Chris Young Was A Good Risk, Well Worth Taking

I wanted to update this with some great information from analyst/statistician/Met historian Mark Simon at ESPN who writes, Young’s 1.88 ERA would be the best overall mark for any Mets pitcher who made at least four starts with the team. In single-season annals, it’s topped only by Dwight Gooden’s 1.53 ERA in 1985, Mike Birkbeck’s 1.63 ERA in four starts in 1995 and Tom Seaver’s 1.76 ERA in 1971. Young allowed only 12 hits over those 24 innings. Go back through the history of the AL and NL, all the way back to the dawn of the National League in 1876, and there is only one other pitcher who made as many starts and pitched as many innings as Young did this year, who could match Young’s rate of 4.5 hits allowed per nine innings. That would be former Cleveland Indians pitcher Herb Score, who yielded 18 hits in 36 innings in 1957, the year his season was tragically cut short when he was hit in the head by a line drive. Read the entire post, as always, good stuff. Also, there are too man...