Archive for the 'Card of the Week' Category

There is oh-so-much to like about this rookie baseball card of Tom Glavine:

• I have no idea if  Glavine ever used banned substances but one thing I know for sure is the size and shape of his body didn't change throughout his career. Especially with his youthful face hidden in a shadow, the photo above could have been from almost any year of his career.
• The design of the 1988 Score set, and the Rookie Prospect subset, was just fantastic. Keep in mind that this was Score's debut set. From 1981 to 1987, there were just the three main baseball card producers--Topps, Fleer, and Donruss. In 1988 Score came on the scene with a simple yet great-looking set. Upper Deck would come along later to really change the card landscape, but in 1988 this set was big news.
• The photo itself is wonderful, especially since it includes an extra Braves logo visible in the background, the ball just coming out of Glavine's hand, and the entire field back to the outfield wall.
• Back in 1988, it was pretty uncommon to see photos on the back of cards, especially color photos.  The backs of these cards were just great, with the color photo and multi-color text.
• The only thing I've never understood about this set is the purpose of the 3 stars on the front of card. (These stars appear on every card in the set.)

Let's talk a little bit about the player himself.

In the last 50 years of baseball, Glavine is one of just 10 players to amass at least 5 different 20-win seasons.

I haven't looked at the numbers in detail, but my instinct is that winning 20 games is rarer these days than it used to be, thanks to 5-man rotations and fewer innings pitched by starters. Among active pitchers, nobody has more than two 20-win seasons. I wonder when we'll next see a guy win 20 games five different times. It might be a long time.

It's interesting to note, however, that Glavine's neutralized pitching numbers suggest that he didn't deserve a single 20-win season. His overall W-L record (neutralized) is 267-207 (.563) as opposed to his actual totals of 305-203 (.600.) Glavine's numbers were helped by playing on a lot of really good teams--still, though, we can't really hold that against him and the bottom line is that he pitched consistently and excellently for many years.

Glavine's post-season record mirrors that of the Braves over the same period--lots of appearances but mixed results. In 1995, the year the Braves won it all, Glavine pitched 28 innings and allowed just 5 earned runs. In 1997, however, he allowed 11 earned runs in 19.1 innings.

A reader Joseph made an interesting point about Glavine's numbers. He finished his first season (1987) and his last season (2008) with the same numbers: 2 wins, 4 losses, and a 5.54 ERA.

I want to touch a little more on this card, Glavine, and the Braves. In 1988, this card was not a good pull for a collector. Sure, it was a rookie prospect card, but it was a guy who had bad numbers in 1987 and a terrible season in 1988. In that latter season he had a lousy 80 ERA+ over 195 innings and led the league with 17 losses. The Braves were a lousy team and no kid wanted a rookie card of some lousy pitcher from a lousy team. But those who knew Glavine and baseball thought differently. In 1988, despite the bad overall numbers, there were some very good things. His WHIP was a reasonable 1.35, much better than would be expected for such a bad ERA. He allowed just a few more hits than IP and his walks per 9 IP was a very good 2.9. These were harbingers of things to come as Glavine went on to have very low walk totals in his career and also to allow fewer hits than innings pitched.

So in 1988, most card collectors (including me) took these Glavine cards and put them away in a box. In 1989 and 1990 Glavine was an average pitcher (which says something since the Braves were still bad) and then suddenly he exploded in 1991, right along with his team. He won 20 games and the Cy Young award and the Braves went to the World Series. That's when collectors went back to their boxes of commons to dig out the Tom Glavine rookie cards.

One more thing about Glavine's stats: he was a pretty good hitter. It is well known that the 1990s Braves starting pitchers fiercely competed over their hitting ability. Glavine, Greg Maddux, John Smolts, and Steve Avery all had some excellent batting seasons for the Braves. Glavine himself had 7 different seasons with at least 5 RBI and finished with 25 career doubles. Among active pitchers, only Livan Hernandez, Mike Hampton, and Carlos Zambrano can claim the same. Plenty of pitchers from days gone by did plenty better, but these days those are good numbers. It's just a shame he didn't have more numbers since chicks dig the long ball.

Let's hear your memories of this great pitcher, surely a HOFer one day.

Want to read a bit more on these topics? See the 1988 Score blog, which features info and many card photos from that set. You can also see my post on his Topps rookie card on my old 88 Topps blog.

Even though this is a baseball blog, I'm willing to bet that most of the readers have never heard of either of the two players featured on this card--Mickey Abarbanel and Cisco Carlos. (Neither had I, before writing this post.)

