The Red Seats Pub: Whos the best leadoff hitter in Mets history?

June 21, 2024

Since our conversation last week about baseball books, I’ve been thinking a lot about reading. I naturally saw all your recommendations — and your excoriations for dawdling on “Ball Four” — and responded by … picking back up a copy of Studs Terkel’s “Division Street: America” that I had put down in 2012. I was tired of it then, but really enjoyed polishing it off this time.

More specifically, I was contemplating first sentences. You know, “In the beginning was the word” and “Happy families are all alike” and “Call me, Ishmael” and my personal favorite, one reinforced by these times, “The sun dawned, having no alternative, on the nothing new” (Samuel Beckett’s “Murphy”).

A good first sentence sets the tone for the story to follow, maybe revealing some of its style and, hopefully, doing it all pithily enough so people can remember it years down the road.

Kind of like a good leadoff hitter, right?

A good leadoff hitter is a tone-setter. Hopefully he’s got some style to him as well. Successful leadoff hitters come in different forms, and the Mets have seen a variety of them over time.

So today’s topic: Who’s the best leadoff hitter in Mets history?

If we’re talking about the best leadoff hitter for a career with the Mets, the answer is José Reyes. Reyes led off 1,041 games for the Mets — nearly 350 more than second-place Mookie Wilson — and he produced several of the best seasons by a leadoff hitter in club history.

But once again, I want to focus on a single season, because that’s more interesting. Some of the best players to lead off for the Mets haven’t done it for long, and I want to keep them as candidates. We’ll have plenty of Reyes seasons to discuss within that framework, as well.

There are 24 individual seasons where a player compiled at least 400 plate appearances leading off.

Going strictly by OPS, Jeff McNeil in 2019 had the best season for a Mets leadoff hitter. Going strictly by on-base percentage, Rickey Henderson in 1999 edges out Richie Ashburn from 1962. Going by sOPS+ — how a hitter did compared to other leadoff hitters that season — the winner is Tommie Agee in 1969. Going by my own personal measure that adds stolen bases to total bases when accounting for slugging while subtracting caught stealings and double plays from on-base percentage, Reyes’ 2011 just beats Henderson’s ’99. Lance Johnson in 1996 is close in all of these categories.

But that’s looking at every plate appearance from a leadoff hitter. And shouldn’t we confine it to the actual act of leading off? Who was best as the actual first hitter of the game?

If you think that’s the way to go, prepare to be amazed: Your choice might be Roger Cedeño from 2003! In what was for him a pretty terrible season, Cedeño went 34 for 87 with eight walks leading off games for a pretty terrible Mets team; that’s a slash line of .391/.442/.540/.982. (In all other situations that season, Cedeño slashed .239/.293/.343/.636.) Nobody who led off at least 82 games was better from an OPS or OBP standpoint in team history.

Looking at it that way seriously hurts the chances of ’99 Henderson (.360 OBP, .683 OPS leading off the game) and ’96 Johnson (.322 OBP, .718 OPS leading off the game). Reyes in 2006 and 2008 and McNeil in 2019 remain strong contenders.

Indulge me this one last argument: What if we looked at every inning? After all, the first inning isn’t the only inning someone leads off. If you’re coming to bat in an inning and need to score, who’s the best Met in history to bring to the plate first?

The answer is, fittingly, one of the slowest Mets ever. John Olerud never once led off a Major League Baseball game. But when he led off an inning in 1999, he reached base at a .528 clip — more than 50 points better than 2000 Benny Agbayani. Olerud’s 1.144 OPS leading off an inning that season is the best in franchise history for anyone who led off at least 100 innings in a campaign. Michael Conforto’s 2017 is only three points behind, though that has more to do with his 14 homers and 23 extra-base hits than his on-base prowess. In 1962, Frank Thomas led off more innings with a home run than anyone in team history (18).

Having established that there are a lot of different ways to approach answering this question, what’s yours?

By the way, the special beer on draft this week: Rockaway’s Porch Life. It’s a Czech pilsner, which is really the only kind. You can sip it thinking about summer nights or the museum of medieval torture at the foot of the Charles Bridge in Prague. (I opted for the Kafka Museum during my afternoon in Prague last fall, which is just reveling in a different kind of anguish.) The brewery is offering delivery.

(Photo of McNeil: Rich Schultz / Getty Images)

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