Jim Abbott

When I think about Jim Abbott I have three factoids about the man pop into my head.  In no particular order:

1. He had only one hand.
2. He threw a no-hitter as a member of the New York Yankees.
3. In his last full season he lost 18 games.

That’s a lot to chew on.  I know.  The guy was prolific.

Like me, Abbott is from the beautiful state of Michigan.  Unlike me, Jim Abbott is completely mediocre.  A student of mine actually suggested this post and pointed out to me that Abbott’s career ERA+ is 100.  In other words, he is completely mediocre and entirely average.

Abbott was a terrific collegiate pitcher at the University of Michigan.  He was named the top amateur athlete in the country in 1987 and is the proud owner of a gold medal.  Being that he had one hand and all, Abbott came into the big leagues with quite a bit of fanfare and was the #8 overall pick in the 1988 draft.  He was picked ahead of fellow first rounders like Robin Ventura and Tino Martinez.

Jim made his debut with the Angels in 1989 at the tender age of 21 and held his own.  In his rookie season he won 12 games and finished 5th in the Rookie of the Year vote (the immortal Gregg Olson won the award).  He bounced back to earth a bit in 1990, losing 14 games and leading the league in hits allowed (ouch!).

However, Jim showed his trademark resiliency in 1991, winning a career-high18 games with an ERA of 2.89.  That season Abbott finished third in Cy Young voting (a juiced up Roger Clemens won the award) and won the hearts of fans all over the nation.

The next season was a weird one.  Abbott improved on his already sparkling ERA with a mark of 2.77, fifth in the American League.  However, he was the victim of some tough luck and played for a really shitty team and lost 15 games.  Jim was a legitimate tough-luck loser.  That winter the Angels shipped the lefty to the New York Yankees for Russ Spring and JT Snow, it was a pretty big deal at the time.

It was in his first season with the Yankees, 1993, that Abbott hurled a no-hitter against the Cleveland Indians.  His time in New York was relatively brief and he spent the next few years bouncing around the league, playing for the Yankees, White Sox, Angels (again), and Brewers.  Abbott retired following the 1999 season.

Abbott had only 21 at-bats in his career (all with the NL Brewers).  In those 21 at-bats, he struck out 10 times and recorded two base hits.  It’s obviously difficult to bat with only one hand on the bat.  Stunningly, both of his hits came off of certified staff ace, Jon Lieber.

Abbott currently works as a motivational speaker.

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Top 10 Worst MLB All Stars of the 1980s

Listed below are the 10 worst All Stars of the 1980s.  To qualify for the list the player had to:

• Make an All Star game in the 1980s
• Make no more than one career All-Star appearance
• Be painfully mediocre

10. Matt Nokes (1987):  Nokes had exactly one good year his entire career and it was his rookie season, 1987.  Nokes helped lead the Detroit Tigers back to the playoffs as he crushed 32 homers and finished 3rd in the Rookie of the Year voting.  He had some decent power numbers later in his career but at the cost of a low batting average and miserable on-base percentage numbers.

9.Ron Davis (1981): Davis made the 1981 All Star game as a member of the New York Yankees.  He was a reliever, and saved six whole games that season.  He retired with a career ERA+ of 101, making him almost completely average.  He is the father of Mets prospect, Ike Davis.

8.Jerry Mumphrey (1984):  Jerry Mumphrey was “okay”.  He stuck around the big leagues for 15 seasons and made one All-Star game.  In 1984, “Jer” hit .290 and slugged nine home runs.  He was a man amongst boys.  He had better seasons earlier in his career, and retired with an OPS+ of 108, just a tick above average.

7.Ken Reitz (1980): Ken “Zamboni” Reitz was good with the glove, but the guy couldn’t hit a lick.  In 11 big league seasons, he hit .260 (OPS+ 79).  In 1980, he hit .270, which was darn close to his career best.  In ended up being his final big league season.  While a deft fielder, Reitz had a reputation as one of the slowest runners in history.

6.Vance Law (1988):  I have a few Vance Law baseball cards, and I remember him as the guy that wore really creepy glasses.  These things were huge with thin frames, dude looked weird (pictured).  Personal attacks aside, The Long Arm of the Law was a pretty mediocre ballplayer.  He played above-average D, but struggled with the stick.  Law is currently the head baseball coach at BYU (that explains his weird look, no offense).

