The last time a NY Mets player led the league in losses

There have been eight seasons where a New York Mets pitcher led the league in losses. From 1962-1967, all but the 1966 season included someone representing the Mets leading the league in this statistic. Roger Craig in 1962 and 1963, Tracy Stallard in 1964, and finally Jack Fisher in 1965 and again in 1967.

The team cleaned up their act in the latter part of the 1960s, winning a World Series in 1969 and being a much better ball club thereafter. They weren’t without their miserable stretches. Jerry Koosman led the league in losses in 1977 and Pat Zachry did so in 1981—both tied with another National League player.

The most recent instance of a Mets pitcher leading the league in losses would happen again soon after. In 1983, veteran journeyman Mike Torrez found his way to the Mets via offseason trade. He’d put together several league leading totals, none of which he probably intended to deliver.

The last Mets pitcher to lead the league in losses was Mike Torrez in 1983

Torrez played for some pretty good teams, but only ever appeared in the postseason once. He won a championship with the 1977 New York Yankees. However, most of his career was spent with the Boston Red Sox. It’s from those Red Sox where he spent 1978-1982 that he’d get traded back to New York but to the National League club representing the Big Apple.

Statistically, Torrez was far from the worst Mets pitcher to ever take the mound. A 0.3 WAR, 10-17 record, and 4.37 ERA was less than mediocre. The 17 losses was the most of any NL pitcher, giving him a distinction of being the most recent Mets pitcher to lead the league in this category.

How’d he do it? His 108 earned runs and a whopping 113 walks helped to lead the way. Both also led the league. He was no stranger to doing so. In 1979, he led the American League in both statistics. In 1975, he walked 133 batters for the Baltimore Orioles. Comically, he was a 20-game winner with a 3.06 ERA in 1975. He took that “unhittable” adjective a little too literally.

Torrez failed to make it through his second year with the Mets, going 1-5 with a 5.02 ERA in 8 starts and a relief appearance. The 1984 season would end up as his last, making two relief appearances for the Oakland Athletics later that year. Fortunately for Mets fans, they were done with starting pitcher cast-offs from other organizations. A group of rising youngsters would take the bulk of the starts for the organization soon after.

For as bad as many Mets teams have been over the last 40 years or so, it’s impressively odd no one else has led the league in losses since Torrez. You need to be some kind of special innings eater in order to stick with a team and lose as often as Torrez did in 1983 when, despite the losing, he still logged 222.1 innings which ranks as the 48th most in a single-season by a Mets pitcher. It’s not ironic that on this same list of innings pitched are the same Mets pitchers to lead the league in losses outside of Zachry whose accomplishment happened in the shortened 1981 season. There’s something to be appreciated about a guy taking the ball for as long as those gentlemen did and how many losses they took just to get through the year.