#5 1986 Mets Rewatch: The Pitcher The Mets Beat The Most

The 1986 Mets Rewatch Newsletter is a newsletter for people who would build a bunker so that they could watch Mets games in peace

If you're a Mets fan of a certain age, you know of Hall-of-Fame pitcher Steve Carlton for a few reasons.

1) The Mets (and Tom Seaver) ¹

beat him a lot, 36 times to be exact. That’s more than they've beaten any pitcher.

2) He struck out 19 Mets in a game in 1969 and lost!

3) He's a strange person³

He was a great pitcher. I don’t dispute that.

But while the 1969 game is his signature game against the Mets, there is another one that stands out in Carlton's ledger. It's this one from April 18, 1986, in which he posted the following pitching line against the eventual champs.

-6 2/3 innings pitched

-5 runs, 5 hits

-10 strikeouts, 8 walks

Yes, that's right. He had 10 strikeouts and 8 walks!

That's absurd. Mets broadcaster Tim McCarver called it “mind boggling.”²

There's no chance a starting pitcher would last long enough to do that now. No other pitcher previously had that many strikeouts and that many walks in a game against the Mets prior to that day. Only one has done it since (Fernando Valenzuela in 1987 – he pitched a complete game against the Mets with 13 strikeouts and 8 walks!)

Only one pitcher has had a 10+ strikeouts and 8+ walks game for any team since 2007 (Carlos Martinez of the Cardinals in 2017).

Carlton was the second pitcher to have a 10/8 game in the 1980s but what's crazy is … the first guy did it the day before! Bobby Witt of the Rangers threw 5 no-hit innings against the Brewers, striking out 10 and walking 8 before then-Rangers manager Bobby Valentine hooked him.

The happy recap

There was a little cause for alarm early as Ron Darling allowed solo homers to Milt Thompson and Mike Schmidt in the first inning. The Schmidt one, hit against a wind blowing in from center field, was the fourth home run Darling had allowed in five innings pitched all season. Darling was pitching after three previous attempts for his start had been rained out.

Darling pitched well other than those two dingers. He didn’t allow another run. The momentum carried over as Darling allowed only one home run in his next five starts.

In 2026 baseball Carlton would have gotten the hook in this game after a first inning in which he threw 47 pitches(!) and walked 4 (he also struck out three. Darryl Strawberry's bases-loaded walk scored one run and Ray Knight plated two others with a single.

This was an excruciating inning. Nine batters came up in the 20 minutes it took to complete and only two put the ball in play. Knight had the single and Len Dykstra led off with a drag bunt hit. Carlton had issues throughout the inning with his catcher, John Russell and the inning included a wild pitch and a passed ball on cross-ups. The Phillies warmed up Dave Stewart but didn’t bring him in.

Ralph Kiner described it as “a wild and wooly game” when the second inning started, but the next five innings were rather boring. Neither team scored and there were only two base hits.

The Phillies threatened in the seventh by putting the first two men on base and I can’t imagine any current circumstance in which Darling would have been left in a one-run game in the seventh inning with two on base.

But this was 1986 and Davey Johnson stuck with him. The Phillies chose not to bunt the runners over and Darling escaped with a strikeout and two flyouts.

In the bottom of the seventh inning the Mets took advantage of a Mike Schmidt mishap. Schmidt misplayed a Keith Hernandez foul popup that got caught up in swirling winds. Hernandez then got a single that hit the first base bag and started a rally. Von Hayes was waiting for the ball but it hopped well over his head.

George Foster accounted for the game's final two runs with a bases-loaded single against submarining reliever Kent Tekulve. Both runs were charged to Carlton.

That gave Foster an even 1,200 RBI for his career and some satisfaction after being booed during his previous at-bats (Foster struck out on a pitch that would have been Ball 4 with the bases loaded in the first inning). He got a standing ovation for this one.

Jesse Orosco finished the game for Darling. The two of them combined for only one walk, a significant contrast to Carlton’s game.

Photo Album

One of the entertaining things to watch in this game was home plate umpire Dutch Rennert.

It’s interesting to see how umpires, particularly Dutch, would position themselves to call pitches 40 years ago. It’s a lot different from how they do so now.

But what Dutch was best known for was his overly demonstrative strike call. You had no doubt what the pitch call was when Dutch was umpiring. I appreciate that his obituary noted that though he acknowledged getting carried away, it wasn’t an act.

Another cool visual from this one … the Phillies’ bullpen car.

Who’s to blame?

Phillies pitching coach Claude Osteen blamed the pitcher's mound for Carlton’s struggles. "It's a very steep mound here with a steep drop-off. Not that there's anything wrong with that⁴ It's just that way. But when you get one like that you've got to go pretty slow. He was all keyed up. He was going much too fast."

Foster, Knight, Hernandez, and Gary Carter were all quoted after the game saying that Carlton had good stuff. As did Osteen.

"He had a super fastball and it was the closest thing I've seen to his old slider," he said.

Said Phillies manager John Felske: "Steve wasn't very lucky tonight," said John Felske, referring no doubt to the seventh-inning sequence in which Hernandez should have been out on a popup but got a hit instead.. "He never seems to be against that team."

Eh. Maybe yes, maybe no. Carlton walked 15 batters in 14 1/3 innings in his next three starts. I don't think this game was a fluke. He was just old and still recovering from injury.

Most Losses To Mets – All-Time

>> Most losses by an active pitcher: Patrick Corbin 13

Carlton's 36 losses to the Mets are actually the most by any pitcher to any team since 1962, the year of the Mets inception. Fellow Hall-of-Famer Phil Niekro comes closest with 34 losses to the Reds.

Of course, you do have to be pretty good to lose to a team 36 times, so we'll give Carlton that much. He did have a more memorable day later that season, albeit with the Giants and not the Phillies, when he recorded his 4,000th career strikeout.

By the way: This was one of the weirder days in Philadelphia sports history. Not only did Carlton have this strange game, the 76ers lost a playoff game to the then-Bullets, 95-94 when Dudley Bradley banked in a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

The Sixers led 94-77 but the Bullets scored the last 18 points of the game. Bradley had the lowest field goal percentage of any player in the regular season but hit the winning shot. They usually show this once a year during the playoffs to have a little fun with former Sixer Charles Barkley.

While we’re acknowledging Mets opponents, RIP to Davey Lopes and Phil Garner who both passed away this past week.

Lopes played 16 seasons in the majors, primarily as a second baseman for the Dodgers for whom he played in four World Series, winning one in 1981. His 557 stolen bases rank 26th all-time and he passed on the knowledge to many future basestealers as a longtime coach.

Garner played 16 seasons, mostly as a second baseman and third baseman primarily with the A’s, Pirates, and Astros, the latter of whom he managed to an NL pennant in 2005.

By the way, both were 1986 Mets-killers. Lopes went 7-for-13 with 2 homers against the Mets in the regular season and was one of the run scorers in the 16th inning of Game 6 of the NLCS. Garner hit .370 with 10 hits and 2 home runs, including a 10th-inning go-ahead homer in one of my favorite games that I hope to recap in the future.

If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend the YouTube series “Howard Johnson’s Time Machine.” Howard and sportswriter Mark Rosenman are going week by week through the 1986 season in even greater depth than I am. Each week they bring on a different 1986 Mets player as a guest. Here’s the episode with Mookie Wilson talking about the injury he suffered in spring training.