5.Tom Hume (1982):  Tom Hume was a first round pick that ended up being a mediocre relief pitcher.  Not what you’re looking for with your first round pick.  Hume was decent enough to play in the bigs for 11 seasons.  Over that time, he lost 14 more games than he won and finished with an ERA+ of 98.  Tom worked as the Reds bullpen coach for 11 seasons.

4.Bob Walk (1988): Bob Walk had a very decent career.  He was a major piece for Jim Leyland on some of those good Pirates teams of the late 1990s as he could start and relieve at a pretty average level.  Walk won 105 games, more than he lost, and finished with a ERA+ of 91.  Bob now does radio work for the Pirates.

3.Kevin Bass (1986): Don’t ask me why, but I always though my Kevin Bass baseball cards were “good”.  I thought they would be worth some serious cash.  Turns out that Mr. Bass was downright average, hitting .270 for his career (OPS+ 105), while hitting about eight home runs a year.  He made the 1986 squad as he hit .311 with 20 home runs on a pretty good Houston Astros club.  Two of Bass’ son’s were drafted by a big league team.

2.Pat Tabler (1987): Pat Tabler was another first round pick, that just kind of fizzled.  Tabler, drafted in 1976, made his big league debut in 1981 and started a bit in the mid-1980s.  He played all over the diamond with varying degrees of success.  In 1987 he hit .307 with 11 home runs (a pathetic career high).  For his career, Tabler had an OPS+ of 99, almost exactly mediocre.  Tabby Cat (seriously, that’s his nickname) does TV work with the Blue Jays.

1. Greg Swindell (1989):  Greg Swindell was an effective pitcher for good chunks of his big league career, both as a starter and as a reliever.  Swindell played 17 seasons, which is damn impressive.  He played in one All-Star game, which is damn hilarious.  Swindell made the mid-summer classic in 1989 as a young starter with the Indians.  He went 13-6 that season with an ERA+ of 118.  He transitioned from starter to reliever in 1996, winning a ring with the D’Backs in 2001. He now does TV work with the Diamondbacks.

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Bill Doran

Is that a smile or is he really sad? I can't tell.

This post was the idea of my boss at work so I basically have to get it done today.  His suggestion was to do Bill Doran, a pretty mediocre second baseman from the 1980s and early 1990s.  Doran was a name I remembered from when I was a kid and I’m pretty sure I have a few of his baseball cards at my parents house in Michigan.

Doran got his start in the Houston Astros organization and made his big league debut in 1982 as a late season call up.  In his first full season, 1983, Doran handled the second base duties in Houston and played well enough to pick up a few Rookie of the Year votes after hitting .271 with 12 steals and 8 homers.

Doran’s progression continued over the next seven seasons in Houston.  He usually posted OPS+ totals right around the league average.  Some highlights of his time with the Astros include his 42 steals in 1986 and his 1987 season in which he played all 162 games and hit a career high 16 homers while stealing 31 bases.  Basically, he was a poor man’s Brian Roberts.  Doran also played on the 1986 Astros team which played in one of the more memorable NLCS series of all-time against the New York Mets.

What’s so outstanding and impressive about Doran is that he was ALWAYS about average.  Most guys, even on this site, have a BIG year or two, not Doran.  The guys was consistently mediocre.  His career-high OPS+ was 125, while dipping below 94 just once as a full-time player.  That sort of production is just outstanding.

In 1990, Doran was shipped out of Houston to Cincinnati where he helped the Reds win a World Series.  Playing for the Reds down the stretch that season, Doran hit a robust .373 in 17 games.  He spent the next two years with the Reds before flaming out in only 20-some games in 1993 with the Milwaukee Brewers.

Over the course of his bland, 12 season career, Doran never made an All-Star game and retired with an OPS+ of 106, almost perfectly league-average.  Doran coached a bit in the big leagues after his career was over, but is currently out of baseball.  His son, named after Nolan Ryan, is apparently attempting to be be an actor.  Best of luck to him.

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Delino DeShields

Delino had a huge head.

Delino DeShields is one of the great baseball names of the last century.  He is probably the only person on the planet with that name.  Does anyone out there know any one named Delino DeShields?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.  Aside from having a pretty cool name, Delino DeShields is one of the great mediocre base stealers of all time.  He’s right up there with Tom Goodwin and Eric Young.

