Did you know that in 1985, Dwight Gooden had a season where he was worth 12.2 WAR? It remains to this date the most in a single season in New York Mets history.
WAR, which stands for Wins Above Replacement, essentially measures how good a player is by determining how many more wins they are worth than a replacement-level player at his position.
Baseball-Reference defines a 5.0-plus WAR season as All-Star quality, and in Mets history, there have been just 68 such seasons.
A lot of those seasons come from the franchise greats like Tom Seaver, Jacob deGrom, David Wright, Darryl Strawberry, and Edgardo Alfonzo, just to name a few. Others come from players who had great careers but aren’t remembered as Mets. Pedro Martinez, Bret Saberhagen, and John Olerud are some of the ones who fit into that category.
Then, there’s my personal favorite group — the players who had one, and just one season only, where they played so far above their career averages that they etched their names into the history books next to the likes of Seaver, deGrom, Wright and the others.
So, with an honorable mention to Angel Pagan who just missed the cut, here are the three most unexpected 5.0 WAR seasons in a Mets uniform.
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