The 1967 team had the largest single roster in Mets' history--54 players (27 pitchers and 27 position players)--or enough players to staff TWO baseball teams, with a couple of players in reserve. At the time, that huge number implied that Wes Westrum's club was backsliding into utter chaos, an implication the team's won-lost record and finish seemed to support: the Mets reverted to losing 100 games (they went 61-101), and finished dead last again. But in retrospect, the gargantuan roster signified something quite else: instead of a team completely confused about which players could actually play ball, the 1967 Mets were a team committed to finding a few Championship quality players: eight players who would play on the 1969 World's Championship team, the most in any single year, joined the '67 Mets. Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Ron Taylor, Cal Koonce, and Don Cardwell joined the pitching staff (which already had Tug McGraw and Nolan Ryan, though Ryan spent '67 in the minors) and Ed Charles, J.C. Martin and Ken Boswell took their first Met swings for a lineup that already included Ed Kranepool, Bud Harrelson, Ron Swoboda, Cleon Jones, and Jerry Grote.

The largest story of 1967--and probably of the franchise-- was the emergence of pitcher Tom Seaver, who won the 1967 Rookie-of-the-Year Award, rewriting the team's record books: Seaver set new team marks in wins, won-lost percentage, ERA, strikeouts, complete games, all by a wide margin, and all of which he would shortly set even higher standards in. And, odd as it may seem, his single largest contribution to Mets' history is tonal, not statistical: Seaver's dead-serious desire to win infected the young squad, and for the rest of Seaver's ten-year stay with the Mets, their feverish competitive intensity never subsided.

The big stories coming out of training camp, however, were of other new arrivals:

Rookie outfielder Don Bosch had been acquired in a trade, along with veteran pitcher Don Cardwell, for Dennis Ribant, and his reputation as a fielder and a good singles hitter fell far short of his performance on the field. Billed by the Mets and Pirates front offices as skilled at reaching base and, in the field, a worthy rival of Willie Mays, Bosch quickly demonstrated how far he would fall from those great expectations: he would have fewer than 100 at-bats in 1967, and a .140 batting average, about half of what his hype had suggested. Over the course of the season, Tom Seaver's pitching not only dwarfed Bosch's hitting, but Seaver actually outperformed him at bat-the rookie pitcher's batting average, slugging percentage and on base percentage were a few points higher than Bosch's. (Seaver scored and drove in 10 runs in 77 at-bats; Bosch could only manage 9 in 93 at-bats.)

But the trade worked, anyway, in that Cardwell began the year as the Mets' opening day pitcher (a role Seaver would assume) and performed creditably, turning in a decent (3.58) ERA in 118 innings despite elbow injuries, leading the staff in shutouts with 3. A big disappointment was Jack Fisher, whose ERA ballooned more than a full run to 4.70, and whose losses (18) led the NL. Fisher's hits/IP numbers just about reversed Seaver's (Fisher gave up 251 hits in 220 IP; Seaver went 224/251 ). A workhorse throughout his Mets career (always pitching at least 220 innings), Fisher became tradebait as 1967 dragged on, as the Mets saw several promising young starting pitchers, such as Dick Selma and Bob Hendley. The 23-year-old Selma had been used in a dual role, relieving and starting, and his 1967 performance qualified him for a full-time starting role (in 38 games and 81 innings, he turned in a 2.78 ERA). If Selma could only maintain that ERA next year, and triple his innings pitched, he would still fall slightly shy of matching the rookie year of Tom Seaver.

Over his 20-year career, Seaver never for a day had a losing career record. His first appearance, a start on the second day of the 1967 season, was a game that the Mets won 3-2, although Seaver didn't get the victory. That 0-0 mark would represent the lowest winning percentage of Seaver's career, as he won his next game (a 6-1 victory over the Cubs), and his next one (a 2-1 win, also against the Cubs), staying between 1 and 4 games above .500 all season long. Seaver wound up with a 16-13 record, easily the best record in the Mets' short history, with a franchise-record 18 complete games. (The career record for complete games was Al Jackson's 41, which Seaver would break in 1969, on his way to a franchise record of 171. The team record for lifetime victories, Jackson's 40, would be broken that same season, en route to Seaver's club record of 198.) Seaver's 10th victory, on July 26th , boosted his record to four games above .500 briefly, and saw an odd record set: during the win, the Mets hit four sacrifice flies, a record since unequaled.

The Mets' best hitter in 1967 was clearly new outfielder Tommy Davis, acquired in a trade for fan favorite Ron Hunt and the last original Met, Jim Hickman. In Davis's only year with the Mets, he led the club in most offensive categories, including Total Bases, Games, Slugging Average, Batting average, Home runs, Runs, RBIs, doubles (among Mets who played in at least 100 games.) Among Mets who played in fewer than 100 games, Bob Johnson had a pretty amazing season, batting .348 with a better OBP and SLG than Davis, pinchhitting and playing utility infield. Both Johnson and Davis would be traded in the off-season.