I’ve been a DeShields fan since using him to steal all kinds of bases on RBI Baseball III for Nintendo.  I’ve also always been a fan of the Expos.  God bless that old team.  Moving on…

DeShields was a first round pick of the Montreal Expos in 1987 out of high school.  Delino debuted with the Expos in 1990 and finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting behind the immortal David Justice.  That season DeShields helped the speedy Expos tear apart the base paths.  DeShields stole 42 bases as a rookie and hit .289.

In 1991, DeShields led the National League in strikeouts as he topped the 150 plateau.  However, he still stole 56 bases and scored 83 runs.  He continued this kind of play for two more years while playing north of the border.  DeShields stole 187 bases in four years with Montreal before getting traded to the Dodgers after the 1993 season.  It was this trade that makes DeShields a bit of a baseball footnote.

In this deal, the Expos sent the speedy DeShields to the Los Angeles Dodgers for a young pitcher named Pedro Martinez.  You really know the rest of the story.  DeShields continued to post high steal and strikeout numbers to go with a low batting average and on base percentage.  Martinez on the other hand, blossomed into an ace and won Cy Young Awards with the Expos and Red Sox.

Delino spent three years with the Dodgers then bounced around the league with the Cardinals, Orioles, and Cubs before falling out of the bigs after the 2003 season.  DeShields played in the bigs for 13 seasons and stole 463 bases.  Not bad.  however, he retired with a career batting average of only .268, which doesn’t cut it for a top-of-the-order guy like DeShields.

DeShields currently manages minor league ball in the Reds organization.  He is married and has five children, all of whom have names starting with the letter “D”.  Awesome.  In fact, his son Delino Jr. (I guess there is more than one Delino DeShields) is one of the top running back prospects in the country.

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Top 10: Players Becoming Managers

Pro sports has a long standing tradition of turning its former players into its future managers and coaches.  It started back in the day with the role of the player/manager.  Some athletes across all sports have excelled in this role, including the great Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics.  However, greats like Ty Cobb have struggled mightily in that position.

The focus of this Top 10 List is on former players who have gone on to become managers or head coaches in their sport.  You won’t find guys like Joe Torre on this list.  You also will not find greats like Casey Stengel or Sparky Anderson, two guys who didn’t do a lot as players but are Hall of Fame managers.  This list will feature only guys who have been mediocre as both players AND as managers/coaches.  Enjoy!

10. Lloyd McClendon (.244 career hitter / .430 W% as manager):  McClendon could very easily be higher on this list, but I thought he was a great guy to leadoff for this group.  McClendon was a decent hitter during his eight big

Lloyd loses his shit.

league seasons, retiring with an OPS+ of 94.  However, he was your typical, mediocre National League fill-in player.  He would pinch-hit and he could play multiple positions.  His highlight was a player came in the 1993 NLCS when he was forced to start and responded with a .727 AVG and a home run before the Pirates went down to the Braves.  McClendon’s last season as a player was in 1994 with the Pirates.  He returned to the Steel City in 2001 as the Pirates manager and promptly guided them to their first 100 loss season in 16 years.  None of the McClendon led Pirates clubs finished higher than 4th in the division and he was fired in the middle of the 2005 season.  I’m totally sure how he kept his job for that long.  Say what you want about the Mad McClendon, but the guy could really throw a tantrum.  In 2001, McClendon was arguing with the 1st base umpire and ripped the base out of the ground and ran off of the field with it.  He was fined $1,000.

9. Vinny Del Negro (9.1 ppg as a player / About to be fired by the Bulls):  Del Negro was a painfully average basketball player.  For the most part, Vinny was a bench player.  He put together a decent run in the mid-1990s with the David Robinson-led San Antonio Spurs, averaging 14 a game during the 1995-96 season.  When Vinny called it quits as a player in 2001-2002, he had career averages of 9.1 ppg and 3.2 apg.  Not exactly an all-league sort of player.  The circumstances that led to Vinny being named a head coach in the NBA are a bit fuzzy.  Let me put it this way, the guy must have some dirt on several higher-ups in the NBA.  Del Negro managed to turn his job as a radio commentator into a front office position with the Phoenix Suns.  Then, prior to the 2008-09 NBA season, Del Negro was named the head coach of the Bulls despite having ZERO coaching experience.  All he’s done since then is put up a total record of 82-82.  His Bulls teams have gone 41-41 in both seasons he has coached.  In many ways he is perfectly mediocre.

