ERIK: If this isn’t your wheelhouse, Tim, you don’t have one. Look at that, you lucky bastard: M’s, Cards AND Royals, whose ’85 squad I’m sure will never leave your pissed off, we-wuz-robbed data banks. All in all, the lineup wasn’t bad for me, either.
And then IG/BR had to blow it with that third column.
When I started these grids, I longed for the stats/awards columns because I always got stuck on the team-to-team ones, but today it was the opposite. I did the M’s row in like 15 seconds and then stared at that 40+ saves column for 15 minutes before hazarding guesses. Dear IG/BR: Saves are the Miami Marlins of stats: No one cares!
Mesa was the easy one—though I guess he did it with the Indians just once? Sutter was a fingers-crossed guess since 1980s guys still went 2-3 innings for a save. Right? Right. Just checked. In 1984, Sutter saved 45 games for the Cards but in 122.2 IP. Similarly I didn’t go “Iron” Mike Marshall for the Expos because I figured nobody saved 40 in the 1970s when three innings of relief was the norm. (Indeed, Marshall topped out at 32 saves, and his high for the Expos was 31 in 1973 when he threw *179 INNINGS*!!!! He earned that nickname, boyo.) Instead, for Expos/Nats, I guessed our bete noire (one of the many) Fernando Rodney, because I knew he’d pitched for the Nats but had forgotten it was the tail-end of his career when he was no longer a closer. Whatevs.
Should we talk trades? That’s one of the easiest ways to get my synapses snapping, so the M’s column went fast. And it’s always good to opt for the underside of the trade for your rarity score. I.e., instead of Randy, I went Mark Langston; and in place of Omar, Felix Fermin and $500,000 in cash—surely one of the saddest trades in my lifetime.
What ARE the saddest trades of my lifetime? Off the top of my head:
Twins trade Cesar Tovar for three Phillies (1972)
M’s trade Omar Vizquel for Felix Fermin + $500,000 in cash (1993)
M’s trade Tino, Nellie + Jim Mecir for Sterling Hitchock and Russ Davis—helping the Yankees become a dynasty again (1995)
RE, No. 2: About once a month I’ll think of one of the greatest signs/placards a fan ever brought to the ballpark. It was a Cleveland fan during the ’95 ALCS and it read:
SEATTLE: THANKS FOR JIMI HENDRIX AND OMAR
If you’re out there, dude, your good work did not go unnoticed.
For the life of me I couldn’t think of a Royal/Expos-Nat so guessed Amos Otis because I knew at the end of his career he was cast out of KC, and I thought it might be Montreal. Pittsburgh. Vada Pinson brings me joy—2700+ hits and one of the greatest names in MLB history—so I’ll use him any chance I get. As for Darrell Porter, he’s one of those Bernie Carbo/Sid Bream guys who show up in the postseason playing against his former team and helping us all with our Immaculate Grids decades later. And not for nothing: HUBBA HUBBA. He’s got a real Clark Kent thing going there. Yes, ladies, behind these nerdy glasses is a jaw of steel.
Tim?
TIM: This should have been easier. But You’re right, E, saves are kind of a nothing stat. Like I wrote when Sewald was traded, lots of dudes have racked up saves, names you wouldn’t necessarily expect, which you might think would make it more interesting on the Grid, but instead it just confuses things. Like you said about Rodney: I know he was a Nat, I don’t know if he was still collecting saves at that point. Similarly, I recall Doug Jones—the pitcher, not the former US Senator—played for Cleveland, but when? Before Milwaukee or after? Was he any good after? Brad Hand made a stop in Cleveland, but he got traded midseason so many times maybe he didn’t have a full year there? Too iffy all around, so go with the sure bets: Wetteland in Montréal, Mesa in Cleveland, and I could go against the obvious (Sutter) on the other because I was so, so sure of Todd Worrell in St. Louis.
BZZT, WRONG!
Say what?!? I swear Todd Worrell led the league in saves when he won Rookie of the Year. I’m certain. Did I catch the Grid in a mistake? No, dummy, you just didn’t account for era. Worrell did indeed lead the league in saves in 1986. With 36. Complete games were still a thing in the ’80s, remember? And that was a staff of innings-eaters. True, not the kind of CG count that the prior year had, but still. (Looking it up: 1985 STL CGs: Tudor 14, Andujar 10, Cox 10, Forsch 3; 1986: Cox 8, Tudor 3, Forsch 3, Mathews 1, Conroy 1, and even swingman Ricky Horton with 1. Big drop from 37 to 17, but today 17 would be unheard of.) And the closer was relatively new back then, so much so that, as it turns out, there were only three guys to ever reach 40 saves in the Majors before 1986 (Sutter in ’84, Jeff Reardon in ’85, and The Quiz in ’83 and ’84). Something to file away for future Grids if we get stuck with lame-o saves again.
