1969 Mets: Platoon … Halt!

The platoon system that became legend for the 1969 Mets was not in place when the team broke camp. The team’s offense was porous enough—and personnel and needs shifted often enough—that manager Gil Hodges essentially used a different lineup combination every other day.

Rule 5 pick Wayne Garrett was the 25th man on the roster and the fourth option at third base to incumbent Ed Charles. “The Glider,” coming off a year in which he led the club with 15 home runs, played every inning of the first seven games of the year at third base and batted .154 before Amos Otis started a couple of games there. Otis’s uninspired play at the position inspired Hodges to put him in the outfield where he belonged, though he did not play there regularly. Kevin Collins got the next try at third base, but his batting average was down to .150 in early May when he was sent down (and eventually sent north to Montreal in the Donn Clendenon deal). Garrett made the team mainly because if he were demoted, the Mets would have had to offer him back to the Atlanta, the team they drafted him from (as per the rules of the Rule 5). He did not start at third base until May 4—he had started twice at second and once at shortstop. Red became the 40th Met to man the hot corner in the club’s brief existence, a fraternity that would add almost 100 new members over the ensuing 40 years.

Ed Kranepool, on the other hand, was coming off a so-so season, yet he earned increased playing time at first base by hitting well over .300 for the first month. Cleon Jones began the season playing first base against lefties, with Ron Swoboda taking Jones’s spot in left field. Rod Gaspar, who made the ’69 club after just two years in the minor leagues, saw a lot of playing time in the early going. Art Shamsky’s bad back helped Gaspar make the team out of spring training, and 23-year-old switch hitter wound up starting each of the team’s first 10 games. Shamsky reclaimed his playing time upon his return in mid-May and platooned in right field with Swoboda. Gaspar remained with the team all season, however, and often entered games in eighth or ninth innings for defense or to pinch run. The acquisition of the much needed power bat of right-handed slugger Donn Clendenon on June 15 made him the first baseman…but only against lefties.

It was a system of trial and error. Though the mound had been lowered in response to the major league wide pitching dominance that crested in 1968, offense was still hard to come by for the Mets. They raised their batting average 14 points from ’68, but it was still only .242 (league average was .250) and good for eighth place in a league that added two new teams in ’69. Hodges squeezed every drop he could out of the team’s offense and relied on the pitching. Mets pitchers held the league to a league-best .227 average and no other team in the league could match their miniscule 1.18 baserunners allowed per inning. The team’s 2.99 ERA was second only to the Cardinals’ 2.94.

Part of Hodges’s lineup tinkering was the result of injuries and part was predicated by Bud Harrelson missing three weeks because of military commitments (during the Vietnam era the major leagues did not want to appear to be shielding players from service and many spent time at stateside bases during both the season and off-season). As a result, Ken Boswell, Bobby Pfeil, Al Weis, and Garrett moved around the infield and lineup as the need arose.

Hodges used 98 different batting orders during the 1969 regular season. Though the lineups were more stable in the postseason, the platoons were still strictly adhered to, and to good effect. The player used most often in the same spot in the batting order during the season was Tommie Agee in the leadoff spot. Hodges wrote his name there 93 times, yet seven other players took shots in the opening spot; including Harrelson 32 times. Though not part of a regular platoon, Pfeil still batted second more often than any other Met (32 times). Jones was the most oft-used hitter in both the third hole (54) and cleanup slot (73) in the batting order. Kranepool was the most frequently used batter in the fifth spot (40). Swoboda hit sixth 59 times, a half-dozen more times than Kranepool. The seventh spot saw more men used (14) than any other spot in the lineup; with Jerry Grote’s name written there 81 times. Weis usually found himself in the eighth spot against lefties (69 times); while Harrelson often batted there against right-handers (61).

The pitcher’s spot was one place where those scoring at home could find blessed regularity. Only eight pitchers started for the Mets all season. Tom Seaver and Gary Gentry made 35 turns of the rotation apiece, Jerry Koosman had 32 starts, while Don Cardwell and Jim McAndrew had 21 apiece in Rube Walker’s novel five-man rotation. Nolan Ryan, who also had to pitch around military commitments that summer, made 10 starts. Tug McGraw and Jack DiLauro started four times each.

Critics of the Cubs—including some of the teams players—blamed Leo Durocher’s penchant for running out the same lineup every day for wearing down the club and costing Chicago a lead that had stood at 10 games in mid-August. The Mets did not have the star power the Cubs could provide in an everyday lineup; but the Mets were certainly rested. While Randy Hundley caught the first 68 games of the year for the Cubs—including both games of a doubleheader seven times in that span (he would do double duty a dozen times in ’69)— only outfielder Cleon Jones played anywhere close to 60 consecutive games to start the season for the Mets. The most frequently-used Hodges lineup in 1969 (not taking the pitcher into account) was used just five times and included J.C. Martin behind the plate as opposed to regular catcher Jerry Grote:

1. Agee

2. Garrett

3. Boswell

4. Jones

5. Shamsky

6. Kranepool

7. Martin

8. Harrelson

9. Pitcher

Pennant.

 

MATTHEW SILVERMAN has written several books on the Mets, including 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, Mets Essential, Shea Goodbye (with Keith Hernandez), and Mets by the Numbers (with Jon Springer). He works as editor with Greg Spira on the Maple Street Press Mets Annual. He served as managing editor for Total Baseball, Total Football, The ESPN Football Encyclopedia, and as associate editor for The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia. A former associate publisher at Total Sports Publishing, he was lead editor for Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia. He lives in High Falls, New York.