April 27, 1986: Mets defeat nemesis John Tudor to complete sweep of Cardinals

Few teams in baseball history have had the luxury of all but clinching their division as early as April. The 1986 New York Mets knew this better than most, having fought to 98 wins in 1985 only to miss the playoffs at the hands of their bitter National League East rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, who took the division with 101 regular-season wins and went on to win the NL pennant.

Still, their expectations were prime. Of 210 writers from the Baseball Writers Association of America surveyed by The Sporting News before the 1986 season, 179 had the Mets winning the NL East, and 100 the World Series.1

Alas, many predictions turn out wrong – those same writers had picked the Cardinals for fifth place the year before. The 1986 Mets, however, lived up to the preseason hype.

A key moment in their rise was a four-game weekend series in St. Louis in late April. For how early it was, the tensions surrounding the matchups felt astoundingly World Series-esque.2 The Cardinals needed to get right amid a three-game losing streak, and the Mets, already on a five-game roll, wanted to go for their throats.

Through three games of the series, the Mets had a come-from-behind 10-inning win in the opener on April 24, then a shutout by 1985 NL Cy Young Award winner Dwight Gooden, then a one-run win capped by an acrobatic game-ending double play.3 Passion displayed itself on both sides. Cardinals shorstop Ozzie Smith broke up a double play with an aggressive takeout slide.4 Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez was visibly dismayed when a potential home run was called foul,5 mentally battered by the St. Louis fans in his first action in the city since he testified about his drug use with the team.6

New York went for the series on Sunday, April 27, with a chance to legitimately throw aside the Cardinals and get a significant early edge in the division.

In front of a crowd of 39,193, John Tudor took the mound for St. Louis.

Were it not for Gooden’s master class in 1985, Tudor would have taken home his own NL Cy Young Award – he won 20 of 21 decisions after June 3 and finished second to Gooden in award voting. His microscopic 0.93 ERA in 48⅓ innings against the Mets played a major role in the Mets’ shortcomings. Twice against New York he threw complete-game shutouts,7 and in a third start he threw 10 scoreless innings before the Mets won 1-0 in the 11th.

But despite a 3-0 start to the 1986 campaign, with a 1.69 ERA, the lefty was already a far different pitcher than the year prior – he had suffered a shoulder injury in Game Seven of the World Series.8 His velocity, which had already dropped significantly (albeit with improved results) throughout his career, fell to the low 80s. Tudor’s 1986 season would see him dealing with his worsening injuries while throwing the slowest of any pitcher in the National League.9 Still, for the Mets to beat him here would signify monumental progress.

Tudor opened with three perfect innings, striking out Darryl Strawberry and Lenny Dykstra and getting six groundouts.

Sharing the mound with Tudor was his former Red Sox teammate Bob Ojeda. Having been traded to the Mets in November 1985 after an anti-ownership outburst in Boston, he still had much to prove.10 Off to a hot start, Ojeda sat 2-0 with a 1.46 ERA through three outings.

The Cardinals led off the bottom of the first by manufacturing a run, as was their style. Vince Coleman led off with a single and moved to third on a single by Smith. Ojeda induced a grounder by Tom Herr to Kevin Mitchell at shortstop. Mitchell, playing the position for the first time professionally,11 flipped low to Tim Teufel, who dropped it for an error, scoring Coleman.12

A fly ball by Jack Clark advanced Smith to third base, setting up reigning National League MVP Willie McGee for first and third with only one out. But Ojeda struck out McGee, and Tito Landrum grounded out to Teufel to end the frame.

A quiet second inning brought the Cardinals to the third, when Coleman turned a leadoff single into three bases via a stolen base and a Herr groundout. Ojeda again managed to scrape his way out of the jam, as another Clark fly out ended the inning, keeping the score 1-0.

The tides turned for the Mets in the fourth inning, when Mitchell led off with his first career home run, catching just enough of a changeup to muscle it over the left-field fence. With the game brand-new at 1-1, Hernandez singled, and a double-play ball to short by Gary Carter coaxed a rare errant throw from the Wizard, sailing over the head of Herr.13

With men on second and third, Strawberry’s groundout to first brought home Hernandez, and George Foster’s single drove in Carter to make the score 3-1, Mets.

In the bottom of the inning, the Mets’ two-run lead was cut to one when McGee powered his second April homer, over the left-field fence. It was a rare positive for McGee early in a season during which his batting average ultimately plummeted nearly 100 points from the .353 mark of his MVP season.

The Cardinals threatened to draw even when Terry Pendleton singled and stole second, but Ojeda put down the last two men in the St. Louis lineup to end the fourth.

The top of the Mets’ order came up with two outs in the top of the fifth, and Mitchell singled to left field before Tudor made his biggest mistake of the game, with Teufel at bat. As Tudor remarked afterward, “Mike Heath called a change. … I was thinking fastball and at the very last second tried to throw a changeup.” What came out of his hand was somewhere in between,14 and left up high for Teufel to hit a two-run blast. Like Mitchell’s, it was not crushed; in fact, Teufel ran it out initially, prompting Todd Worrell to throw at him in his next at bat in the eighth inning. Nonetheless, the Mets had a 5-2 lead.15

The Cardinals stranded Herr on second in the fifth, and Pendleton in the sixth. For the game they hit 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position.

