Time Traveler Tuesdays : Tug and Matlack: Lefties Who Helped Define the 1970's Mets Pitching Staff
- Manny Fantis
- 3 minutes ago
- 5 min read
The lefties that helped define Shea Stadium pitching magic in the 1970’s, Tug McGraw and Jon Matlack, couldn’t have been more opposite in approach and in attitude.
McGraw was motion, noise, improvisation — the hurler who slapped his glove, shouted belief into a clubhouse, and made the bullpen feel like a stage entrance. Matlack was quieter, cleaner, more severe — a starter whose excellence could be hidden by won-lost records, and an offense that too often left him no margin. One gave the Mets their slogan. The other gave them October credibility.
Together, they explain the strange beauty of the 1970s Mets: a club that was rarely took the easy road. They were often frustrating, but never short on drama.
McGraw had already been part of the 1969 championship team, but the early 1970s turned him from useful reliever into cult figure. In 1971, sharing late-inning work with Danny Frisella, he went 11-4 and held hitters to a .189 average. His screwball made him especially dangerous to right-handed batters.
Then came 1972, his peak season as a Met: a 1.70 ERA, 27 saves, an All-Star appearance, and a reputation so strong that Sparky Anderson called him “The Seaver of saves.”
That phrase mattered because Tom Seaver was the Mets’ standard of excellence. To be compared to him, even in the bullpen, meant McGraw had become something more than colorful. He was a weapon. In the pre-specialization age, a “closer” was less a ninth-inning specialist than a cleanup pitcher, who could get you out of any scenario, limiting severe damage created by a fading starter.
Matlack arrived by a different road. Drafted by the Mets in 1967 and called up in 1971, he became a full-fledged major leaguer in 1972. His rookie season was not merely promising; it was polished. He finished 15-10 with a 2.32 ERA, the best ERA on the Mets and fourth best in the National League, then won the NL Rookie of the Year Award. He also found himself attached to history on September 30, 1972, when Roberto Clemente’s 3,000th hit came off him — a moment Matlack later remembered less as ceremony than as an interruption in a game he was trying to win.
If McGraw’s genius was theatrical survival, Matlack’s was stubborn competence. He was a pitcher whose record could lie. In 1973, he finished 14-16, but he struck out 205 batters, third in the National League behind Seaver and Steve Carlton. That same season, he was struck in the forehead by a line drive off the bat of Atlanta’s Marty Perez, suffered a fractured skull, and returned to pitch 11 days later. By late summer, as the Mets began their improbable climb, Matlack went 5-1 from August 18 through the end of the regular season.
The 1973 Mets are remembered through McGraw’s words: “Ya Gotta Believe.” The slogan was born in a season that had given the club every reason not to. On July 11, New York was 36-46, last in the NL East and 12 games behind the Cubs. Key players had missed time, and the season seemed to be sagging into another disappointment. McGraw’s clubhouse outburst transformed a management pep talk into a rallying cry, and eventually into one of the most famous phrases in franchise history.
At first, belief did not fix anything. As late as August 30, the Mets were 61-71, still in last place. Then the season tilted. They went 21-8 over their final 29 games, finished 82-79, and won the division on the season’s last day in Chicago. McGraw was central to the charge: beginning with his 14th save on August 27, the Mets went 24-9, while he saved 12 games, won four more, and posted a 0.88 ERA over his final 41 innings.
But slogans do not beat the Big Red Machine by themselves. Matlack did that with his left arm. In Game 2 of the 1973 NLCS at Cincinnati, he faced a lineup that could make good pitchers look temporary and held the Reds to two hits, both by Andy Kosco. It was one of the defining games of his Mets career: the quiet left-hander walking directly into October noise and reducing it to soft contact and silence.
McGraw had his own October moments. In Game 5 of the NLCS, with the Mets trying to finish Cincinnati, he entered after the Reds loaded the bases against Seaver in the ninth. McGraw got Joe Morgan to pop up, then covered first on Dan Driessen’s grounder to end it. Shea erupted, and the Mets had won the pennant.
The World Series against Oakland became a showcase for both men and a reminder of how thin the line was between Mets magic and Mets heartbreak.
Matlack pitched well in Game 1 but lost 2-1. He won Game 4, allowing one run in eight innings as the Mets evened the Series. Asked to start Game 7 on three days’ rest, he lasted only 2⅔ innings after home runs by Bert Campaneris and Reggie Jackson, and Oakland won the championship. Still, his Series line — four earned runs in 16⅔ innings — speaks better than the final result.
McGraw, meanwhile, was everywhere. He worked five games and 13⅔ innings in that World Series, saved Game 5, and finished with a 2.63 ERA. The Mets were one win from another championship before losing Games 6 and 7 in Oakland. For McGraw, the Series confirmed what 1973 had already shown: his value was as much emotional as statistical, though the statistics were plenty real.
After that, the decade began to fray. McGraw’s 1974 season was damaged by shoulder pain, and the Mets traded him to the Phillies that winter with Don Hahn and Dave Schneck for Del Unser, John Stearns, and Mac Scarce. It was the only trade of McGraw’s career, and it became part of a larger dismantling of the 1973 pennant-winning core.
Matlack stayed longer, and in some ways pitched better after the pennant season. In 1974, despite a 13-15 record, he posted a 2.41 ERA, struck out 195, and threw seven shutouts. In 1975, he was an All-Star and shared the game’s MVP award with Bill Madlock after throwing two scoreless innings. In 1976, he won 17 games, completed 16, posted a 2.95 ERA, and finished sixth in Cy Young Award voting.
Yet the Mets around him were slipping. By 1977, the franchise was collapsing into a 98-loss season, and Matlack’s numbers finally buckled with it. After that year, he was dealt to Texas in a four-team, 11-player trade. Like McGraw, he left as part of the long exhale after 1973 — the slow breakup of a team that had almost turned belief into another title.
Their legacies have settled differently. McGraw remains the unforgettable voice: the man of the slogan, the bounding reliever, the personality large enough to belong to two franchises. Matlack remains the underrated craftsman: Rookie of the Year, postseason stalwart, top ten Mets pitcher in major franchise categories, and finally a Mets Hall of Famer. McGraw was inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame in 1993; Matlack was named to the 2020 class and honored in 2021.
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