Dwight Gooden’s Historic 1985 Season

Doc Gooden's 1985 season was one of the best in MLB history. (via slgckgc)

Doc Gooden’s 1985 season was one of the best in MLB history. (via slgckgc)

Three decades ago this summer, a hard-throwing New York Mets pitcher put together one of the most phenomenal seasons in baseball history.

And he was only 20 years old.

Just two years prior, in 1983, Dwight Gooden had racked up 300 strikeouts in 191 innings with the Class A Lynchburg Mets, while winning 19 games. Then, in September, he was promoted to the Tidewater Tides for their postseason. He pitched another 29 innings with 19 Ks, including a brilliant four-hitter against the Denver Bears in which he went the distance for a 4-2 win.

Said the Tides’ manager, Davey Johnson, who had first seen Gooden as a roving instructor in 1982 when the kid was with the Kingsport Mets of the Appalachian League: “Wherever I manage next year, Gooden will be my number one starter.”

Mets General Manager Frank Cashen was hesitant. He felt the organization had rushed former blue-chip prospect Tim Leary, with disappointing results. He didn’t want history to repeat itself with Gooden.

But Gooden’s season with Lynchburg could not be ignored. “I bite my tongue when I say this,” Cashen confessed in January of 1984, “but we may have to take a longer look at Dwight Gooden now.”

Gooden made the big league club after a solid spring. Johnson, the new Mets skipper, turned out to be a prophet. The kid from Tampa indeed became his number one starter. Gooden’s 17 wins and 276 strikeouts in 218 innings earned him the National League’s Rookie of the Year Award in 1984.

But it was only a prelude to what he would accomplish the next season.

Gooden started New York’s home opener on April 9, 1985. He was solid, surrendering three earned runs in six innings to St. Louis in a contest the Mets eventually won in extra innings.

On April 14, Gooden faced Cincinnati at Shea Stadium, in his second outing of the year. Initially, the big story was that it was the 44th birthday of Reds manager Pete Rose. By the time the afternoon was over, however, all anybody wanted to talk about was Dr. K.

Gooden threw a complete-game shutout, allowing only four measly singles (including one by Rose, the 4,104th of his career). He walked two and struck out ten. His ERA, which stood at 4.50 at the start of the game, shrank to 1.80.

It never went above 2.00 the rest of the season.

Doc Gooden was the best pitcher on the planet in the summer of ’85. The numbers certainly back up such an assessment. His 24 victories (including 14 in a row), 268 strikeouts, and microscopic 1.53 ERA all led the major leagues. The latter figure was the second-lowest (post Deadball Era) behind Bob Gibson’s 1.12 mark in 1968. His 276 innings pitched and 16 complete games led the Senior Circuit.

Sabermetrics have clearly shown that Gooden’s 1985 season was indeed one of the best in history. His WHIP of 0.965 was second in the NL that year only to the Cardinals’ John Tudor. Using the Wins Above Replacement formula developed by BaseballProjection.com’s Sean Smith, Gooden topped all of baseball in 1985 with a WAR of 13.2. Since 1900, only two players have had higher figures. Deadball pitcher Walter Johnson’s was 16 in 1913, and 14.6 in 1912. Babe Ruth’s was 14.1 in 1923.

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

If we use Smith’s formula for WAR for Pitchers, Gooden’s figure is 12.2. Since the dawn of the 20th Century, only Walter Johnson (14.6 in 1913 and 13.5 in 1912) and Cy Young (12.6 in 1901) have topped it.

Gooden was 11-1 in the second half in 1985, and despite his young age and all the innings he’d pitched, he grew stronger once the calendar flipped to September. That month, he gave up only two earned runs in 53 innings (that’s an ERA of 0.34). He won four of his six starts, but would have gone 6-0 with any kind of support, because he had consecutive no-decisions in which he was pulled after nine innings with the game scoreless (In Gooden’s four losses on the year, the Mets scored a total of five runs.).

It was a dominating display of pitching.

