Mets Madness: A winter tournament to select the fans’ favorite player

Who is the fans’ favorite New York Mets player of all-time? This winter we find out with a Mets Madness tournament.

We’re well into the offseason already and the New York Mets won’t play another game for a few more months. To help some of the time pass this winter, we invite you to follow us on Twitter and Facebook and participate in our Mets Madness Tournament.

Much like the NCAA March Madness Tournament minus the corruption, this is based on the votes by Mets fans on social media. We’ve bracketed up 64 current or former members of the Amazins and will have them duke it out daily to determine which member of the orange and blue is the most beloved.

Using the most sophisticated sciences, we’ve seeded what we believe are 68 of the most well-liked players in franchise history. They’re separated into four different brackets by years with an extra that includes a mix of eras. We will begin with a play-in game for each bracket.

With bracket games, the most exciting part is to see where everyone ranks. I won’t waste your time any further. This is where everyone falls.

60s/70s Conference

Seed 1: Tom Seaver
Seed 2: Ed Kranepool
Seed 3: Tug McGraw
Seed 4: Jerry Koosman
Seed 5: Jon Matlack
Seed 6: Jerry Grote
Seed 7: John Stearns
Seed 8: Ron Hunt
Seed 9: Cleon Jones
Seed 10: Tommie Agee
Seed 11: Felix Millan
Seed 12: Nolan Ryan
Seed 13: Craig Swan
Seed 14: Art Shamsky/Jack Fisher
Seed 15: Ron Swoboda
Seed 16: Wayne Garrett

80s/90s Conference

Seed 1: Keith Hernandez
Seed 2: Dwight Gooden
Seed 3: Darryl Strawberry
Seed 4: Ron Darling
Seed 5: Gary Carter
Seed 6: Howard Johnson
Seed 7: David Cone
Seed 8: Mookie Wilson
Seed 9: Wally Backman
Seed 10: Bud Harrelson
Seed 11: John Franco
Seed 12: Sid Fernandez
Seed 13: Todd Hundley
Seed 14: Bret Saberhagen
Seed 15: Bob Ojeda
Seed 16: Lenny Dykstra/Ray Knight

00/10s Conference

Seed 1: David Wright
Seed 2: Jacob deGrom
Seed 3: Carlos Beltran
Seed 4: Johan Santana
Seed 5: Jose Reyes
Seed 6: Noah Syndergaard
Seed 7: Wilmer Flores
Seed 8: Brandon Nimmo
Seed 9: Michael Conforto
Seed 10: Curtis Granderson
Seed 11: Steven Matz/Joe McEwing
Seed 12: Pedro Martinez
Seed 13: Matt Harvey
Seed 14: Carlos Delgado
Seed 15: Jeurys Familia
Seed 16: Tom Glavine

Overflow Conference

Seed 1: Mike Piazza
Seed 2: Edgardo Alfonzo
Seed 3: Bartolo Colon
Seed 4: John Olerud
Seed 5: Rusty Staub
Seed 6: Robin Ventura
Seed 7: Daniel Murphy
Seed 8: Jesse Orosco
Seed 9: Lee Mazzilli
Seed 10: Yoenis Cespedes
Seed 11: R.A. Dickey
Seed 12: Rey Ordonez
Seed 13: Dave Kingman
Seed 14: Benny Agbayani
Seed 15: Billy Wagner/Endy Chavez
Seed 16: Al Leiter

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the four play-in matches are below:

Play-in: Joe McEwing vs. Steven Matz
Play-in: Endy Chavez vs. Billy Wagner
Play-in: Jack Fisher vs. Art Shamsky
Play-in: Ray Knight vs. Lenny Dykstra

The way the tournament will work is like this:

Each day on Twitter, we will post a poll with the two player names. You pick your favorite. Sounds simple, right?

Unlike government held elections, you get to vote two times without having to put on a disguise like the Democrats and Republicans make you do every November.

There will be a poll posted and one player will get a vote for having the tweet favorited and one vote will go toward the other if it’s retweeted.

In the event of a tie, both players advance. The next round will include a triple-threat match. The only exception to this is in the final round. If there’s a tie in the championship, we will invite the two players to duke it out in the ring one-on-one with one weapon of their choice. If they are unable to attend, we will do a re-vote.

The tournament will start on December 1, 2018, and will have one match-up per day. We will announce the schedule at the beginning of the week just in case there’s someone you really want to campaign hard for.

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We hope to see you participate in Mets Madness. May the best Met win.