The Crane Pool Forum

Two (or more, I suppose, though I can't think of any at the moment) stints with the Mets, that is. Mets who have left the team (not merely been sent down to the minors, or ILed or DLed or things of that nature) but left the club, played in another organization, and then returned to the Mets.

I'll start with the more obvious choices of Seaver, Kingman, and Staub.

Gotta have Al Jackson, Lee Mazzilli and Jose Reyes on there!

McReynolds. Bonilla. Burnitz. Zelle.

Izzy.

Alex Trevino behind the dish.

David Cone
Roger Cedano

Mike Jorgensen, David Cone, Hubie Brooks, Pedro Feliciano, Jeurys Familia, Bob L. Miller, Mike Jacobs.

Do managers count? If so, Gil Hodges, Yogi Berra, Roy McMillan, Dallas Green (ugh!), Willie Randolph (double ugh!). But not Joe Torre, who never really "came back" to manage the Mets. Torre was already here when he was named player-manager.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 7:51 am Mike Jorgensen, David Cone, Hubie Brooks, Pedro Feliciano, Jeurys Familia, Bob L. Miller, Mike Jacobs.

Do managers count? If so, Gil Hodges, Yogi Berra, Roy McMillan, Dallas Green (ugh!), Willie Randolph (double ugh!). But not Joe Torre, who never really "came back" to manage the Mets. Torre was already here when he was named player-manager.

If you don’t count Torre for that reason, you have to take away Yogi. He came in as a player-coach, and never left until being fired as skipper.

Bobby Valentine would also be a three tenured Met as all three times were broken up.

I think Clint Hurdle? I think he was here in 1985, went away for the glory year of 1986 and came back the following year?

This is a good question, Roger!

Tim Foli had two stints!

Pete Walker

Juan Lagares

Carlos Gomez

Todd Frazier

Marlon Anderson

Lenny Harris

What is interesting is how consistently poorly second tenures tended to go for people not named Staub.

Or, I guess, worse is the Jason Vargas pattern, where a guy is a Met who isn't really yet able to perform in the big leagues, moves on and becomes a successful big-leaguer to some degree, and returns to the Mets when he is no longer really able to perform in the big leagues.

I guess Carlos Gomez is another guy where his Mets tenures were two thin, stale, crusty pieces of bread holding together an otherwise robust sandwich.

Marshmallowmilkshake wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 9:44 am This is a good question, Roger!

Tim Foli had two stints!

Thank you.

I've drawn a blank on some of these returning Mets. Maybe they just re-appeared here for a blip, at the tail ends of their careers, when I wasn't paying close attention, but I'm looking at a lot of famous Mets and wondering when exactly they popped up (or struck out, in some cases) a second time. Is anyone else surprised to see a few of these names here?

I do remember Bob Miller well--he was one of the few promising original Mets (before my time) who was young, performed well (with a terrible W-L record), loads of potential (which he fulfilled with the Dodgers), every reason in the world to hang onto him, and they swapped him out for a bunch of nothing. When they re-acquired him, after he had passed through most franchises in MLB, I remember thinking "A little late, doncha think?"

I think we've run out of two-time Mets. The funny
thing is Ben Grimm could pound out some code and
answer this question in one minute.

Are you curious who the woman in my avatar is? She has nothing to do with the Mets but everything to do with this website.

Has this been revealed yet? If so, I missed it...

Greg McMichael is a rare Met who left the team and returned within the same season.

There is at least one other such animal — a back-end reliever who cycled through several teams in one season, continuing to get DFA'd and claimed on waivers. I'm thinking around 2008?

kcmets wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 11:30 am

Are you curious who the woman in my avatar is? She has nothing to do with the Mets but everything to do with this website.

Has this been revealed yet? If so, I missed it...

No, no one was curious.

the back story to my avatar is that I had myself the generic Mr. Met avatar for a long while, and wanted a different one, but every time I went to the "change avatar" page, the photo I selected (typically of some favorite obscure Met) was deemed too large to be acceptable, so I kept trying smaller and smaller photos but every time, the same result. My photos were all thousands of pixels by thousands of pixels, so I was missing not by a little but by a diameter-of-Jupiter amount, so I gave up, but last week I rearranged every photo on my hard drive by size and found her in my "Ancestry.com" work file and unlike most of my photos which were thousands of KB, hers was 4 KB or something like that, so I tried making her my avatar, and voila! it worked.

The funny part to me is that I have no idea who she is or was. She might be related to me, but more likely she's related to someone related to someone who's related to someone who's related to someone who's related to someone who's related to someone who's related to me. Maybe she was even a Mets fan--I don't know, but bless her, I don't have to look at Mr. Met anymore.

Edgy MD wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 11:00 am What is interesting is how consistently poorly second tenures tended to go for people not named Staub.

And Rusty's second time was not really so impressive. He was beloved, and he was a great pinch-hitter, but he was a sliver of his former self (except in actual girth) on the ballfield. By the end, I kind of thought of him as a wasted roster space, a sentimental gesture towards team chemistry, and memories of him in his prime, and just plain affection for an excellent human being and restaurateur but I would have preferred a player who could, you know, field a little, and run the bases, slug a HR now and then, all that good stuff.

kcmets wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 11:30 am The funny thing is Ben Grimm could pound out some code and
answer this question in one minute.

OK, I challenge the Thing to do so, since it's so easy for him. I will take the "over"--I'm sure we must have forgotten someone.

kcmets wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 11:30 am I think we've run out of two-time Mets. The funny
thing is Ben Grimm could pound out some code and
answer this question in one minute.

FAFIF has the whole list. He wrote about this. Recidivist Mets.

stevejrogers wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 9:18 am

batmagadanleadoff wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 7:51 am Mike Jorgensen, David Cone, Hubie Brooks, Pedro Feliciano, Jeurys Familia, Bob L. Miller, Mike Jacobs.

Do managers count? If so, Gil Hodges, Yogi Berra, Roy McMillan, Dallas Green (ugh!), Willie Randolph (double ugh!). But not Joe Torre, who never really "came back" to manage the Mets. Torre was already here when he was named player-manager.

If you don’t count Torre for that reason, you have to take away Yogi. He came in as a player-coach, and never left until being fired as skipper.

I included Yogi because he was a coach in between playing and managing. But yeah, he never left, either.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 1:49 pmFAFIF has the whole list. He wrote about this. Recidivist Mets.

Well, he is Encyclopedia Metsmanicca.

roger_that wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 1:07 pm

Edgy MD wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 11:00 am What is interesting is how consistently poorly second tenures tended to go for people not named Staub.

And Rusty's second time was not really so impressive. He was beloved, and he was a great pinch-hitter, but he was a sliver of his former self (except in actual girth) on the ballfield. By the end, I kind of thought of him as a wasted roster space, a sentimental gesture towards team chemistry, and memories of him in his prime, and just plain affection for an excellent human being and restaurateur but I would have preferred a player who could, you know, field a little, and run the bases, slug a HR now and then, all that good stuff.

Strange. He had .400 on-base percentage his last season, with a 126 OPS+.

We were lucky to have him.

True, but (looking at his stats) only 45 at-bats all season long, and nearly every time he got on base, you needed to pinch run for him. 2 runs scored in 1985, and one of them was on his only HR.

roger_that wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 12:59 pmthe back story to my avatar is that I had myself the generic Mr. Met avatar for a long while, and wanted a different one, but every time I went to the "change avatar" page, the photo I selected (typically of some favorite obscure Met) was deemed too large to be acceptable, so I kept trying smaller and smaller photos but every time, the same result.

If you'd like, send me a pic and I'll fix it for you.

kc@kcmets.net