Doc & Darryl Wasted Potential Personified

ESPN’s latest 30 for 30 installment, Doc & Darryl, touches on how talented not only Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry were but the entire…

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Doc & Darryl Wasted Potential Personified

ESPN’s latest 30 for 30 installment, Doc & Darryl, touches on how talented not only Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry were but the entire 1986 New York Mets roster. That team was stacked with talented players up and down the lineup, however nearly all failed to realize their potential. Drugs and alcohol abuse and ultimately addiction ruined the two biggest stars of that team but it also impacted Keith Hernandez, Lenny Dykstra and among others.

To give some perspective the ’86 Mets team featured 4 regular platoons, a rarity in baseball history for a world series winner; even rarer was that three of those platoons featured a player who would in the future win or finish in the top 5 of an MVP vote. The platoons were center field (Mookie Wilson & Lenny Dykstra who finished #2 in MVP vote in ‘93); third base (Ray Knight & Howard Johnson who finished #5 in MVP voting 2x); and left field (Kevin McReynolds & Kevin Mitchell who won MVP in ’89 with SF Giants). Their pitching staff featured two shutdown closers (Roger McDowell & Jesse Orozco), and four 15+ game winners (Gooden, Sid Fernandez, Ron Darling & Bob Ojeda) as well as two future all star closer relievers (Randy Myers & Rick Aguilera) as middle man. Coupled with hall of fame talent at catcher (Gary Carter), first base (Keith Hernandez) and right field (Darryl Strawberry) made this team incredibly deep, special and dominant in 1986.

You wonder if the Mets clubhouse culture didn’t feature open substance abuse (cocaine, alcohol and rampant “greenie” (uppers) usage (Strawberry and others have been quoted as saying there was expectation everybody would use them every day), how many more titles could they have won, and would they be remembered as one of the greatest teams of all-time. Instead it’s an example of an incredible assembly of potential unrealized. It’s a classic tail….