Perhaps if Familia does finish off a National League victory, he can mark another awesome Mets All-Star moment. The team only has one All-Star MVP in its history, but their players have sure made strong impressions. With a hat tip to Tug McGraw’s heroic two-inning relief effort in 1972 and David Wright’s smashing All-Star debut in 2006, these are the Mets’ finest All-Star highlights.

Tom Seaver – 1970

Where else would a retrospective on any of the Mets’ top moments begin other than on Seaver? Fresh off a Cy Young Award-winning championship season in 1969, the game’s best pitcher was handed the ball at the start of the 1970 All-Star Game in Cincinnati. Four of the American League’s first five hitters were Hall of Famers: Luis Aparicio, Carl Yastrzemski, Frank Robinson, and Harmon Killebrew.

No matter—Seaver blew the AL away with three dominant innings. He surrendered just one baserunner on a Yaz single that barely went past the diving attempt of shortstop Don Kessinger. Seaver’s strikeouts were on brand names, too, as Aparicio, Robinson, Killebrew, and slugger Frank Howard all whiffed. Meanwhile, Jim Palmer matched Seaver with three scoreless innings of his own, but they were far from as dominant as Seaver’s effort. Although the game went 12 innings and the story was Pete Rose’s controversial take-down of Ray Fosse with the winning run, Seaver’s tremendous start will go down in the Mets’ record books.

Jon Matlack – 1975

The Mets’ lone All-Star MVP didn’t even get to keep the award for himself. 1975 was the only occasion in the 44-year history of the award that it was shared by two players. Matlack can safely say that he did his part first though. The former Rookie of the Year winner entered a tight 3-3 game in the bottom of the seventh inning. His teammate Seaver actually had a poor outing for once, giving up a booming two-run homer by Yastrzemski into the Milwaukee night that tied it up in the sixth.

Tasked with stemming the tide, Matlack did just that. He struck out Hall of Famer Rod Carew, picked off Claudell Washington after a single, and then fanned Bucky Dent. The southpaw worked a scoreless eighth as well, yielding just an infield single. Thanks to Matlack’s performance, Cubs third baseman Bill Madlock was in the position to break up the tie in the top of the ninth. He singled off Goose Gossage to score Reggie Smith with the go-ahead run, and Randy Jones closed out the victory with a perfect frame. Matlack and Madlock shared the All-Star MVP honors, no doubt inspiring the future TV series Matlock.

Lee Mazzilli – 1979

Mazzilli is the lone Mets hitter to make this post, with all due respect to Wright and Lance Johnson’s three-hit showing in ’96. However, neither of them were the primary reasons for a NL victory. The center fielder pinch-hit for Gary Matthews, Sr. in the top of the eighth inning with the NL trailing by one run in Seattle. Facing the Rangers’ Jim Kern, Mazzilli smoked one the other way down the left field line just over the wall for a game-tying solo homer. He became the first Met to ever homer in an All-Star Game.

That would have been a fine day anyway, but Mazzilli wasn’t done yet. By the ninth inning, the NL had gone through the order to send Mazzilli back up to the plate. The bases were loaded with two outs and the game still tied from his earlier blast. Facing defending Cy Young Award winner Ron Guidry, Mazzilli patiently waited out a walk that scored Joe Morgan with the go-ahead run. One vintage Bruce Sutter inning later, the NL clinched another victory. Perhaps dazzled by Dave Parker’s amazing throw, the MVP went to him, but it really seems like it should have gone to Mazzilli. Alas.

Dwight Gooden – 1984

It is still almost unfathomable to consider how good Doc Gooden was at such a young age. Selected fifth overall in the 1982 draft, Gooden stormed through the system and made his MLB debut at age 19 on April 7, 1984. Despite being a mere teenager, Gooden showed no sign at all of his age and became the youngest All-Star in MLB history when he was selected for the NL squad in San Francisco. Fernando Valenzuela struck out the side in the top of the fourth inning and handed the slim 2-1 lead off to Gooden.