Traded during the season was another recent acquisition, thirdbaseman Ken Boyer, who also was productive with the bat. Although near the end of his playing days, Boyer still knew how to get on base (.335 OBP) and still had some power (.355 SLG) when he was traded to the White Sox in July for catcher J.C. Martin. (Davis, Jack Fisher, and Johnson would also go for key players on the 1969 World Series roster--Davis and Fisher also joining the White Sox in exchange for Tommie Agee and Al Weis, and Johnson joining the Reds in return for Art Shamsky.) In trading Boyer, the Mets continued their de facto policy of trading their RBI leader: past seasons' RBI leaders often found themselves soon playing for other teams: Frank Thomas in '62 was the only club RBI leader to defend his status, repeating in '63, but Joe Christopher ('64), Charlie Smith ('65), Boyer (in '66) and now Davis in '67 were traded near the peak of their Met value. Boyer found himself without a regular position on May 10 when the Mets picked up Kansas City thirdbaseman Ed Charles. Since the only other position Boyer could play was firstbase, where they had committed to playing young Ed Kranepool full-time, Boyer's value was exchanged for a backup catcher.

Kranepool, who had made the All-Star team at 21, regressed at 22, hitting 10 HRs for the third time in four years. (The 16 HRs the year before turned out to be Kranepool's career high.) Joining Kranepool in the list of young Mets whose progress was slow in 1967 were Cleon Jones and Jerry Grote. The Mets' best overall position player in 1966, Jones began 1967 by slumping badly and, according to manager Westrum, "making too many mental errors." Westrum's solution, according to George Vecsey's JOY IN MUDVILLE, was to platoon Jones with lesser outfielders in the hope that Jones would respond to the challenge, but instead Jones withdrew emotionally. Grote responded to Westrum's treatment of him differently--abrasive and confrontive where Jones was sensitive and moody, the hot-headed Grote in '67 hit even more poorly than Jones (Jones batted .243 and Grote .195, neither with many HRs or walks. The next year Grote would draw more walks alone, 44, than he and Jones combined for HRs and walks in '67.) Even more damaging than Grote's bat, from Westrum's point of view, was Grote's relationship with the pitching staff, whom he treated with contempt and criticism. A crucial game in July was lost when Grote got ejected for arguing the umpires' calls, leaving the Mets without an experienced catcher. Westrum's deteriorating relationship with Grote and Jones, among others, resulted in his resignation on September 20th.

The high point of the 1967 season was probably Jack Fisher's win over the Phillies on April 21st, making their record 4-4, the longest into the season that the young franchise had played break-even ball. At that point, the Mets proceeded to lose 22 of their next 32 games, falling into last place on Memorial Day, when Don Cardwell got hurt and missed over a month of play. Scrambling to replace him in the rotation, the Mets auditioned relievers Jack Lamabe, Chuck Estrada, and newcomers Nick Willhite and Bob Hendley in the role. Willhite's lone Met start , the day after he was acquired from the Angels, was the biggest blowout of the year, as Willhite and the Mets relief staff gave up seven HRs to the Cubs, losing 18-10, but Hendley, whom the Mets acquired from the Cubs the day of the blowout, stabilized the rotation somewhat. They played .500 ball from June 24th through August 17th, going 28-28 for those two months, climbing to ninth place as late as September 4th. An eight-game losing streak, and a 12-33 finish, sent the club down to the depths of a last-place finish for the fifth time in six seasons.

The Mets were as good as their offense in 1967. Averaging only a hair over 3 runs a game all season, they suffered protracted periods when managing even two runs per game was a struggle, dooming them to long futile stretches, such as the one between August 20th and September 17th. In the 28 games between those Sundays, they went 6-22, and averaged 1.89 runs per game. (Before this slump, when they had played .500 ball for nearly two months, they had averaged 3.91 runs per game.) The Mets offense simply wasn't providing the runs needed to win. In a league that averaged 622 runs per team, the Mets' pitching was only fifty runs worse than average, surrending 672 runs, but the offense fell over twice as far short of matching the league, scoring only 498 runs, 124 short of the average.

The two vital areas of offensive production, scoring runs and driving them in, as measured by OBP and SLG, showed that the 1967 Mets were slightly more deficient at driving men home than in getting them on base. The Mets were 7.5% short of the league's OBP, but 10.5% short of the league's slugging percentage. Having traded their best player at getting on base, Ron Hunt, for Tommy Davis, a power hitter, they sought to fill Hunt's slots, at second base and at the top of the order, with Chuck Hiller, but Hiller got off to a very slow start, and they traded Eddie Bressoud, last year's starting shortstop, on April 1st for secondbaseman Jerry Buchek, a mediocre fielder and a poor OBP man (lifetime .269, a hundred points below Hunt's OBP numbers.) They had traded Bressoud in the first place because they were ready to give the starting shortstop job to 23-yar-old Bud Harrelson. Westrum hoped the rail-thin, slick-fielding young shortstop could also hit at the top of the lineup, but Harrelson, despite his team-leading 48 walks, batted only .254, and fellow-speedster Cleon Jones (who tied with Harrelson for the club lead in stolen bases with 12) was no better at reaching base, combining for an OBP below the league average.

The Mets might have done better to make a table-setter out of Ron Swoboda, who hit a career high of .281 (with a .340 OBP) in 1967, but they were still hoping he could develop as a power hitter. Swoboda did hit 13 HRs , third on the team, but felt the pressure to hit many more. Like Tommy Davis, he was not a true middle-of-the-order power hitter, and like Davis, he was not a gifted outfielder, but they were the best the Mets had. Their centerfielder, Cleon Jones, was not up to the defensive demands of his position--Jones was an adequate leftfielder--so the Mets' starting outfield featured three men struggling to defend their positions adequately all year long. They solved two of their outfield's defensive problems after the season, when they traded Davis for centerfielder Tommie Agee, allowing them to move Jones to left field.

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