dale murphy's son up to something...

dale murphy's son up to something... Apr 23, 2020 17:50:29 GMT

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Post by klawrencio79 on Apr 23, 2020 17:50:29 GMT

Apr 23, 2020 17:37:33 GMT TheGoodMan19 said:

Apr 23, 2020 13:37:44 GMT klawrencio79 said:

To tack on to what Goodman was saying, just take a look at Davis' first few years. Basically from 1986 (his first full-time year) through 1990, he was among the preeminent players in the game with power and speed, to go along with gold glove defense. In 1986, he slashed .277/.378/.523 (.901) with 27 homers and 80 steals against only 11 CS. In 1987, his best year in the bigs, he went .293/.399/.593 (.991) with 37 HRs and 50 steals and only 6 CS.

He dealt with injuries starting in 1990 and he had trouble staying on the field, culminating in a 1997 cancer diagnosis. Despite, he came back in 1997 and had a great year for the Orioles, posting a .970 OPS with 28 HRs.

Plus, he had this gem of a brawl:

Klaw, what to you think derailed Gooden? The injuries, the partying, the Mets downward spiral, the rape allegation, all of the above?

You seen him enough. The man was on another level. His 1985 season was one of the greatest pitching seasons in history. Put up by a 20 year old kid. He should have won the Cy Young as a 19 year old rookie. Still a very good pitcher in 1992. Then his career down down the toilet. I'm sure you read "the Worst Team Money Could Buy", I wonder if that circus didn't affect Doc. I hated him, like I hated the Mets at that time. But what a waste. A damned shame. He should have been one of the all time greats.

Definitely a combo of all of the above. You take a kid who is that young and throw the world at him like that, you have to make sure he can handle it. In addition to all of that, the Mets inexplicably wanted Gooden to learn how to throw a slider, which he didn't need. Gooden has said that this, in part, exacerbated his injuries. The Worst Team Money Could Buy goes into detail about that. But you're right, it was just a perfect storm of terrible ingredients for a kid who went from nothing to having the world in his hand basically overnight.

Gooden's incredible years were just a bit before a time where I could fully appreciate it. I was 7 during the summer of 1986. 1988 was the year where I started regularly going to Met games but I can't say I was really old enough to appreciate what I was seeing in terms of what Gooden was capable of. He was definitely still good in 89-92 but nowhere near the same.