The precocious right-hander led the majors in strikeouts, and he was up to the task of matching the famous Fernando. Down went eight-time All-Star Larry Parrish. Down went Chet Lemon and his 215 career homers. Down went Alvin Davis, his future AL counterpart for 1984 Rookie of the Year. All three batters flailed at Gooden’s preposterous arsenal. He followed it up with another scoreless inning, the lone blemish coming on a weird pop-fly double by Eddie Murray. No matter—Gooden retired Hall of Famers Cal Ripken, Jr. and Dave Winfield to escape the threat. The man was a wunderkind.

Matt Harvey – 2013

No Mets fan will ever forget the excitement that came with Matt Harvey’s 2013 first half. After a promising showing in his 2012 debut, Harvey broke out as perhaps the new face of New York baseball with a dominant showing. He had a 2.35 ERA, 147 strikeouts in 130 innings, a 0.915 WHIP, and a mere .542 OPS against. With the All-Star Game right in Queens at Citi Field, NL skipper Bruce Bochy granted Harvey the starting assignment, much to the home crowd’s delight.

The incomparable Mike Trout welcomed Harvey to the All-Star stage with a leadoff double on the first pitch, and the amped-up righty then accidentally drilled Robinson Cano. He faced a daunting task with Miguel Cabrera up next. Harvey returned to form with a strikeout on a diving 92 mph pitch that the Triple Crown winner chased out of the zone. He then retired Chris Davis on a routine fly to center and Jose Bautista on another strikeout. The NL went down in order against Max Scherzer, but Harvey returned the favor in the second with a perfect frame, fanning Adam Jones in the process. Two innings, one hit, no runs, and three strikeouts. If the national audience didn’t know who Harvey was before the game, they did now.

Jacob deGrom – 2015

It would have been enough to write about five memorable Mets All-Star memories, but the list simply would not be complete without mentioning deGrom’s mastery from last year in Cincinnati. Fortunately, BP Mets’ own Brian Duricy already recounted deGrom’s outstanding All-Star effort last week in the group post on our favorite Mets highlights, so I’ll turn it over to him:

The word “highlight” often connotes one event, a flash-in-the-pan occurrence that exists as a singular exemplar of excellence. But pitching has the ability to stretch highlights so that they encompass a series of events, to show that repetition can be brilliant in its own right. When Jacob deGrom began the sixth inning of the 2015 All-Star Game, 74 pitchers had compiled an immaculate inning.

None had ever done so in an All-Star Game, against a three-man stretch of some of the best hitters the game has to offer. In deGrom’s 2015 All-Star performance, he fired eight straight fastballs — the velocity of which increased from 96 to 98 mph between the first and eighth pitch — seven for strikes, and finished with two nasty cutters low for swinging strikes. Though he missed immaculate status by one errant fastball, and though this highlight came in a Mets jersey but not in a Mets game, it’s imperfect; but dominance like that is its own form of perfection.

Photo Credit: Frank Victores-USA TODAY Sports

The flamethrowing righty began the 2016 season with a flourish, overpowering the National League in April with 38 strikeouts in just four starts and 26 and two-thirds innings. He has yet to allow a home run and his 12.8 strikeouts per nine innings are the best in the NL, trailing only David Price among all starters. By Baseball Prospectus measures, he leads all starters with a 1.00 FIP and is tied with Clayton Kershaw for the NL lead with a 65 cFIP (again behind only Price for the MLB lead). Syndergaard is in tremendous company and seems to be the most exciting starter on a pitching staff chock full of talent.

Now that Syndergaard is done pitching in April, fans can only wonder what the rest of the campaign could offer. He is probably not going to be quite this spectacular for the entire season and could very well simply be in the middle of a hot streak. After all, Syndergaard is just one of several Mets in franchise history who dominated in April.