8. Herm Edwards (9 seasons, zero Pro Bowls / .422 W% as NFL coach):  Herm Edwards is probably best known for his

Intensity.

awesome soundbites as an NFL head coach.  His postgame comments were hardly mediocre, but really, the guy never got great results.  As a player, Edwards was a pretty decent defensive back and spent the bulk of his NFL career in Philadelphia with the Eagles.  Edwards peaked as a player during his first two seasons, picking off a combined 13 passes in those two years.  However, he never reached those heights again and was out of the league after nine seasons.  Edwards then worked his way up the coaching ranks and was hired as the head coach of the Jets for the 2001 season.  Herm put up a pair of 10-win seasons, but that was pretty much it.  After a 4-12 season with the Jets he was fired, only to be quickly hired by the Chiefs.  He had a 4 win season in KC and a 2 win season and was canned after the 2008 season.  He has one of the worst winning percentages in the history of the NFL for someone who has coached in at least 100 games.  Ladies and gentleman, Herman Edwards!!  Get excited!!

7. Hal McRae (3 All Star games in 19 seasons / .458 W% as manager):   Hal McRae might be the best player on this list.  He was a pretty good hitter in the 1970s and 1980s spending most of his time as a designated hitter for the Kansas City Royals.  He retired with over 2,000 hits and a .290 average.  However, he was very limited defensively and was never really a guy you were afraid of.  He wasn’t exactly the star of any team he played on.  McRae retired as a player at the age of 41 and was hired to lead the Royals as manager only four years later.  McRae did okay in Kansas City, posting three winning records in four years (including the strike shortened 1994 season).  McRae was known to flip his lid from time to time as a manager and never led a team of his to the post season.

6. ML Carr (10 ppg in 10 seasons / .293 W% as coach):  ML Carr is one of the worst coaches in NBA history.  He took the Boston Celtics franchise and ran the baby right into the ground in the mid-1990s.  Carr put together a mediocre first season as coach with a 33-49 record, narrowly avoiding the humiliating 50-loss mark.  In his second season, the Celtics went 15-67 and Carr soon found himself out of work.  Since then Carr has spent some time working in the WNBA.  Don’t let him tell you this was a lateral move.  As a player, Carr was decent.  Never known as a scorer, he was a decent defensive player.  Carr led the league in steals in 1978-79 while playing for the Detroit Pistons.

5. Gary Kubiak (5 starts in 9 NFL seasons / 31-33 as a coach):  Gary Kubiak started a mind-boggling 5 games in 9 NFL seasons.  Dude barely got off the pine.  Kubiak spent his entire career, after being drafted in the 8th round of the NFL Draft, backing up John Elway.  So, we can’t really blame him for staying on the bench.  In his limited action, Kubiak posted a pretty dismal QB rating of 70.6 and threw 14 career touch downs.  Since “retiring”, Kubiak has been the man calling the shots for the Houston Texans.  In his four seasons there, Kubiak has not seen a lot of improvement, winning between six and nine games each season, including a high of nine in 2009.  For some reason, Gary and his wife have given each of their three boys a first name starting with the letter “K”.  Hopefully none of their middle names start with K.

4. Jim Zorn (67.3 QB rating / 12 wins in 2 seasons as a coach):  If Jim Zorn had been able to hang in there as a coach for more than two years he would be much higher on this list.  As a player, Zorn was painfully mediocre and it’s entirely possible that he used up all of his favors and luck by staying in the NFL as a player for 11 years.  Zorn spent most of his career in Seattle with the Seahawks before making cameo appearances with Tampa Bay and Green Bay.  Zorn has the distinction of leading the league in interceptions and times sacked in separate seasons and threw 30 more picks than TDs for his career.  Zorn was named the head coach of the Redskins before the 2008 season.  He led the Skins to a disappointing 8-win season in 2008 and then followed that up with a 4-win season, making him the most obvious fire in the history of organized sports once the season ended.

