does turn into the second coming of Gary Sheffield at least on the field; the jury is out, though, on that. But Phillip Humber and Mike Pelfrey are close — and would start the season in the Majors for a lot of teams — Carlos Gomez and Fernando Martinez are going to see the big leagues before Shea is torn down. And maybe the most intriguing prospect of all, pitcher Deolis Guerra, turns out to be the next guy in the Seaver/Gooden tradition. And that doesn’t even have us discussing Mike Carp, Joe Smith or any number of other interesting players in the Mets’ system.

With a general manager, Minaya, unafraid to make moves to improve his team, and ownership willing to spend to stay on top, could the Mets be on the brink of the kind of run the Yankees enjoyed in the 1990s? Could the Mets be good every year for a decade or more, like the Braves?

Well, I hate to jinx it all, but yeah, they could be. 2006 might have been the start of the “good old days” of Mets’ baseball, a golden era. While Mets’ fans have learned to regard the half-full glass skeptically, there’s every reason to believe not merely “Your Season Has Come” (whomever came up with that slogan needs to be sent into Jim Duquette exile) but that your time as a Mets’ fan has come.

It’s not magic, baby, it’s reality.