Not all arms are alike and April trends vary from year to year, but it can still be revealing to look back on those previous Aprils to see how the pitchers fared for the rest of the season. Using the Baseball-Reference Play Index, I searched all Aprils in Mets history for pitchers who owned the month as much as Syndergaard, which means a sub-2.00 ERA and a sub-1.000 WHIP in at least four starts.

There were 16 other occasions in Mets history with starters as sharp as Syndergaard in April. None of them struck batters out at a better rate than him, though most recorded better ERAs and WHIPs, even with higher innings totals. Compared to their Aprils, here is how those pitchers performed for the entire season, sorted by ERA. (Bold indicates that the pitcher led the league.)

It should hardly come as a surprise that Seaver was able to maintain most of that April form throughout his seasons. Hall of Fame talent usually keeps a pitcher on top, whereas lesser pitchers couldn’t keep pace. Gooden’s 1985 campaign is in the conversation for the greatest pitching seasons of the modern era, so “Doc” topping the list is not a shock, either. ERAs averaged a 101% increase, and WHIPs went up by 29%, forecasting a potential Syndergaard season-ending line of a 3.40 ERA and a 1.26 WHIP. (It would make sense to trust in PECOTA’s more mathematically sound 3.04 ERA and 1.09 WHIP rest-of-season projection though.)

Regardless, Syndergaard’s rate stats compare more favorably with the likes of Seaver and Gooden than the others. Harvey’s 2013 would fit in well too … if it didn’t have the asterisk of being somewhat abbreviated thanks to his season-ending Tommy John surgery. The other pitchers were not strikeout artists like Syndergaard, and the lower ERAs unsurprisingly tended to correlate more with high strikeout totals (save for Koosman’s 1968, an anomaly enabled by the Year of the Pitcher’s microscopic statistics). Leiter’s 2002 does not jive with Syndergaard’s 2016 either, as he has consistently walked fewer batters than Leiter typically did. It would probably be asking too much for Syndergaard to match legends like Seaver and Gooden, but since their rates are closest to his, final figures in their general vicinity could be in his future.

Santana in 2009 and Seaver in 1970 likely showed the worst-case scenarios for Syndergaard’s season at this point. Both aces maintained good strikeout rates and control and still had strong campaigns anyway, but their ERAs jumped thanks in part to surrendering at least 20 homers each. Although Syndergaard has yet to surrender a dinger this year, he gave up about a homer per nine innings in 2015. A reckoning will come at some point; it will just be on him to avoid mistakes and, of course, keep baserunners to a minimum.

Syndergaard’s April success has offered some extremely encouraging signs of his evolution as a pitcher. Even if the 23-year-old righty isn’t this dominant for the rest of the season, the successes of these previous April sensations suggest that he is on pace for a truly excellent 2016. The biggest test will be how he reacts to the higher expectations. Thankfully, Syndergaard definitely has the talent to meet the challenge.

Photo Credit: Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports

One in three.

Those were the odds that Tom Seaver would become Vern Fuller’s teammate in Cleveland and not the greatest pitcher in Mets history.

For all of the skill required to build a baseball team, assembling a championship squad often comes down to pure luck. The Yankees were lucky to have two future Hall of Famers and three near-Hall of Famers come up through their system and succeed all at the same time during their dynasty years of the late-90s and early-00s. The Giants were lucky to have Madison Bumgarner waiting for them with the 10th pick of the 2007 draft after two lesser southpaws were taken before him.

Although the Mets have had their share of misfortune over the years, April 3, 2016 is the 50th anniversary of the luckiest day in Mets history. It was on that day in 1966 that–through sheer providence–they won the rights to negotiate with Tom Seaver.

The first stroke of luck came from Seaver’s natural growth. The California native was a late bloomer and teams didn’t really feel the need to scout him when he pitched at Fresno High School. His teammates knew that he was already smart on the mound, but being a junkballer with intelligence wasn’t enough. Had Seaver already been the physical specimen he was a few years later, he likely would have been out of the fledgling Mets’ price range.

