True Mets fans can tell you who led the team in HRs, wins in 2013

Every so often I get myself caught sliding down the rabbit hole of past New York Mets seasons. One recent journey took me back to 2013. Post-Madoff and pre-Jacob deGrom, we arrive at an interesting time in franchise history.

R.A. Dickey has already been traded to the Toronto Blue Jays. Jacob deGrom has not yet made his major league debut but Matt Harvey has arrived and given the fans some hope.

It’s a period of losing baseball in Flushing and some general negative feelings. There’s no surer sign of this than looking at the team’s leader in home runs and wins.

Only a true Mets fan knows who led the team in home runs and wins in 2013

I say it in jest. You can be a true Mets fan and have no idea who the team leader in home runs and wins was back in 2013. It’s perfectly okay to check out what the team is up to every few years. The 2013 campaign was the perfect one to skip out on and have a sports vacation.

I’m not sure you can find any modern Mets season with two more random answers to these leaders. On the offensive side, you might guess David Wright or even Lucas Duda led the team in home runs. You may ask yourself if this was Ike Davis’ big year.

It’s a “no” for all of those guesses. With 21 home runs, the Mets 2013 king of swing was Marlon Byrd.

In his lone year with the Mets—which didn’t even stretch the full season—Byrd hit 21 home runs in 464 plate appearances. It was an unexpectedly high number for a guy who had never hit more than 20 in any full season.

Byrd was a summer trade piece sent to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The relationship didn’t last long. We’ll always have 2013.

As if this wasn’t an odd enough answer, we need to pair it with the pitching staff and their leader in wins. Probably not as random, the man with the most wins on the 2013 Mets was Dillon Gee with 12.

Gee is one of those Mets starters from the beginning of last decade that seems to have just faded in our memories. Never thought of as an ace, he was more of a mid-rotation starter at best long before the Mets had enough good arms to be competitive.

With his dozen wins in 2013, Gee managed to secure the team lead rather easily.

Both Byrd and Gee had good years for the 2013 Mets, but a good year for these two doesn’t equal success for the team as a whole. Instead, it gives away how the season ultimately ended: in despair.

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At 74-88, this was another uneventful Mets campaign.