3. Ron Washington (414 hits in 10 seasons / Did cocaine while managing the Rangers):  Ron Washington was a utility

Cocaine is one hell of a drug.

infielder as a player.  He was a regular for the Twins in 1982, but spent the rest of his career as a back up for five different clubs.  When Washington was done as a player in 1989, he retired with an OBP below .300 and an OPS+ of 79, meaning he was about 21% beneath your average player.  Yikes.  Washington emerged as a big time managing prospect while working in Oakland.  He was hired before the 2007 season to lead the Texas Rangers.  He has a .496 winning percentage in Texas and was said to be on the hot seat before this season started.  Then, before the 2010 season started, it was revealed by Washington himself, that he did cocaine last summer while managing the Rangers.  Somehow the guy has kept his job.  I don’t understand.

2. Sam Mitchell (8.7 ppg in 13 seasons / .452 W% as a coach):  Sam Mitchell ranks high on this list due to his longevity.  He was never considered a “good” player but stuck around because he was good buddies with Kevin Garnett.  Sam was a member of the first ever Minnesota Timberwolves team and averaged 13 points a game during his first two years in the league.  He also found time to lead the league in fouls during his second season.  Mitchell was reliable, seldom missing time due to injuries and played on some damn good teams in Minnesota and Indiana.  When his playing days were over, Mitchell worked as an assistant and was eventually hired to lead the Toronto Raptors.  Mitchell clashed a bit with the Raptors star Vince Carter.  This helped lead Carter to (I believe this) tank on purpose and force a trade out of Toronto.  Either way, the Raptors never won more than 47 games with Mitchell and when he was fired after 17 games in 2008, he was 33 games under .500 as a coach.

1. Phil Garner (16 seasons, 99 OPS+ / One playoff appearance in 15 years as a manager):  Phil Garner is blessed with on of my all-time favorite nicknames, Scrap Iron.  “Scrap Iron” worked primarily as an infielder during his 16 seasons as a player.  He spent most of his career with the Pirates and Astros.  He was named to three All Star teams and played until he was 39 years old.  Garner was never really great at any one things, but could play all over the infield and wasn’t a total zero at the plate.  When his playing days were done, Scrap Iron moved to the bench for good.  He got his first job managing the Brewers in 1992.  That season the Brewers won 92 games.  No Garner-led team has won that many games in a season since then.  Garner actually hung in Milwaukee for seven more seasons after than and posted a losing record in each season, but never lost more than 93 games.  He really just kept doing enough to NOT get fired; until, ya know, he was fired.  Garner was fired in 1999 and was hired to manage the Tigers in 2000.  Scrap Iron lasted only two full seasons in Detroit and was fired after starting 0-6 in 2002.  He took the 2003 season off, but in 2004 he was hired to manage the Houston Astros.  It was in 2005 that Garner led a team to the playoffs for the first time.  Sadly, he was right back around the .500 mark the next season and sucked the year after that.  In 15 years as a manager he has a mediocre winning percentage of .483.

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Matt Nokes

I spent the last week of March in Arizona.  Along with two other chaperones, I took 11 high school boys out west for a spring training trip.  Over the course of the trip we saw some sites, ate some food and went to a couple of spring training games.  However, the main point of the trip was to get the kids some expert training.  The guys attended three days of pretty intense training with two different camps.

Most of the instructors/coaches at these camps were former ball players, most of them at the minor league level.  At one of these camps, I was standing with my fellow chaperons and we were watching the kids play.  The lead instructor comes up to us and starts chatting.  The guy was drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays back in the 1990s and was actually in their minor league system before they even had a big league team.  Old school, right?  We asked him about where he played and all that jazz and he uncorks this gem of a story.  I’m paraphrasing, but I think it’s pretty close:

A couple years back I was playing independent ball and that was a lot of fun.  We had a player/manager.  Do you guys remember Matt Nokes (We all smile and nod).  That dude was our manager and he was a ton of fun and he was HUGE…and I’ll tell you why in a minute.  (The guy then walks away for about 30 seconds to talk to someone else and then returns.)  The guy LOVED steroids, man.  He loved them so much that he was pushing them on all the other guys, trying to get them to take them.  I think he got at least three other guys hooked.  But man, he loved them and he was BIG.

So there, that’s Matt Nokes apparently.  As a Tigers fan, I have fond memories of a young Nokes taking the league by storm in the late 1980s and then fading off after leaving the club.

Nokes’ best season was in 1987 when he was a rookie with the Tigers.  Nokes debuted with the San Francisco Giants in 1985 and had a cup of coffee with the Tigers in 1986, before finally sticking in 1987.  That season, Nokes made his only All Star appearance and finished third in the Rookie of the Year voting.  The 23-year-old Nokes slugged 32 home runs and won the Silver Slugger award for the catcher position.

