You got the kind of lovin' that could be so smooth

In honor of Santana rolling into town, the top 10 pitching seasons in Mets history.

Honorable mention

EDIT - Forgot about this, somehow: Dwight Gooden, 1984 (218 IP, 17-9, 2.60 ERA, 276 K), Jerry Koosman, 1968 (263.2 IP, 19-12, 2.08 ERA, 178 K), Tom Seaver, 1968 (277.2 IP, 16-12, 2.20 ERA, 205 K), Frank Viola, 1990 (249.2 IP, 20-12, 2.67 ERA, 182 K), Rick Reed, 1997 (208.1 IP, 13-9, 2.389 ERA, 113 K), Bob Ojeda, 1988 (190.1 IP, 10-13, 2.88 ERA, 133 K)

No. 10 -- Bret Saberhagen, 1994

177.1 IP, 2.74 ERA, 13 BB, 143K, 14-4 record

The two best pitchers selected in the 1982 draft: Doc Gooden, by the Mets, and Saberhagen by the Royals. He was the youngest pitcher to ever win the Cy Young Award, at age 21 in 1985, when he went 20-6 with a 2.85 ERA and won Game 7 of the World Series for Kansas City. Not half bad.

The Mets got him after the 1991 season for Kevin McReynolds and Gregg Jefferies, and in '94, he had the best even-yeared season of his career, finishing the campaign with more wins than walks. The last guy to do it? Slim Sallee in a great year for baseball, 1919. Carlos Silva tried this again in 2005 with the Twins, but he only had nine wins to go against his nine walks. Tougher than it looks, and it looks pretty tough. Anyway, this season would be ranked higher except the Saberhagen pitched many fewer innings than the guys ahead of him on the list.

No. 9 – Jon Matlack, 1974

265.2 IP, 2.41 ERA, 195K, 13-15 record, 149 ERA+

What a beautiful name – Jonathan Trumpbour Matlack. You don't hear the name "Trumpbour" enough. Not even sure how you pronounce it, really. Anyway, I've included this season for two reasons. First, because the Mets were really crappy and disappointing in '74. A year after making it to the World Series, they went 71-91 and scored only 572 runs, let in basically all batting categories by Cleon Jones, whose line of .282/.343/.421 would be fine for the seventh-best hitter on a team, not the best. They stunk. And Matlack was nasty all the same.

Moreover, this was a comeback of sorts. Matlack was the Rookie of the Year in 1972, 15-10 with a scorching 2.32 ERA, but in May of 1973, he has his skull fractured by a line drive off the bat of Atlanta's Marty Perez. This kept him out of the rotation for a whopping 11 days, and he went on to post another good, if slightly less impressive, campaign. Even more damagingly, though, the "Ya Gotta Believe!" movement then ended with Matlack knocked out early in the Game 7 loss to Oakland. Basically, in '74, Matlack was up against it, and he played like a champion.

No. 8 – Pedro Martinez, 2005

217 IP, 2.82 ERA, 208K, 0.949 WHIP, 15-8 record

No need to go much into this one. Petey opened his New York career with a devastating 7-6 loss in Cincy and came back to post the second-best WHIP in Mets history. The Mets went from 71-91 in 2004 to 83-79. Good times.

No. 7 – Jerry Koosman, 1969

241 IP, 2.28 ERA, 180 K, 17-9 record, 160 ERA+

Briefly, why would this season make the list when, only a year before, Koosman won two more games, pitched 22 more innings, and had an ERA 20 points below this one? Tom Seaver's 1968 (277 IP, 2.20 ERA, 205 K, 16-12 record) also looks better, or at least comparable to this one. I just couldn't stand to include either of the 1968 seasons on the list; the year was just too weird.

Remember, the league average ERA in 1968 was 2.99. That's nutso. This was the year Bob Gibson won the Cy Young and the MVP Award with a scandalous 1.12 ERA. All sorts of schlubs had great '68s: the Reds' Gary Nolan, all of 20 years old, had a 2.40 ERA in 150 innings; the Phillies' 37-year-old Larry Jackson closed out his career with a 2.77 ERA (it's called going out strong); a guy named Bobby Bolin, almost exactly a league-average pitcher over a 14-year career, had an ERA of 1.99 in 177 innings for the Giants. This was not remotely close to normal.

