Mookie by Mookie Wilson

Author:Mookie Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

The Dread Scott Series

After having so dominated the highly competitive National League East, much of the media and our fans envisioned us using the Houston Astros as a mere stepping stone on our way to the World Series. While we were seen as a team without any weaknesses, the Astros came into the NLCS with a .255 batting average, only one legitimate home run threat, and not even close to the pitching and bullpen depth that we had.

But I knew better. And so did a lot of my Mets teammates.

We expected a very good series. They may have had twelve fewer wins than us, but they equaled our team with their thirty-nine come-from-behind victories during the regular season. More than anything, that showed us they could be as gritty as we were.

I knew their pitching was very good, particularly in a short series, and matched up well against us. They relied on their pitchers like we did to keep them in games. And while Houston didn’t have the power we did, they had very good speed on the base paths and played solid defense in the field. The Astros were a fundamentally sound ball club that didn’t beat itself.

Despite how great we thought we were, I think we all would have preferred an easier team to play. It wasn’t that we feared the Astros, but we knew that it was probably going to be a much tougher job to waltz through the championship series than if we faced a different opponent. We knew they were going to win at least one ball game; a four-game sweep was not going to happen.

Houston was as red hot as we were entering the championship series. Both of our clubs finished the season winning ten of our last twelve games. But whereas we used our bats to beat teams into oblivion during that stretch, the Astros’ starting pitching staff, which consisted of Mike Scott, Nolan Ryan, Bob Knepper, and Jim Deshaies, and their bullpen, anchored by Charlie Kerfeld and Dave Smith, were on an incredible roll. Over the final twelve games of the season, Houston pitching registered a minuscule ERA of just 1.34. Included in that run were an astounding five shutouts in six games, with a division-clinching no-hitter by Scott in the middle of it.

But despite the Astros’ impressive pitching numbers, statistics didn’t really play a big part in our planning back then. We believed in the proverbial “eye test.” We believed in what we saw and what we had faced. We took seven of our twelve meetings against them during the regular season, so our plan was fairly simple: they had two pitchers—Scott and Ryan—that we had to beat in a short series or we would be in trouble.

Truth be told, as great as the Hall of Famer Ryan was, when it came to the biggest of obstacles standing between us and the World Series, Mike Scott stood alone. The amazing thing about Scott was that he was an average pitcher at best when he was with the Mets earlier in his career.

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