The following season was not as kind to Nokes.  He hit only 16 homers in 1988 and followed that up with 9 in an injury shortened 1989 season.  In 1990, the Tigers shipped the struggling slugger to the New York Yankees for a couple of pitchers.  Nokes struggled in New York in 1990, but rebounded with a pair of 20+ HR seasons in 1991 and 1992.  However, Nokes was kind of an all-or-nothing kind of hitter.  In those two power-filled years in New York he had OBP of .308 and .293 and it’s really hard to stick around in the bigs when you’re getting on-base at that rate.

In 1995 Nokes had cameos with the Orioles and the Rockies before exiting the majors for good.  Nokes then bounced around the minors and some independent leagues for the better part of a decade before finally hanging up the spikes for good.

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Steve Balboni

Steve Balboni was 225 lbs of twisted steel and pain.  Okay, that may be a bit much, but the guy was a beast…a total beast.  He was listed at 225 lbs, but was probably closer to 250 and instead of steel, picture pudding.  Balboni was a big man who could hit a baseball a country mile.  Check out this career line:

• 181 HR, .229 AVG, .293 OBP

In other words, Balboni usually homered or got himself out.  Steve was a second round pick by the New York Yankees back in 1978 and showed his big power right away in the minor leagues.  He hit 164 home runs in the minors, including at least 30 jacks a year as a youngster from 1980-1982.  Balboni and his big swing (and bigger mustache) made their debut with the Yankees in 1981, but he just could not crack the regular playing rotation.

Following the 1983 season, the Bronx Bombers sent Balboni (and his mustache) to the Kansas City Royals for a bag of balls.  Balboni immediately stepped up as a regular in KC and hit 28 homers  and finished 19th in MVP voting as the Royals won the AL West.  The following season, Balboni and the Royals were even better as Steve crushed a career-high 36 home runs and the Royals won the World Series.  That same season however, Balboni led the AL in strike outs with 166, something that would plague him throughout his career.

Balboni would struggle with injuries, his weight, and strike outs for the rest of his career.  Nicknamed, “Bye Bye Balboni”, Balboni ended up striking out far too often to stay in the big leagues.  Even in the minors he whiffed far too often, once every 3.8 at-bats which is pretty incredible when you think about it.

After leaving KC, Balboni bounced around a bit, playing in Seattle, New York (with the Yankees) and in Texas.  While most big league players retire when they can no longer play in the majors, Balboni stuck around in the minors for as long as he could.

Following the 1990 season, Balboni played in only 2 big league games for the rest of his career.  However, he was more than happy to kick it around in the minors through the 1993 season.  In 1991, 1992 and 1993, Balboni launched 86 home runs for the Rangers AAA club while hitting around .250.

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Mark Lemke

You could probably make the argument that Mark Lemke wasn’t even a mediocre baseball player.  You could probably also say that he is simply a footnote in the annals of Major League Baseball.  However, I recall Lemke for providing me and other baseball fans with a great 10 days of entertainment during the 1991 World Series, arguably the greatest Fall Classic of all-time.

By most offensive metrics, Lemke wasn’t even close to being a mediocre hitter.  For his career, the second baseman, hit .246 with an on-base percentage of only .314 and a career OPS+ of 71, 29 points below the average hitter.  Lemke was decent in the field though, and probably rates as better-than-average, this is partly what made him a regular in the Atlanta Braves lineup from 1990-1997.

Lemke’s claim to fame came in the 1991 World Series.  The series pitted the Atlanta Braves against the Minnesota Twins in a battle of teams that went from last place to first place that season.  The Braves boasted a great young pitching staff headlined by Tom Glavine, Steve Avery and Greg Maddux while the Twins had the star power of Kirby Puckett, Jack Morris and Kent Hrbek.  They also featured the mullet of Dan Gladden.

In 1991 regular season, Lemke hit .234 with 2 homers and 2 triples all season.  In the World Series though he turned into an absolute beast.  The consistently light-hitting Lemke went off on Minnesota pitching to the tune of a .417 batting average, a .462 OBP and a staggering 3 triples in the seven game classic.  In game three of the series, Lemke hit a game-winning, walk-off single that prevented the Braves from falling into a 3-0 series hole.  Throughout the epic series, Lemke came through time-after-time and his legend grew in Atlanta.

