The Mets Let Him Go. Then He Got Worse. Then He Won the Pennant.

Ah yes. The Mets.

Did the Mets trade away a great pitcher, or did they trade away a bad month? Every Mets fan asked it this week, the way Mets fans ask everything. Who did we anger? What do they want? Some even had a theory: the ball through Buckner’s legs.

We went through every outing he made this year, so here is the answer, with its number: the trade fixed nothing. In his first four starts as a Ray, Freddy Peralta gave up 17 earned runs in 21 innings. That is worse than anything he did in Queens. The magic, such as it is, started three weeks later and has lasted ten outings. That is the surprise. You were told a story about a change of scenery. The scenery changed, and for a month he got worse.

By the end of this you will know what to say the next time your team sells low, which, if you root for the Mets, will be soon.

The Season, One Start at a Time

Let us set the scene, since someone clearly did. In January the Mets sent two young players to Milwaukee for Peralta, who had gone 17–6 with a 2.70 ERA the year before. He was theirs for one season. He made 22 starts in orange and blue and posted a 4.99 ERA. (If you are keeping score at home, that is the number a fan remembers; it is also the one he should not.) On August 2, with the club at 47–66, the Mets sent him to Tampa for three minor leaguers.

Look at the first blue bars. Seven runs to the Rockies. Five to the Orioles. If the devil was punishing Flushing, he had an odd way of rewarding Tampa. Then, from late August on, the bars nearly vanish: 34 innings and three earned runs to end the season, one of them against — of course — the Mets. Then 17 innings in October with two more. Then the ALCS MVP. And on Monday night, with Milwaukee up two games to none, he took the ball for Game 3 of the World Series against the club that traded him to the Mets in January. (How that went, you know better than I do; this was written before the first pitch, as one does.)

What Changed, and What Merely Bounced

Some of it is real. As a Ray he walks fewer men, about 7 in 100 batters against 9 in New York. He gives up fewer home runs. Notice what he does not do: strike out more. He strikes out fewer, about 20 in 100 against 22 as a Met, and both are well under the 30 he struck out over his Milwaukee years.

The rest is the ball in play. As a Met, about 31 of every 100 balls hitters put in play fell for hits. As a Ray, about 23. Over his career, about 27. That is the kind of number that bounces; a pitcher has some say in it, but his fielders and the hops have more. Two-thirds of a great run, it turns out, is often the fielders and the hops.

And the sample is small. Ten outings is about 50 innings. You would not judge a restaurant by one dinner, and a pitcher’s ERA does not settle down for well over a hundred innings. Fifty good innings tell you he is not broken. They do not tell you he was fixed.

As for Buckner: Read the Fine Print

Now, about that ball. On October 25, 1986, Mookie Wilson’s slow roller went through Bill Buckner’s legs, the Mets won Game 6, and two nights later they won the World Series. Notice which side that ball rolled for. That was no curse. That was a gift — and gifts of that size, as every old story warns you, come with a contract.

One imagines the meeting. A gentleman in a good red suit offers one title, delivered in the most improbable way he can arrange. The price, in small print: the long wait. The Mets signed. It has now been 40 seasons. They were allowed to reach the World Series twice, in 2000 and 2015, and to lose both times, which is a detail only a lawyer of his kind would think to include. You may see the table; you may not eat.

Mets fans are not the first to sign. The Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1940 and did not win another until 1994. Fifty-four years. Somewhere a Jets fan is reading this, counting back to January 1969, and asking where one goes to renegotiate. I am told the office is open; the terms have never been good.

But here is the part of the contract the gentleman hopes you skip. It does not cover trades. Nobody below made the Mets sell a pitcher at the bottom of his slump. That is regression to the mean, and it does not care who signs your checks: a pitcher who has just been worse than his talent is likely to be better next, wherever he goes. The Mets sold the dip and the Rays bought the bounce. The devil had nothing to do with it, and THAT is the bad news, because it means the Mets did it on their own.

What to take home

When a player leaves your team and turns into a star, check two things before you light a candle. First, look at his first month in the new uniform. If he was bad there too, the new team did not fix him; time did. Second, count the innings. Fifty is a hot streak. Five hundred is a pitcher.

And to the gentleman in the red suit, should he be reading: the Mets have paid. Forty years is long enough. The Jets would like a word, too.