Roger McDowell

McDowell was a fearless and colorful reliever who handled crucial late innings. He helped give the 1986 Mets one of baseball’s deepest pitching staffs.

McDowell reached the majors in 1985 and immediately gave Davey Johnson a reliever who could pitch more than one inning. He shared the late-game work with Jesse Orosco, sometimes setting up and sometimes closing. In 1986 he went 14–9 with 22 saves, numbers that show just how often the Mets asked him to carry a game through its middle and end.

His most important performance came in the 16-inning clincher against Houston in the NLCS. McDowell threw five scoreless relief innings and even stayed in the game as a runner because the Mets had emptied their bench. The famous clubhouse pranks and hot-foot stories fit the team’s wild image, but none of them mattered without his serious work on the mound.

He remained a key reliever until the Mets traded him and Lenny Dykstra to Philadelphia for Juan Samuel in 1989, one of the deals fans still hate revisiting. McDowell’s Mets career was short compared with Orosco’s, yet it covered the exact years when the club became a powerhouse. He was part of both the chaos and the structure that made those teams work.