Friday, June 05, 2009

One of the defining memories of Joe McEwing is that he OWNED Randy Johnson. As the years have gone by, it's hard for me to remember why exactly we were so confident when Super Joe squared off against the Big Unit.

Fortunately, in honor of Johnson's 300th win, Buster Olney posted some interesting tidbits about the surly giant, including the following:

Best Game By a Hitter Against Randy Johnson
May 21, 2000: Probably the best game by a hitter who measured at least a foot shorter than Johnson. Little utility man Joe McEwing had two doubles and a home run against Johnson, making him the only batter with three extra-base hits in a game against the Unit (all eight of the Mets hits against Johnson went for extra bases). The matchup included a 12-pitch battle in the fifth inning in which McEwing fouled off seven two-strike pitches before doubling. This was a day in which Johnson struck out 13, but the Mets rallied from deficits of 1-0, 3-2, and 5-3, before winning 7-6 on a ninth-inning hit by Derek Bell. McEwing would score the winning run."He's a good little ballplayer," Johnson told the media afterwards, keeping his description of McEwing brief.

Unfortunately, a little further research indicates that McEwing only had the one great game. His career line against Johnson excluding that one game:

40 AB, 8 H, 2 2B, 3 RBI, .200/.195/.275,  .470 OPS

Interestingly, McEwing had more plate appearances against Johnson than any other pitcher.

If you want a crappy player who did actually own Randy Johnson, there's Randy Velarde, who had a .452/.500/.548 line in 46 career plate appearances, owning the highest OPS against Johnson of any player with 40 plate appearances.

In other news, Turk Wendell did in fact own Mark McGwire, who was 0-8 against #99, with 6 Ks and 3 BBs (one of which was intentional).

1 comment:

Fred Coupon said...

One of the Big Unit's most embarrassing moments -good thing he twirled that perfect game in 2004 or there'd be very little to look back on the last several years- has to be the double Met great Dae-Sung Koo hit off him in 2005.