The Mets were the champions of the National League in 2015 without anybody being officially judged [1] particularly valuable. The Baseball Writers Association of America has an award that declares who’s Most Valuable, and no Met got anywhere near it. Twenty National Leaguers were named on BBWAA ballots and only two of those names belonged to Mets; neither of them reached the Top 10. Yoenis Cespedes finished 13th, Curtis Granderson 18th.
Starting pitching was the 2015 Mets’ most obvious strength. MVP voting rarely favors starting pitchers, though three of them finished in the Top 10 in the N.L. voting. None of them was a Met. No Met pitcher showed up anywhere in the Most Valuable voting, but that’s OK. There’s a special award for pitchers. It’s called the Cy Young.
All that strong Met starting pitching translated to one Met, Jacob deGrom, drawing votes. He came in seventh of nine pitchers named. Nobody else in the rotation, nor the closer, was given as much as a single fifth-place vote for 2015.
One of the factors that catapulted the Mets from 79-83 also-rans to 90-72 and the postseason was the infusion of young blood. There’s an award designed to recognize players in their first year. It’s called the Rookie of the Year. One Met was considered for this award in 2015: Noah Syndergaard. The man we like to call Thor finished Thorth…uh, fourth in this voting. No other Met was mentioned.
A team with no more than the 13th-most valuable player, the seventh-best pitcher and the fourth-best rookie must have something going for it, like really outstanding managing. Terry Collins, the Mets manager, attracted support in the BBWAA National League Manager of the Year voting…just not a ton of it. Collins finished third, the best showing of anybody in a Met uniform in the “big four” award balloting.
No Met won a Silver Slugger. Cespedes won a Gold Glove, but it was for his four months of defensive work in the American League. Matt Harvey took Comeback Player of the Year honors in two realms: MLB.com’s (as voted by each team’s dot-com beat writer) and The Sporting News (as selected by a cross-section of nearly 200 players in the National League). TSN also singled out Collins as its Manager of the Year, which is decided by peer vote. And the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year awards, determined statistically, called deGrom the best-fielding pitcher in the majors.
So there’s that. Plus the pennant, which pretty much beats everything that isn’t a World Series title. In 2014, deGrom was Rookie of the Year and Juan Lagares won the Gold Glove. Any interest in trading this season for that season? Or do you prefer a year like 2012, when R.A. Dickey won the Cy Young and the Mets finished like Anthony Young?
Not that individual awards and team success have to be mutually exclusive, but I suppose this is just the way these things land. No Met has ever won the MVP, even if in all other years when the Mets made the postseason, they had at least one player wind up in the Top 10 in Valuable voting. And you can’t really argue too strenuously with Bryce Harper winning the 2015 MVP or all those Cubs — Jake Arietta, Kris Bryant, Joe Maddon — taking all those other BBWAA awards.
They can have them, it is tempting to scoff.
Still, the Mets got pretty far with nobody grabbing and holding the establishment’s attention during award consideration season, which occurred before the playoffs but after it was known the Mets would be part of them. Perhaps the tone was set in July, when they were allotted only one All-Star, same as the last-place Phillies, who you might recall were represented by the comprehensively stellar Jonathan Papelbon. The Mets’ closer, Jeurys Familia, saved 43 games on their behalf, yet the Trevor Hoffman N.L. Reliever of the Year Award, which you may or may not know exists, was voted by a panel of distinguished former closers to Mark Melancon of Pittsburgh. The peer-chosen Sporting News Executive of the Year award did not go to Sandy Alderson, who obtained Cespedes and several other transformational contributors at the trade deadline, but Alex Anthopoulos, the since-departed Blue Jays general manager.
Maybe Melancon (51 saves) was the best reliever in the league in 2015. Maybe Anthopoulos (Troy Tulowitzki, David Price) was the MLB GM handiest with a phone and a ticking clock. Maybe everybody was indisputably better at something, except coming back from an injury, than any given Met.
Pretty cool we got as far as we did, huh?
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As if two Mets, Willie Mays and Yogi Berra, being named recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom [2] wasn’t enough, we’ll be along with Faith and Fear’s annual offseason Most Valuable Met [3] and Nikon Camera Player of the Year [4] awards soon and finally reveal the long-promised Most Inconsequential Met Ever. Until then, you should know about what these people are up to:
• Sam Kulik has created The Broadcast, his own play-by-play of the May 31 Mets-Marlins game, with each half-inning set to its own original music. To make it even more interactive, Sam has created a special set of baseball cards that unlock the audio. It’s both impressive and fun. You can learn more here [5] and listen to a sample here [6].
• Because you can’t watch 2015 Mets highlights enough, help yourself to Drew Palazzo’s stirring tribute montage, titled A Journey to Remember. It seems to cut off before the World Series, which I would say is an editing highlight unto itself. Watch Drew’s emotional wizardry here [7].
• It’s not too late to bid on a deluxe Met package as part of WhyHunger’s 2015 Hungerthon. Through Tuesday night at 6:30, you can try to win four Metropolitan Box Seats to a select game at Citi Field in April, with a David Wright-signed baseball and parking pass thrown in. It’s certainly a great cause and you can’t argue with the prize. If you’re interested, go for it here [8].