Ray Knight still follows the Mets as much as possible, and the 1986 World Series MVP is happy they’ve turned their season around and are challenging for a playoff position.
“Always follow the Mets. Just glad they’re starting to play good baseball, solid baseball,” Knight said Saturday at Fanatics Fest NYC at the Javits Center. “Early in the year, it seemed like everything was a struggle.
“But they have [started] scoring runs, getting better pitching, and hey, they have a chance to maybe do some damage. You come into the playoffs, you never know what’s going to happen.”
The Mets went nowhere at 24-35 in early June, but they are now just one game behind the Braves for the third wild-card position in the National League under first-year manager Carlos Mendoza.
The 71-year-old Knight, who played three seasons for the Mets from 1984-86, believes those early struggles helped the team develop chemistry and resilience.
“When you go through adversity and come out of it, there’s always that,” Knight said. “You learn to deal and deal with down days, down weeks, but when you come out of it, you realize, ‘hey, we’re pretty good.'” So you have that value of not having to worry or think that this fight is coming to be an absolute battle. We’re going to come out of here and play good baseball.”
The retired third baseman was acquired from the Astros after the Mets had finished 68-94 in 1983.
They improved by 22 games the following season before winning 98 games in 1985 and then a franchise-record 108 in 1986 en route to the World Series title over the Red Sox.
“In ’84 I got traded over there, and they were already really good,” Knight said. “It was just a question [of] get that pitching staff stretched out. Doc [Gooden] come along and obviously [Ron] Darling and [making] the trade for [Bobby] Ojeda. … The pitching staff — there was already a lot of offense there — and once that pitching staff settled in, it just felt like you could win every day.”