He felt like he could throw the ball by anyone. He’d just keep pounding the strike zone with fastball after fastball, challenging the hitter to make contact. To Gooden, it seemed like every batter was behind in the count, 0-2.

He felt invincible. Bulletproof.

By season’s end, people were predicting that Dr. K was going to be the greatest pitcher ever, if he wasn’t already.

The kid was the toast of New York City.

Gooden was a unanimous choice for the National League Cy Young Award, garnering all 24 first place votes. He was asked if he thought he might someday become the first 30-game winner in baseball since Denny McLain in 1968. “Hopefully,” he replied, “one day before my career is over.”

Of course, Gooden never became baseball’s next 30-game winner.

And besides, he didn’t want to even think about that. He just wanted to play baseball.

His 1985 season brought enormous expectations that any pitcher would find tough to live up to, but Gooden especially so.

It seemed his best was just never enough.

The pressure only heightened his insecurities. Some of the joy was taken out of the game. He would ask himself how the bar had gotten set so high. And who had set it? Certainly not Gooden himself. But the media had anointed the shy kid, for better or worse.

To compound the problem, Gooden was suddenly flush with cash. After making $40,000 in his rookie season in 1984, and $450,000 in 85, his salary spiked to $1.3 million. Endorsement money was coming in faster than he could count it. Polaroid. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Sports Illustrated. Spalding. Toys “R” Us. Nike.

Oh, to be young and a Met (and a millionaire) in the drug-fueled ’80s. Dr. K had money to burn, and plenty of hangers-on happy to help him spend it.

As the 1986 season progressed, Gooden noticed that his fastball, which had been consistently in the mid-90s, had lost just a bit of its zip. “That impossible-to-track, impossible-to-time movement deserted me in 1986, and never returned,” he said.

Gooden’s ratio of strikeouts per nine innings suggests he was right. In 1984, it was a major-league leading 11.4. In 1985, it had slipped to 8.7. By 1986, it was 7.2.

Was it a result of overwork? Had he thrown too many innings at too young an age?

Or was it something else?

On a star-studded Mets team that, in Gooden’s own words, “was getting loaded all the time,” alcohol became a way of dealing with the pressure. “Drinking allowed me to be the real me.”

Booze eventually progressed to heavy cocaine use. “It was love at first sniff,” Gooden remembered.

The rest of the story is not unfamiliar. What had been such a promising career was derailed by demons and addiction. He was also hampered by shoulder problems. Thirty victories? Gooden never even had another 20-win season after 1985, although he did win 18 in 1988 and 19 two years after that.

He was a very good pitcher fortunate enough to play for 16 years and win 194 games in the big leagues (100 of them coming before the age of 25). But Dr. K was never the same after 1985. The electrifying stuff that had allowed him to toy with batters was a thing of the past.

“It was pretty shocking, and honestly, I’m not too happy about it.”

It was the first week of September, 2012. Stephen Strasburg of the Washington Nationals had just been told by his manager that the team was shutting him down for the remainder of the year. The club was a lock for the postseason, but Strasburg was not going to throw another pitch in 2012.

“I don’t know if I’m ever going to accept it to be honest,” Strasburg said. “It’s something that I’m not happy about at all. That’s not why I play the game. I play the game to be a good teammate and win.”

Winning was something the 24-year-old Strasburg had done 15 times in 2012. But because he was returning from Tommy John surgery in 2010, the Nationals had committed to easing him back slowly. He had a once-in-a-generation arm, and Washington didn’t want to risk further damage to its investment. After 28 starts, and 159 innings, Strasburg was done for 2012, postseason or no postseason.

Strasburg’s manager was none other than Davey Johnson, Dwight Gooden’s former Met skipper. It had been a long, long, winding road for Johnson since the glory days of the ‘80’s at Shea Stadium. He’d since managed the Reds, the Orioles and the Dodgers. He was now pushing 70 in his second season in the nation’s capital.