Tudor finished his day with a one-two-three seventh inning, as Worrell relieved him and pitched an uneventful top of the eighth (working around the Teufel beaning). Afterward, Ojeda returned to face the middle of the Cardinals’ lineup. Clark’s home run reduced the Mets’ lead to two, and McGee’s single brought Landrum to the plate as the tying run. But a groundball to Rafael Santana, in at short for Mitchell, started a 6-4-3 double play and kept the Mets in front 5-3.

New York looked for insurance in the top of the ninth, loading the bases with one out on Strawberry’s double, Foster’s single, and Dykstra’s intentional walk. The Mets squandered the opportunity, though, as Ojeda grounded to Herr, who made a fine play to force out Strawberry at the plate. Santana’s popout allowed the Cardinals one more chance to score two runs.

Ultimately, the game ended as quietly as it started. A trio of fly outs from Pendleton, Heath, and pinch-hitter Clint Hurdle finished off the complete game for Ojeda and the four-game sweep for the Mets.

The Mets stars of the final game each paralleled 1985 Cardinals. As a left-hander coming over from Boston, Ojeda was compared to Tudor from the moment he arrived.16 Mitchell, whose batting average was up to .391 after the game, felt to the Mets the way rookie Coleman had been to the Cardinals. Teufel’s acquisition was reminiscent of Jack Clark’s the year before. For those three to be contributors on an already deep roster brought the Mets’ ceiling to new heights.17

Beyond that, the success of the two righties Mitchell and Teufel represented the fruit of an offseason designed to lengthen their lineup against left-handed pitchers like Tudor – Mets right-handed bats jumped from a .678 OPS against lefties in 1985 to .748 in 1986.18

In completing their sweep of the Cardinals, the Mets sucked the heart out of their rivals – columnist Phil Pepe labeled it a “total and complete wipeout.”19 The Mets had won nine straight, and the Cardinals had lost seven.

For Tudor, the loss ended an 18-game home win streak, and 14-game streak overall – especially brutal because it fell one shy of Bob Gibson’s franchise record.20 For Ojeda, winning became the norm en route to a fourth-place finish in the NL Cy Young Award voting – the highest placing of four Mets starters to receive votes.

The April sweep served as a massive confidence boost to players and fans alike. Backman put it bluntly – “There’s a lot of talk around the clubhouse about winning [the pennant] early – April, May, June.”21 The series was among the first glimpses of the dominant season that would eventually bring Queens its second World Series title.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

SABR members John Fredland and Kurt Blumenau provided insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Photo credit: Trading Card DB.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

The author also reviewed SABR Baseball Biography Project biographies of several players who played in the game, especially Rory Costello’s biography of John Tudor and Alan Cohen’s biography of Bob Ojeda.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN198604270.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1986/B04270SLN1986.htm

Notes

1 “Bush-League Predictions,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1986, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-09-30-me-10099-story.html.

2 Jeff Pearlman, The Bad Guys Won! (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 64-65.

3 Phil Pepe, “El Sid’s 10 Ks Aren’t Wasted,” New York Daily News, April 27, 1986: 36.

4 Rick Hummel, “Mets Keep Cards In Spin 4-3,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, April 27, 1986: 48.

5 Jim Naughton, “On or off Field, Hernandez Has No Hideaways,” New York Daily News, April 27, 1986: 70.

6 George Vecsey, “Torn Between Shadow and Sunshine,” New York Times, March 9, 1986: 4S.

7 June 8 and September 11.

8 Peter Gammons, “How Long Can It Last?” Sports Illustrated, May 21, 1990.

9 Fred Mitchell, “Martinez ‘happy’ to be optioned back to Iowa.” Chicago Tribune, August 4, 1986: Section 3:3.

10 Pearlman, 223

11 Marty Noble, “Mitchell Outplays the Master at Short,” Newsday (Long Island, New York), April 28, 1986: 92.

12 Noble, “Mitchell Outplays the Master at Short.”

13 Jim Thomas, “Basket-Ball,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, April 28, 1986: 3C.

14 Thomas. Tudor said he tried to throw a changeup at the last minute. Thomas also referred to it as a changeup. Jim Naughton, “Ojeda Pins Loss on Ex-Mate Tudor,” New York Daily News, April 28, 1986: 53.

Teufel referred to the pitch as a fastball.

15 Naughton, “Ojeda Pins Loss on Ex-Mate Tudor.” Teufel said he initially ran out the home run. John Sonderegger, “New Mets Keep Cards on Skids,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, April 28, 1986: 7C. Worrell dusted off and then hit Teufel in his first plate appearance after the home run. This was the first of only four home runs for Teufel that season. He didn’t hit another until June 10, when he hit an extra-inning walk-off pinch-hit grand slam off Tom Hume of the Phillies. Teufel’s 27 homers in Triple A in 1983 convinced manager Davey Johnson to trade for him, but his power didn’t show up to a large degree in 1986.

16 Fred McMane (United Press International), “There Are Enough Similarities Between Bob Ojeda and His …,” November 14, 1985. https:/www.upi.com/Archives/1985/11/14/There-are-enough-similarities-between-Bob-Ojeda-and-his/3500500792400/.

17 Sonderegger, “New Mets Keep Cards on Skids,” 3C.

18 Pearlman, 67-68.

19 Phil Pepe, “Mets Didn’t Beat Up Wimps,” New York Daily News, April 28, 1986: 53.

20 Jim Thomas, “Basket-Ball.”

21 Jim Naughton, “How Sweep It Is for Mets,” New York Daily News, April 28, 1986: 47.