Time Traveler Tuesdays: 1970s Mets' Catchers: A story of transition behind the plate

The story of the 1970s Mets at catcher is really a story of transition. The decade opened with Jerry Grote still doing most of the work behind the plate, moved through years when Duffy Dyer and Ron Hodges mattered in real ways, and closed with John Stearns carrying the job almost by himself.

One year after the miracle, the Mets still looked familiar at catcher. Grote handled 126 games and hit .255, while Dyer appeared in 59 and hit .209; New York finished 83-79. Behind the plate, it still felt like the club was leaning on the same voice and same habits that had carried it to glory, even if the standings no longer looked quite so magical.

The pattern barely changed in 1971. The Mets again went 83-79, and Grote again did the heavy lifting, catching 125 games and batting .270 with 25 doubles. Dyer remained the second catcher, appearing in 59 games and hitting .231. It was a steady arrangement, and for a while that steadiness seemed to be enough.

Then the balance shifted. Dyer bore the bigger share of the workload in 1972, playing 94 games and hitting .231 with eight home runs, while Grote, who underwent surgery to remove bone chips in his right elbow, was limited to 64 games and hit .210. The Mets still finished 83-73, but for that season, the position belonged less to the old mainstay and more to the longtime understudy who had waited for his turn.

The pennant season turned catcher into a three-man story. Grote played 84 games and hit .256, Dyer added 70 games, and Hodges supplied 45 more while batting .260. That mix helped carry an 82-79 Mets club into October, and New York then beat Cincinnati in the NLCS before losing a seven-game World Series to Oakland. It was not a clean, one-man arrangement; it was a resilient one, which made it perfectly Mets.

The drop-off came fast. The Mets fell to 71-91 in 1974; Grote was still the primary catcher with 97 games, a .257 average, five home runs, and 36 RBIs, while Hodges handled 59 games and hit four home runs himself. Even in a losing year, Grote made the All-Star team, which felt like a final salute to the catcher who had steadied so much of the franchise’s first good era.

Then came a bridge year. New York climbed back to 82-80 in 1975. Grote had one of his better offensive Mets seasons by hitting .295 in 119 games, and John Stearns began to enter the picture in earnest with 59 games of his own. Hodges barely played, and the position started to look less settled than it had been. The next catcher in line had arrived, even if the old one still held the job.

In 1976, the succession became easier to see. The Mets went 86-76, Grote still led the position with 101 games and a .272 average, Hodges worked 56 games, and Stearns — in a smaller role — hit .262 with a .364 on-base percentage in 32 games. What had once looked like a fixed hierarchy now looked more like a handoff in progress.

By 1977, the handoff was complete. Stearns caught 139 games, hit .251 with 12 home runs, 55 RBIs, and nine stolen bases, and made the All-Star team. Hodges still appeared in 66 games and Grote in 42, but this was now Stearns’ position, even on a club that crashed to 64-98. The Mets had found a different kind of catcher — younger, more athletic, and much more involved in the offense.

Stearns pushed that change even further in 1978. He played 143 games, hit .264 with 15 home runs and 73 RBIs, got on base at a .364 clip, and stole 25 bases. The team dropped to 66-96, but behind the plate, the identity of the club had changed completely. The Mets were no longer relying on a defense-first holdover from an earlier age; they were building around a catcher who could energize the lineup and the bases.

The decade ended with Stearns carrying almost everything. He played 155 games, batted .243, doubled 29 times, drove in 66 runs, stole 15 bases, and made another All-Star team, even as the Mets sank to 63-99. By then, the transition was finished. What began as Grote’s holdover era had become Stearns’ position completely. The 1970s Mets went from Grote’s world to Stearns’ world. Early on, it was still about the old guard and the guys who remembered 1969. By the middle of the decade, the job was being shared and reshaped. By the end, Stearns had taken over, and the position looked completely different. That is the fun of the story: the Mets changed personalities in the 1970s, and you can trace a lot of that change through their catchers.