“My job is to do what’s best for the player,” Johnson said, insisting that it was his call. “And this is what’s best. He has had a great year.” Then, in a telling twist, he seemed to blame the media for the decision. “I know what he is going through for the last couple of weeks. The media hype on this thing has been unbelievable.”

He then added, “He is only human.”

In making his decision, was Johnson harboring thoughts of a young Dwight Gooden?

General Manager Mike Rizzo pointed out, “This is a plan we put in place Feb. 1. We’ve been true to the plan and we haven’t wavered from it one bit. This is just the culmination of that plan. I believe in my heart that it’s the right thing to do for the player, and the right thing to do for the player is the right thing to do for the organization.”

But, said Strasburg: “You don’t grow up dreaming of playing in the big leagues to get shut down when the games start to matter.”

At the time, Steven Strasburg was the poster child for the modern, protected (some would say pampered) young pitcher. Pitch counts and innings-pitched limits had become part and parcel of baseball’s brave new world, even for hurlers who’d never had surgery. Today, throw 150 innings in a season before age 25 and you are accused of recklessly stretching the limits of what the human arm is capable of.

Some say this way of thinking makes modern medical sense. Others cast a critical eye at the way the sport has changed, maintaining that young arms are best strengthened by three things: Throwing, throwing, and throwing.

Back in 1985, even young pitchers were expected to throw until their arm fell off. And while it is difficult to assess, 30 years later, whether Dwight Gooden’s high work load contributed in some measure to the disappearance of his blazing fastball, the possibility exists.

Was Dwight Gooden’s 1985 season the greatest ever by a pitcher? The fact that he was 20 years old, performing in the fishbowl that is New York City, made it even more extraordinary.

His shoulder problems, in addition to his battles with addiction, detoured Dr. K on his way to the Hall of Fame. But 30 years ago he was truly something special to behold. And he put up numbers that, given today’s philosophy on how to handle young starting pitchers, we are not likely to see again.


Scott Ferkovich edited Tigers by the Tale: Great Games at Michigan & Trumbull, published by the Society for American Baseball Research. He is the author of Motor City Champs: Mickey Cochrane and the 1934-35 Detroit Tigers, coming in 2017 from McFarland. Follow him on Twitter @Scott_Ferkovich.
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dp4000
8 years ago

Love the article. Being too young to remember this season but having heard plenty about it and Doc Gooden, as content from this site always seems to do, I’m now inspired to search out the deepest details of this season. So bravo and please keep it up!

My question is, how does the following come across as Johnson blaming the media?

Just curious for the reasoning. To me it just sounds like an exasperated manager constantly being reminded that his young ace is upset with his decision. Not that he is blaming that decision or the placing responsibility for it on the media at all.

dp4000
8 years ago
Reply to  dp4000

I need to learn HTML…

dp4000
8 years ago

Love the article. Being too young to remember this season but having heard plenty about it and Doc Gooden, as content from this site always seems to do, I’m now inspired to search out the deepest details of this season. So bravo and please keep it up!

My question is, how does the following come across as Johnson blaming the media?

Then, in a telling twist, he seemed to blame the media for the decision. “I know what he is going through for the last couple of weeks. The media hype on this thing has been unbelievable.”

He then added, “He is only human.”

Just curious for the reasoning. To me it just sounds like an exasperated manager constantly being reminded that his young ace is upset with his decision. Not that he is blaming that decision or the placing responsibility for it on the media at all.

David Jacobs
8 years ago

dwight-goodens is really history creating person

Love the article. Being too young to remember this season

Paul G.
8 years ago

I vaguely remember a newspaper story about the Mets letting Gooden throw a lot of pitches at a game played in low temperatures, followed by Gooden suffering an injury thereafter. Don’t know what year that was. May have been later in his career and was part of the transition from good to journeyman rather than anything relevant to this.

As to “throw, throw, throw” I am of two minds about that. It may be that pitchers were more durable at one time because anyone who was not durable ruined his arm and was shortly replaced by someone with greater durability. Even if that is true, restricting innings may not be productive as it only delays the inevitable and perhaps makes things worse. If I knew the answer to this, I suspect that I would be a very rich man.