Seaver was determined to go to college to become a dentist, and he saw a baseball scholarship as the best way to reach his goal. Over the next few years, Seaver worked at his father’s raisin factory, enlisted with the Marines to earn help from the G.I. Bill, pitched at Fresno City College, and finally proved his worth to legendary USC coach Rod Dedeaux one summer with the Alaska Goldpanners. By the time Seaver stepped onto the campus in Los Angeles in 1964, he was stronger and a far more impressive athlete. He had even grown a few inches.

Scouting report from Baseball Hall of Fame.

After a standout debut at USC, the nearby Los Angeles Dodgers had the chance to make Seaver a staple in their rotation for years to come. Then-scout Tommy Lasorda paid close attention to Seaver, praising his fastball and command while noting “Boy has plenty of desire to pitch and wants to beat you.”

The Dodgers took Lasorda’s advice and in the first-ever draft, they picked Seaver in the 10th round. Seaver idolized Sandy Koufax and was a frequent visitor to Dodger Stadium, since his uncle owned season tickets. It seemed like the perfect match, but they were too far apart on contract terms—Seaver wanted $50,000, and Lasorda would only offer $2,000. Lasorda told him “Good luck in your dental career,” and the negotiations were over. Seaver overplayed his hand, but he ended up with his $50,000 in due time.

There was a January draft as well in those days, and seven months after Seaver was the 193rd overall pick, his stock had improved so much that the Milwaukee Braves chose him first overall that winter. The USC star was elated, as while he loved Koufax and enjoyed the Dodgers, he didn’t grow up rooting for them (they were in Brooklyn for most of it, after all). His childhood hero was Hank Aaron, and it was a thrill to track the Braves as they won the 1957 World Series during his childhood.

The amount has been disputed (it was either $40,000 or $51,500), but regardless, it did not take him long to agree to a contract with the Braves when scout Johnny Moore met with Seaver and his family. This was more than enough to convince him to abandon his dentistry plans.

Then, fate struck again.

USC began their seasons early, and they had already played a few games. Thus, MLB commissioner William Eckert voided Seaver’s contract on March 2^nd, and in turn, Dedeaux vindictively voided Seaver’s NCAA eligibility for signing a pro contract. Seaver was screwed, a victim of two bigger entities sparring at each other.

Understandably furious, Seaver and his family threatened legal action against MLB, so Eckert found a compromise. Any of the 19 other teams could volunteer to match the Braves’ offer, and a lottery would be held to determine the winner. (The Dodgers, who still liked Seaver, again blew an opportunity to sign him when they were too distracted trying to shortchange Koufax and Don Drysdale on their 1966 contracts to put in a bid.) Even though he was among the most talented amateurs in the country, only three clubs stepped forward: the Indians, the Phillies, and the Mets.

It wasn’t even a lock that the Mets would, in fact, bid on Seaver. Going as far back as his days as general manager of the ’50s Yankees dynasty teams, Mets GM George Weiss was notoriously tight-fisted and reluctant to spend money, particularly on unproven talent. Thankfully, he was convinced to put up the money. The Mets were in.

Perhaps “lottery” is too fancy a word to describe the Seaver Selection Show. All MLB did was put the three team names on slips of paper, place them into a hat, and shake it up. At least they had Seaver on a long-distance call during the process.

So at long last, the final bit of luck arrived when Eckert’s hand just happened to grab the slip with the Mets’ name on it. They were the worst team in baseball and had lost 112 games the year before. Maybe they were just due for some fortune.

Seaver could have snapped World Series droughts in Cleveland or Philadelphia. Instead, he was given a $10,000 bonus–on top of the contract bid–to join the Mets. One year later, he was an All-Star and Rookie of the Year. Three years later, he was the best pitcher in baseball and the ace of the most shocking World Series champion of all-time. A legendary career was born and the Mets had “The Franchise.”

How’s that for a lucky break?

Photo Credit: Gregory J. Fisher-USA TODAY Sports