I feel like we have already discussed the 1980s St. Louis Cardinals but I couldn't find it.

I turned 8 in 1985 and they are the first baseball team that I can remember. The Cardinals in the '80s were a fascinating team winning three pennants in 82, 85, and 87 and the Series in 82. They were the last dominant pitching/speed/defense team taking advantage of the hard astroturf at Bush Stadium

parenthesis are ranking in NL 12 total teams

1982 they hit 67(12) homeruns, stole 200(1) bases, batted .264(2) and OBP of .334(2)
1985 they hit 87(11) homeruns, stole 314(1)bases, batted .264(1) and OBP of .335(1)
1987 they hit 94(12) homeruns, stole 248(1)bases, batted .263(6) and OBP of .340(1)

Fielding % was .981(1) .983(1) and .982(1)

Pitching ERA was 3.37(3), 3.10(2), and 3.91(5)


There were many crazy stats during this period put up by a lot of great players, but one that sticks out at me is John Tudor in 1985 Tuder was a good pitcher and had a successful career going 117-72 games in 253 starts over 12 seasons with a 3.12 ERA.

But 1985 was one of the better seasons put up by any pitcher in the last 50 years. He went 21-8 with a 1.93 ERA in 36 starts with 14CG and 10 shutouts. He threw 275 total innings. And somehow, someway, he did not make the all star team.

Last, I do miss this style of baseball.

W said:

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unfortunately for Tudor his career year coincided with Dwight Gooden's.

and Doc won the Cy Young in 1985.

the Mets vs. Cardinals rivalry was a good one in the mid-80's

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86 Mets are like 84 Tigers. Blows your mind that they only went to that one WS - although clearly drugs had a big role in that.

Back when men were men, '85 Mets went 98-64 and missed the playoffs by 3 games. If you're too young to remember Dwight Gooden, that's the year he went 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA and 268 strikeouts, 16 complete games, and 8 shutouts. And he was 20.

Cue the Cocaine is a helluva drug gif. Missed one-third of the 87 season on drug rehab. Hurt his shoulder and only had 17 starts in 1989. Hurt his shoulder again in 1991. tested positive for coke in 1994 and missed the entire 1995 season. When that happened, they took down a mural of him in Times Square and replaced it with one of Charles Oakley. That mural later broke 17 different peoples' noses with its elbows. Gooden's been arrested six times in this life.

Gooden had a record of 100 wins and 46 losses when he was 25 years old. He went 94-66 over the next 10 seasons, never won more than 13 games again after winning 15+ 6 times in his first 7 seasons, and didn't make it to even 200 wins, let alone 300. But he did pitch a nono in 96 and won a second title with the Jankees.

Got a good one tonight. Contemporary

Kenny Loftin.

I did not know that he actually broke in with the Astros in 1991, and was 25 years old by the time he passed rookie status(played at U of Arizona).

He led the AL five straight years in stolen bases and finished his career with 622 steals. He also finished with a .299 Avg and .372 OBP which is really, really good in a 2103 game career. Those are HOF qualifying numbers.

But, the oddity...

In 1996 he stole 75 bases and was thrown out 17 times
in 1997 he stole 27 bases and was thrown out 20 times
in 1998 he stole 54 bases and was thrown out 10 times.

That 1997 number is crazy. I am assuming, since he only played in 122 games that he was hampered by a quad or hamstring or something that season. But still, I have never seen anything like that.

That dude also played in 95 playoff games and never won a WS.

Loved watching Kenny Loftin play.

agsalaska said:

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Got a good one tonight. Contemporary

Kenny Loftin.

I did not know that he actually broke in with the Astros in 1991, and was 25 years old by the time he passed rookie status(played at U of Arizona).

He led the AL five straight years in stolen bases and finished his career with 622 steals. He also finished with a .299 Avg and .372 OBP which is really, really good in a 2103 game career. Those are HOF qualifying numbers.

But, the oddity...

In 1996 he stole 75 bases and was thrown out 17 times
in 1997 he stole 27 bases and was thrown out 20 times
in 1998 he stole 54 bases and was thrown out 10 times.

That 1997 number is crazy. I am assuming, since he only played in 122 games that he was hampered by a quad or hamstring or something that season. But still, I have never seen anything like that.

That dude also played in 95 playoff games and never won a WS.

Loved watching Kenny Loftin play.

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Get ready to have your mind blown, because Lofton went to Arizona on a basketball scholarship and didn't play on the Wildcats' baseball team until his junior year of college. he had ONE at-bat in college, but an Astros' scout heard about him because the Triple A team was located in Tucson back then, as was U of A. They selected him in the 17th round and he played minor league baseball while still playing basketball for the WIldcats.

Lofton was also part of Arizona's first final four team where he was teammates of Sean Elliott and Steve Kerr.

Lofton is also one of two guys that have played in both a Final Four game and a World Series. The other is Tim Stoddard. And wouldn't you know it, they actually went to the same high school.

If Harold Baines is in the HoF, Lofton should be in too.

I was just looking at Rod Carew's page as Joey Gallo is coming up fast on passing him in career strikeouts.

In his first 6 years as a pro, Carew struck had 199 walks and 412 strikeouts. That was from 1967 to 1972. He won two batting titles in there - .332 in 1969 and .318 in 1972.