DENNIS BEDARD
8 years ago

Great article. I remember his run as if it was yesterday. I always considered him Sandy Koufax in reverse order. Great start followed by a mediocre finish. Makes you wonder if Koufax had run his best years from 1958 through 1961 and then gone out with a string of so so years, would he have been in the HOF? I don’t think so.

bucdaddy
8 years ago
Reply to  DENNIS BEDARD

Koufax’s situation was unique. You can pretty much trace his trajectory from OK to good to great to unbelievable by his progression from bandbox Ebbets Field to the weird Coliseum to the Pitcher’s Best Friend, plus the strike zone expansion in IIRC 1963.

That’s not to say Koufax wasn’t great. A bunch of other pitchers got to pitch under the same conditions (the Astrodome for instance) and didn’t do what Koufax did, until Gibson did.

Brian
8 years ago

Great season, great pennant race. What’s amazing to me is that from June 1st onward that year, John Tudor more or less matched Gooden’s stat line-

Tudor 20-1, 210 IP, 1.37 ERA, 10 shutouts
Gooden 17-1, 191 IP, 1.41 ERA, 6 shutouts

These were the aces of the two teams that were neck and neck all season long!

(However, as money as Tudor was during that stretch, a much bigger chunk of his success was attributable to the fielders behind him. He stuck out only 5.8 guys per 9, but had glove men like Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, Tom Herr, Terry Pendleton, and Andy Van Slyke catching everything in sight, whereas Gooden was more of a one-man show.)

puddlebyonthemarsh
8 years ago

i lived in norfolk as a navy dependent when dwight came up for the playoffs, and followed him on the local tv affiliate whenever one of his starts was televised over the next couple of years. was he the best pitcher on the planet his first two seasons? oh yes, by a good damn margin, too….he was just….amazing.

Nadolne
8 years ago

Doc Gooden brought excitement back to the Mets. http://5starblog.com/tag/doc-gooden/

Mets
8 years ago

Great article.
One game I remember well from that year. May 10. Gooden vs Steve Carlton.
By the end of the 3rd Doc had 4 Ks and Lefty 5 Ks
In the end the Mets won 5-0
Doc had 13 Ks in the complete game shutout
He gave up 3 hits and 3 walks

He also got 2 singles as a batter.

All in front of almost 50,000 fans. Electric.

Pirates Hurdles
8 years ago

As an 11 year old watching that season it was monumental for me. Pretty much as formative as any baseball experience could be. When Topps decided to start putting Doc Gooden on his baseball cards it was another impactful event. I was too young to be burdened by the cocaine scandal at the time. Thanks for letting me relive it a bit.

not Ed Hearn
8 years ago

Thanks for the article. I’m surprised you didn’t mention another infamous factors in Doc’s decline. Pitching coach Mel Stollemyre insisted after the historic inhuman 1985 season that he “needed” to learn a changeup. His motion was never quite as explosive after that distraction in 86 Spring Training.

But I totally agree his arm was abused. Pop used to take us to Shea and old Veterans stadium in Philly for Docs starts from 85-88. One time between bullpen and 1st inning warmups we counted 75 throws before the “first pitch”!

If you look at the game breakdowns he could have easily won 30 that year with better luck. All 4 losses were 2-3 ER in 6 IP, plus another similar ND in June, plus the two shutout extra inning ND’S. Only bad start all year was 5 ER in 5 IP.

Marc Schneider
8 years ago

This just shows how hard it is to make the Hall of Fame. In 84-85, Gooden was probably one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball. Of course, his “decline” was not entirely baseball-related, but it’s awfully hard to be great for 15 years.

Ian
8 years ago

The 1985 Mets were my favorite Mets team (even to this day), and Doc was literally untouchable.

Quite frankly, I’ve never seen anything like Doc’s first 3 years (and probably never will again in my lifetime)