Plus, you kind of need to get the two Miracle Mets efforts onto the list. Koosman might have just got all kinds of shat on by FJM, but his '69 was truly great. He took the L on September 1 to Jim Bunning, then of the Dodgers, and didn't lose again all year, outdueling the Cubs' Bill Hands (a 300 IP ace that year) a week late to pull the Mets to within a game of the divisional lead. He then went the distance in his final four starts, winning all of them, and throwing complete-game shutouts in three. You're damn right it was a miracle.

No. 6 – Tom Seaver, 1969

273.2 IP, 2.21 ERA, 208K, 25-7 records, 1.04 WHIP

The most wins of Tom Terrific's career, his first Cy, second in the MVP voting (behind a deserving Willie McCovey). He wasn't yet the strikeout machine he would eventually be, but with these results, he didn't need to be.

No. 5 – David Cone, 1988

231.2 IP, 2.22 ERA, 213 K, 20-3 record

The first full season of Coney's career, and it was a doozy. The Mets had swiped him off the Royals the previous March for the beloved Ed Hearn (owner Ewing Kaufmann later called it "The worst trade in Royals history"), and Coney pulled off a year arguably superior to the one that won him a Cy in '94 during his second go-round in Kansas City. Second in the league in Ks and ERA, he didn't have the dominating WHIP even of teammate Sid Fernandez, but for this year, the results were too spectacular to ignore.

No. 4 – Al Leiter, 1998

193 IP, 2.47 ERA, 174K, 17-6 records, 1.15 WHIP

This is probably too high, but with all the other crap going on and into players' bodies in 1998, Al Leiter put up a ludicrous year, the best of his career. Now, the league-average ERA wasn't as high as it had been during the outlandish 1994 and 1995 seasons (4.81 and 4.72, respectively), and was not yet as high as it would be in 1999 and 2000 (4.43 and 4.45, respectively); still, against the backdrop of Roidy McGwire and Sammy eating Big Macs and slamming cycles of whatever, Senator Al just absolutely dominated. His ERA+ of 170 was the Mets' best since Doctor K had taken the hill and remains the best since. There's strong cases to be made for the seasons ranked below it, but I like the idea that in the midst of the Steroids Era, some guys were still at their best.

No. 3 – Tom Seaver, 1973

290 IP, 2.08 ERA, 251 K, 19-10 record, 0.98 WHIP

Cy Young Award numero dos on the "Ya Gotta Believe" team, which had a collective OBP of .314. No wonder they were only 82-79. Interestingly enough, Tug McGraw was at best the second-best reliever on that team, behind the immortal Ray Sadecki (117 IP, 3.39 ERA) and possibly Harry Parker (97 IP, 3.35 ERA). Hello, strong media skills.

Anyway, Tom Terrific had got hosed for the Cy two years back for the season directly below this one, and he deserved everything he got in '73, completing 18 of his 36 starts and leading the league in WHIP, Ks and K/BB ratio. A superstar year.

No. 2 – Tom Seaver, 1971

286.1 IP, 1.76 ERA, 289 K, 20-10 record, 0.95 WHIP

Ludicrous. Seaver has the best WHIP in the NL by a wide margin, more than 10 percent better than that of Chicago's Fergie Jenkins (1.049). He leads the league in K/9, also by a wide margin (not to mention strikeouts, but he does), and his ERA is 1.76 against a league average of 3.40; that's an ERA+ of 193, the fourth-best mark since the end of World War II and a Top-50 mark all-time (that's including a lot of bullshit 19^th century seasons).

So, who wins the Cy Young Award? Jenkins, who went 24-13 with a 2.77 ERA for a highly mediocre 83-79 Cubs team that actually scored fewer runs than it allowed. That's that bullshit.

No. 1 – Dwight Gooden, 1985

276.2 IP, 1.53 ERA, 268 K, 24-4 record, 0.96 WHIP

You know the drill. Sandy Koufax would have traded his past for Doc's future, etc. Note: Doc's ERA+ of 228 was absurd; only one guy posted a better mark between Armstice Day and Greg Maddux, and that was Gibson in '68. Gooden, of course, couldn't yet legally drink.

Anyway, I tend to think this list will look differently at the close of 2008.