Like a Record, Baby

SPORTING GOODS

In case you missed it, there was a very good piece on Mets Geek about the historic paces that Reyes, Beltran, Wright, and Delgado are on for the Mets. You can read the piece here.

The most interesting part of the story, to me, is the shortstop related records that appear to be set to fall.

First off, Jose Reyes is having a tremendous year. He is on pace to break single-season Mets records for runs, steals, and triples in a season. In case you were wondering if Reyes is fast.

But the more impressive thing is that Reyes is on pace to break Mets shortstop records in the following categories: batting average, slugging, total bases, runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, rbis, and steals, as well as saber-stats OPS and runs created. Wow.

I remember when I was in college, Sports Illustrated ran an article about how the Mets have never been able to feature (for any length of time) any decent third-basemen. HoJo was really it. But since Fonzie, Ventura, and Wright have all put in some quality seasons, shortstop has now become the position that makes you shake your head looking back.

To illustrate, just check out some of the previous Met shortstop records:
Batting average: .287 by Jose Vizcaino
Home runs: 10! by Kevin Elster and one other.
RBI: 60 by Rey freakin' Ordonez
Slugging: .396 by Kaz Matsui (which would be good for 72nd out of 90 qualified batters in the NL this year)

Not to mention, the Mets SS on-base percentage record was set in 1962, and we all know how good the Mets were back then.

I guess it makes sense, I can't think of any good hitting Mets shortstops, but I didn't imagine the drought went back that long. Jose Reyes is about to be printed all over the Mets record book. At least that will be erasing a lot of Kaz Matsui in the process.