The Mariner column was, of course, a breeze, but the Royals col not so much. I had more than a few immediate thoughts for Royals/Cardinals—Lonnie Smith, Porter, Jamie Quirk, Vince Coleman, the aforementioned Quisenberry—but Dane Iorg I thought would be obscure enough to rate less than a percent. Not quite; maybe I should have gone with Clint Hurdle. But Royals/Expos and Royals/Cleveland wasn’t turning up anything in the memory banks. I knew Taylor because we just saw him when the Royals were here and he was on the Nats’ World Series team; I knew Santana because…well, I just did. But those are current guys, so I knew they’d be lousy scores. Who should I have remembered? (Checks BBRef) Oh, Mark Grudzielanek, duh. Maybe U.L. Washington, I’m not sure I would have placed him in Montréal. Kevin Seitzer for CLE/KC, but nobody else, I think. (Huh, Grudzielanek would have worked there too. Didn’t know/recall he ever suited up for an Ohio team.)
M’s cols/rows are always fun since all those terrible (and some good) Mariner trades never leave us.
SEA/MON-WAS you’ve got the Randy deal, which you utilized with Langston and from which I considered Gene Harris or Brian Holman; there’s the immortal Ryan Langerhans, who came over in a deal for Mike Morse and whom we saw hit a game-winning bomb the time we were in a suite one April; there’s everyone’s favorite failed closer Bobby Ayala, who was finally, finally dumped on some other team (the Expos) years too late; there’s José Vidro, which wasn’t so much a bad trade as just a bust of getting a guy who fizzled out early. (I don’t even remember who we dealt away for Vidro, so it couldn’t have been much of a loss…ah, Chris Snelling. He would have been a good IG pick.) But instead of any of those guys, I went with the not-as-ageless-as-we-’d-have-liked Dennis Martínez. He wasn’t good for Seattle, but I liked that they gave him a shot at 43 years old.
SEA/STL brought to mind the obvious (Marco), the obvious-to-me (Coleman), the recent (Wong), and some not-so-obvious-but-not-obscures: Tino Martínez, Mark “Hittin’” Whiten, nearly-perfect Mike Leake, Brendan Ryan, Scott Spiezio. But my affinity for Darren Bragg never faltered after the M’s dealt him away even though he never amounted to what I thought he could have and he was with the Cards one year when I saw a couple games in St. Louis.
SEA/CLE is rife with bad deals. Omar for Fermin, Reggie Jefferson, and cash. Astrubal Cabrera for washed-up Eduardo Pérez. Trading to get Russell Branyan back after rightfully letting him walk the previous year. And my ultimate choice for today, getting 1½ lousy years of Broussard for Shin-soo Choo and his .300/.400/.500 consistency. Even without trades, though, lots of crossover: Joey Cora, Leonys Martín, Mesa, McLemore, Whiten, Zunino, Rhodes.
Some more noms for saddest trades:
Lowe and Varitek for Heathcliff Slocumb
Mike Hampton and Mike Felder for Erik Anthony
David Ortiz for Dave Hollins
José Cruz Jr. for Timlin and Spoljaric
That’s just the M’s. Also:
Kenny Lofton and some scrub for Ed Taubensee. I mean, it was the Astros that dealt Lofton away, so not sad for me, but for other people…
Miguel Cabrera for a bunch of Tiger prospects. You never know with prospects, but that has to hurt if you’re that one Miami fan.
And my personal saddest trade: Keith Hernandez to the Mets for Neil Fucking Allen, who will forever be known to me by all three names, never one, never two. At 14, and far away from the St. Louis media, I did not know the underlying circumstances surrounding this deal, did not know that Herzog had gotten fed up with Keith’s behavior because of the cocaine (I don’t think I even knew about cocaine). All I knew was that my team dealt away the best first baseman in the game for some nothing middle relief schlub that, OK, didn’t suck, but was completely ordinary and WE LOST KEITH HERNANDEZ.
You’re right, Darrel Porter does have a little Clark Kent thing going there. Herzog used to say “Porter looks like my accountant,” but given he was ’82 NLCS and WS MVP, Clark Kent is a better comp. He just needed a spit-curl.