This card, from what many people consider a classic set, features two young players on a single card. Generally this was done to enable a set to feature more players without having to add more cards to the set and also to hedge bets on which players would be successful. In other words, by picking two young players there was a decent chance that at least one would stick in the majors for some time and the card would carry some interest. This 1968 set featured numerous rookie cards with better players, such as #177 Mets Rookies with Jerry Koosman and Nolan Ryan. Other dual rookie cards in this set feature Johnny Bench, Lou Piniella, and Hal McRae.

Before discussing the players I wanted t speak briefly about the card itself.  Old logos are great and the interlocking S-O-X seen here is no exception. One thing I never understood about Topps baseball cards, though, was the large fraction of posed shots with shadows over the players' faces. Both of these guys are in the shadows.  The back of the card (see below) shows a rarity for baseball card copy--an exclamation point!

Now on to the players themselves. Let's start with Abarbanel. From his minor league stats we can see that he was a great strikeout pitcher, averaging about 1 K per inning. His B-R bullpen article corroborates the numbers but also suggests that he was limited by injuries. In any event, he never made it to the majors.

At least from the point of view of major league stats, Cisco Carlos is the more interesting case here. His rookie year of 1967 stands out due to an ERA of 0.86 over 8 games (7 starts) and 41.2 IP. Furthermore, in those 41.2 innings he allowed only 23 hits and 9 walks while striking out 27.

Indeed, Carlos' performance was record-setting. It turns out that in those 7 starts he didn't allow a single extra-base hit, and that is the post-1954 record for most consecutive such starts at the beginning of a career:

Ned Garver comes up on the search but he doesn't actually belong on the list because his career started before 1954 (but the search is only 1954 and onwards.) Karl Spooner started in 1954 so his entry here is valid.

There is a host of other pitchers tied at a streak of 3 such games, including Vin Mazzaro last year for Oakland.

In fact, Carlos has the longest streak of consecutive starts without allowing an extra base hit at the beginning of  any post-1954 season, regardless of whether it was the first of a player's career:

Pretty good stuff there.

Carlos was never able to reproduce the success of his first season and after a few more season in the majors he went down to the minors and never made it back to the show.

This is the first post in a new regular feature on the Baseball-Reference.com blog. Each Saturday I will post a baseball card along with some stats and commentary about the card itself. Please feel free to make any suggestions in the comments below.

Despite having a rookie baseball card in the 1979 Topps set and finishing 3rd in the NL Rookie of the Year voting in 1980, Lonnie Smith didn't get a card in the 1980 set itself. However, after playing in 9 post-season games with the champion Phillies that post-season, Smith got cards in the 1981 sets, including this one in 1981 Fleer. This year was a big one for baseball cards, with Fleer and Donruss coming out with sets to challenge Topps, who had been the sole company on the market for numerous years (and is again in 2010, for the first time since 1980.)

Although this is not an action shot of Smith, I still love the card. It's a good shot of him, mutton chops and all, and there's a lot to see from his index finger outside the glove to his cool Phillies wristbands. I also enjoy cards that contain some evidence of when or where they were taken. In the background appears to be a Padre player, wearing the brown and yellow of the day. As Smith's jersey is an away one, this picture was probably taken in Jack Murphy Stadium, perhaps in June of 1980 when the Phillies visited San Diego.

Smith was, in my opinion, an underrated player. He hit for average, got on base well, had excellent speed, and was a decent base-stealer. The thing that really sticks out about his career, though, was the degree to which he was in the right place at the right time.

Check out the leaders for most post-season games played in the 1980s:

Lonnie's on top,and that's not even considering his post-season games with the Braves in the early 1990s. In fact, from 1954 to 1994 (stopping short of the wild card era) Smith has the 3rd-most playoff games, behind only Reggie Jackson and Pete Rose.

As a recap, Smith started with the Phillies and played on their 1980 championship team. During the 1981 off-season he was traded to the Cardinals and won another World Series with St. Louis in 1982. He was still on the Cardinals in 1985 but was traded mid-season to the Royals, only for both teams to make it to the World Series and Kansas City to come out on top. (As an aside--can you name any other players to play for both World Series teams in a given year?) Eventually the Royals dumped Smith and he was picked off the scrap heap by the Braves, one of the worst teams in baseball. Lonnie was an instrumental part of the rebirth of that franchise, appearing in two World Series in 1991 and 1992 with Atlanta before moving on to Pittsburgh in 1993. He played in 5 World Series with 4 different teams and was on the winning side three times. That's pretty remarkable.