Lemke’s main career accomplishment, aside from his World Series performance, was that he somehow had 3,664 plate appearances in his career and was never hit by a pitch.  Not once.  Lemke played in 1,069 games and was not hit by a pitch once.  That’s a big league record.  Guessing he stood off the plate a little bit.

When his days a second baseman came to an end with the Boston Red Sox in 1998, Lemke signed with an Independent League team and learned how to throw a knuckleball.  Seriously.  As a IL knuckleball pitcher, he had an ERA of 6.68 and threw dozens of wild pitches.  The dream was over.

Lemke currently does some radio and television work for the Braves.

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Lenny Dykstra

Gross.

Boy oh boy, things have been better for Lenny Dykstra.  Dykstra, known as “Nails” during his days as  a big league ball player has recently filed for bankruptcy, sold his house, gotten divorced,  sold his 1986 World Series ring and ruined his relationship with his son.  Tough break.

During his playing days, Dykstra was one of the more exciting and charismatic players in the game.  He played for the Mets from 1985-1989, and played a key role on the 1986 World Series winning club.

He took his scrappy game to Philadelphia in 1989 when he was traded for Juan Samuel.  He took his game to a new level in the City of Brotherly Love and was a fan favorite until retiring after the 1996 season.  In 1990, Lenny flirted with .400 for a little while, hitting over .400 into mid-June.  It was in Philly that Dysktra played his best ball which included an amazing 1993 campaign.

In 1993, Nails led the NL in at-bats, hits, runs, walks and finished 2nd in MVP voting.  It was in that 1993 season that the Phillies took the National League pennant before falling the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series.  All of this makes it sound like Lenny was maybe a bit more than mediocre, however, his personal issues shortened what could have been a much better career.

His last full season in the bigs was that monster season in 1993 (he missed a big chunk of one season due to a drunk driving crash) and he was out of baseball by the time he was 33.  Nails was known as a partier off the field, a reputation he did little to quell.

In addition to some of his other issues, Dykstra has had both of his brothers accuse of him of fraud and he was named in the Mitchell Report as an abuser of steroids.  Dykstra sure was nuts on the field, crashing into walls and playing his heart out, but he was even more reckless off of it.  Too bad.

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Jeff Conine

Coolest nickname in Marlins history.

Jeff Conine’s page at Baseball Reference doesn’t list his nickname as Mr. Marlin, but I’m quite sure that’s the only nickname he really has.  Conine was with the Marlins from the beginning, selected by the club in the 1992 Expansion Draft after the Kansas City Royals left him unprotected.

Conine promptly made his mark in Miami, placing third in the Rookie of the Year voting in 1993.  Conine made his only two All-Star Game appearances in the following two seasons.  1994 and 1995 were strike shortened seasons, yet Conine made the most of them, posting OPS+ totals of at least 130 in each season.  He was with the the Marlins all the way as they began their ascent to respectability and playoff contention.

During his time with the Marlins, Conine appeared in 6 playoff rounds.  His clubs won each round, winning World Series titles in 1997 and 2003.  He wasn’t with the Marlins the entire time as he bounced around the league a bit in-between, playing for both the Royals and the Orioles.

As he matured in his career, Conine bounced around from team to team and from position to position.  Primarily a first baseman, Conine also played left field, rightfield, and third base.  After that first run with the Marlins, Conine really moved around, often as a trade deadline trade chip.  He was involved in trades that included the following less-than-mediocre players:

• Blaine Mull
• Chris Fussell
• Don Levinski
• Denny Bautista
• Angel Chavez
• Brad Key
• Javon Moran
• Jose Castro
• Sean Henry

Quite a collection of crap, right?  No offense to those listed above, but that should tell us a little bit about Jeff Conine.  Conine played 17 big league seasons and collected over 1,900 hits and 200 home runs.  His career highlights include those two All-Star games and two World Series rings.  In fact, Conine was named the MVP of the 1995 All Star game and was a career .304 hitter in the playoffs.   Conine ended up sticking around until he was 41 years old and was one of the more respected players in the game.  Since retiring he has working with numerous charities, done some broadcasting for the Marlins and completed triathlons.

While he was a semi-star early in his career, Conine’s body of work suggests that he was largely mediocre…and that’s part of what makes him so memorable.

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