Good point Alex, bringing up the Mets' brilliant luck when it comes to young homegrown players who shine brightly at first, but then fade away all too quickly. In addition to Conforto (your example), Ike Davis is another one who looked real good at first until he broke his leg catching a pop fly.Pete could have actually been a perfect example of how a player's stats are never a given. Remember how he was in that rollover crash in Florida during Spring Training? It was scary in that it reminded me of Mets prospect Brian Cole, which I think also happened in Florida. Things like that put things in perspective. You know that experience reminded him that life is precious and to take nothing for granted.
Also, regarding more routine injuries, Pete talks to the media a lot, and I think that results in him getting hit by lots of pitches, so basically any HBP can end his season, put him out for weeks, or even cause him to change his aggressive approach (think David Wright's beaning by Matt Cain in 2009).
However, I'm not worried about Pete. He's a polar bear. My only worry is that he is putting on weight so fast he is trying to look like a real polar bear or get on the show My 600-lb Life, post-retirement.
Also (as previous poster Scoey mentioned in 2020), I don't like how after walk-off hits, Pete loves to rip off his teammates' jerseys, as if they're an arctic seal. IMHO, it's not cool, funny, or sweet (unlike Pete's adorable home run horse from last year). It's borderline sadistic actually: the Polar Bear showing his true colors. I mean, can you imagine if Pete had female teammates and he did that to them? After the Weinstein scandal it's best to avoid ripping other people's clothes off in public, even if they are dudes, you know what I mean? What if Michael Conforto was thinking #metoo when Pete ripped his jersey off after the Mets' first win of last year? We'll never know.
And Pete loves the black uniforms. Ugh. The bad guys wear black. The really, really, REALLY bad Germans in WWII wore black. The New York Mets do not wear black. Pete is a polar bear; are polar bears black? The only place those black uniforms belong is in a landfill in Staten Island. By the way, I think the Mets lost every time they wore them last year; they must've been like 0-8 in the ghastly black "doom" uniforms in 2021.
And yet, in spite of everything, I still love this guy.
Regarding his "popularity ranking" on his page, yes, I realized I made a mistake by not adding a zero.
If Pete hits over 60 home runs this year, he has a chance of cracking the top thousand.
He's at 1,044 right now. I still don't know why Pete was 1,075 out of 1,075 in 2019. It's one of those mysteries that will never be explained.
At the pace of things, Big Pete will only approach the top 100 of the Ultimate Mets Database Popularity Ranking sometime after he hits his 700th career home run (all as a Met of course). By the way, as of this writing, he's at 109 career home runs. so if averages 60 home runs a year it could happen as soon as 2032.
