Every NY Mets player to lead the league in errors

Defense has been a value of winning New York Mets baseball teams. Keith Hernandez at first base. Carlos Beltran in center field. Rey Ordonez at shortstop. The list feels endless.

Needless to say, not every player to suit up for the orange and blue has the fundies to win a Gold Glove. In fact, some have been bad enough to lead the league in errors.

Since their inception in 1962, there have been only three Mets players to spend the full season with the team to lead the league in defensive flubs with a fourth who finished the season in New York. Can you guess them all?

Howard Johnson – 1990

The first Mets player to lead the league in errors didn’t happen until 1990. It’s quite an achievement for an organization that seemed to make countless defensive mistakes in their first several years. Perhaps it was a result of the worst players not getting enough time on the field to rack up enough E’s.

Johnson did a lot of things terrifically for the Mets, but playing defense wasn’t one of them. He made 28 errors in 1990. Among them, 20 came as a third baseman with the other 8 at shortstop. Amazingly, his .972 fielding percentage at shortstop was far better than the .913 as a third baseman.

Howard Johnson – 1991

In back-to-back years, Johnson led the National League in errors. He would add right field to his defensive repertoire this season. It did nothing to save him from a league-worst 31 errors.

A season that featured Johnson as the fifth-place finisher in the MVP race also included 18 errors at third base, 11 at shortstop, and 2 more in right field. He’d wind up in center field the following season as his primary position, committing only 3 errors but with some terrible metrics to tell us he wasn’t getting to enough balls to make the errors.

David Wright – 2005

It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows with David Wright at third base. In 2005, he tied Troy Glaus with a league-high 24 errors. This was just his first full season in the majors. He had some work to do to become the overall great player he’d develop into.

Just two years later in 2007, Wright won the first of two Gold Gloves in his career. Errors were still plentiful, committing 21 in 2007. However, other defensive metrics rated him as one of the more incredible third basemen in baseball. His range had improved significantly. The one big gap in his game had closed.

Javier Baez – 2021

This one deserves an asterisk, but is worth noting. The 24 errors committed by Javier Baez in 2021 was tied with Jazz Chisholm and Luis Urias for the most in the league.

Baez made 18 of his errors with the Chicago Cubs and the other 6 with the Mets. Of them, 4 came as a second baseman and the other 2 at shortstop while filling in for an injured Francisco Lindor. Once thought of as a top-level defender, he’d lead the league in errors for the Detroit Tigers again in 2022 and 2023 as their starting shortstop.