If you're going to have a newsletter about the 1986 Mets, you have to make the first one about Mookie Wilson. He was No. 1, after all.
It's very hard for me to find stats about the 1986 Mets that I wasn't previously familiar with. But I found one recently about Mookie.
Mookie played 58 games in center field that season and in those 58 games, his numbers were off the charts. He hit .339 with a .388 on-base percentage and a .525 slugging percentage. He had a .912 OPS when he played center field and oddly had a .521 OPS when he played left field.
If you combined Wilson's numbers as a center fielder with the other Mets center fielders (Len Dykstra and a few others), you get an MVP candidate.
Mets Centerfielders – NL Rank
| Total | NL Rank |
Hits | 211 | 1st (by 26!) |
Extra-Base Hits | 67 | 2nd |
Runs Scored | 120 | 1st |
Stolen Bases | 47 | T-2nd |
OPS | .854 | 1st |
But that's not all. Mookie also hit .368 with runners in scoring position in 1986. He hit .311 with an .851 OPS against starting pitchers, roasting them the second and third times through the order.
When you hit .368 with runners in scoring position for a season, you're going to get some big hits. Among those for Mookie were a go-ahead three-run home run as part of a wild comeback from a 6-1 deficit in a 10-8 win over the Expos on August 9.
He also had a go-ahead single in the bottom of the eighth inning in a 5-2 win over the Giants on September 1.
Mookie's best game of the 1986 season was his 5-for-5 with a double, triple, and 2 RBI on a game-tying 7th-inning triple against the Padres on May 23. It's a forgotten game because the rest of the Mets went 3-for-26 and the Padres won on Tony Gwynn's 3-run walk-off home run against Jesse Orosco in the bottom of the 9th.
The bigger thing about that game was that it was a sign that Wilson was fully back from both two offseason shoulder surgeries and the eye injury he suffered when he was hit by a throw from shortstop Rafael Santana during a rundown drill in spring training on March 5.
Though the impact of the throw shattered Wilson's sunglasses, the flying glass didn't do the damage it could have done. In fact, as manager Davey Johnson pointed out "they probably kept the ball from detaching his retina."
The injury pushed Wilson's return back from mid-April to May 9, at which time the Mets were 18-4 and Dykstra was off to a great start, hitting .301 with an .810 OPS and 9 stolen bases in 22 games.
There were articles written trying to figure out how the Mets would handle the situation. It was never an issue.
I'm always a believer that most baseball problems fix themselves if you just give them time and that there's no such thing as having too many players at a given position.
Of the Mets remaining 140 games, Wilson started 80 and came on as a pinch-hitter or reserve in 43 of them. Dykstra started 82 and entered 43 games off the bench. The excess center fielder glut eased when the Mets released left fielder George Foster in August, making Mookie an option to start there more often.
The injury didn’t impact the most valuable part of Mookie’s game, his legs. He stole 25 bases and took an extra base on hits (1st to 3rd, 2nd to home, 1st to home), 64% of the time in 1986 (the MLB extra-base rate at that time was in the mid-40s).
With Wilson, Dykstra, and Howard Johnson leading the way, the Mets were the best team in baseball at going second to home on singles. Mookie did so 18 times in 21 opportunities.
The Mets were the best team in baseball in a lot of things in 1986. And though Mookie Wilson's season got off to the worst possible start, he was in position to play the most important role at the finish. We'll get to that in due time.
The 1986 Mets Rewatch Newsletter is a newsletter for people who believe dinosaurs are rooting for them.
More Mookie
Here’s Mookie hitting a walk-off home run vs Bruce Sutter in 1981, robbing Greg Brock of a home run with a leaping catch in 1983, and talking with Howard Johnson and the Kiner’s Korner podcast folks a couple weeks ago.
Elsewhere
Check out this edition of the podcast National League Town, in which Jeff Hysen interviews 1986 Met Roger McDowell and Doug Feldmann, who co-authored McDowell’s new book Hot Foot.
You can contact me on Bluesky or via e-mail ([email protected]). You can find my other newsletter, which summarizes interviews I do with journalists, here.