3 Mets players we wish Statcast was around to track

2) Darryl Strawberry instilled fear in opposing pitchers for eight years as a Met, but Statcast could have given us launch angles and exit velocity.

Like Gooden, Darryl Strawberry was a hyped prospect from the beginning, as he was the first overall pick in the 1980 MLB draft, and his game-changing power turned a franchise that always had been offensively challenged without much power to the best offense in the National League in the second half of the 1980s.

Our scouts and executives today put a lot of emphasis on exit velocity and launch angles, and some of the most towering home runs in Mets history were courtesy of Strawberry. So given all the media attention on the Mets during the decade, national broadcasts could have given us a measure of how hard he hit the ball.

Very few players in the league instilled opposition game planning around a particular player than Darryl Strawberry, not only for his power, but also for his speed. In each season from 1984 to 1988, Strawberry hit 25 or more home runs, and stole 25 or more bases, so how his sprint speed impacted how pitchers approached his plate appearances (albeit in a league where running was more common) while trying to neutralize his power threat would have been fascinating if Statcast was available back then.