Starting at age 27 in 1973, he had more walks than strikeouts every single year for the rest of his career. He never struck out more than 62 times in a season. He won 5 more batting titles (he won 6 in 7 years at one point).
From 1973 until his career ended in 1985, he accumulated 819 walks and struck out just 616 times.

Maury Wills died today at 89, and this seems like the best thread to give him a shoutout. He was the active leader in stolen bases from 1966 to 1972 and finished with 586, which is good for 20th all-time, but was 10th all time when he retired.

His best year was 1962 when he was league MVP, leading the league with 10 triples and 104 stolen bases. He only got caught 13 times, had 208 hits. batted .299 and scored 120 runs for the Dodgers.


He led the league in steals six years in a row from 1960 to 1965. nearly reaching 100 again with 94 in 1965. After brief stints with the Pirates and Expos, he returned to LA in the early 1970s and finished 6th in the MVP race at age 38.

His MVP year of 1962, the Dodgers finished with the oddball record of 102-65 as they had to play a 3-game set with the Giants to determine who would win the National League pennant after both teams finished 101-61. It makes me happy to tell you that this playoff was caused by an enormous Dodger collapse.

They were 98-51 and up by 4 games on September 15, then lost 10 of their last 13 regular season games, including 4 straight to end the season to have the tie. Two of those their last five losses were to the Colt 45s in their inaugural season.

The three game playoff started on October 1 with the Giants beating the **** out of Sandy Koufax en route to an 8-0 win. Koufax only made it through one inning and got tagged for a big homer by Willie Mays. LA won the second game 8-7 in walkoff fashion. They fell behind 5-0 through 5-1/2 innings, then scored 7 in the bottom of the sixth. Tied at 7-7 in the bottom of the ninth, Wills walked, got to third on a sacrifice bunt and scored on a line-drive sac fly.

Dodgers blew a 4-2 lead in the top of the ninth in the final game as SF won 6-4. Wills was 4 for 5 in that game with 3 steals.

That three game series to decide the NL pennant featured 7 future Hall of Famers.

This thread is too good to let die.

I just ran across this one. In 1958 Don Drysdale hit 7 home runs in a span of 24 at bats. Only Willie Mays ever exceeded that. Much more improbable that a pitcher would do that than pitch 58 consecutive scoreless innings as he did in 1968. .

https://www.sbnation.com/secret-base/21222742/don-drysdale-los-angeles-dodgers-home-runs

Great post, count me among those sad that pitchers no longer have (get) to hit. Most of those guys were elite hitters through little league and into high school, and it's a shame that teams essentially forced such specialization that pitchers hitting became a joke.

That's part of the reason why Shohei Ohtani has become one of my favorite players because he's the embodiment of this little league ethos of going out there and striking out the side and then walking to the plate the next inning and hitting a homerun.

We'll never see fun stats like this again about pitchers hitting.

On April 12, 1980 in his first start as an Astro, Nolan Ryan hit his first career home run. It came in his second at-bat and was a three-run blast off Don Sutton. He only came to bat because Sutton had made an error on a bouncer back to the mound off the bat of Alan Ashby on the play before. The Dodgers ultimately won 6-5 in 17 innings. Current Astros manager Dusty Baker hit a homer and went 4 for 8 in the game.

Prior to the game, Ryan had not recorded a single at-bat since October 4, 1972. The American League instituted the DH rule to start the 1973 season, and other than a random pinch running appearance in 1973, Ryan had not been used as anything but a pitcher in more than 7 years.

He had also been a monumentally bad hitter. In 5 years with the Mets, he batted .133 (22 for 165) with exactly 1 extra-base hit, a triple which he hit off of PIttsburgh's Mudcat Grant in a game where he also got the win with 7 shutout innings, striking out 9, improving his record to 8-4 and his ERA to 2.05. The wheels came off the wagon the rest of the way and he wound up 10-14 with a 3.97 ERA and was traded to California, which turned out to be a really dumb-ass thing for the Mets.


Amazingly, he would triple again in 1972 off the great JIm Perry of the Twins in June of 1972 as the Angles beat Minnesota 3-1. What's even crazier is that in his first start with the Angels back in April 1972, Ryan had an RBI single off Perry during a 2-0 complete-game shutout in which he allowed 4 hits, walked 5, and struck out 10. Other than that, he was god-awful as a hitter for the Angels as well, batting .135 13 for 96) with 3 RBI.

His home run came in the third game of the Astros season. No other NL batter had hit 2 yet, so Ryan was technically tied for the NL lead in home runs for a day or so. He wound up hitting .086 for the year, but was surprisingly adept with the bat in the strike-shortened 1981 season, hitting .216 with an OBP of .286.

That turned out to be a definite fluke though. He hit under .100 in 1983 and 198, and had just 5 extra-base hits from April 1980 heading into the 1987 season. He started off the 1987 campaign 0-6 at the plate and 1-3 on the mound - this was the year he went 8-16 but led the NL in ERA and strikeouts.

However, on May 1, he started an away game as the Astros took on the Braves in Atlanta. With a raucous crowd of 8,768 on hand, With the Astros already up 6-0 in the top of the seventh, Nolan batted with Alan Ashby on third and the legendary Bert Pena on first, and destroyed a Charlie Puleo pitch for his second career home run.

So go figure on this. His only 2 career home runs were both three-run jacks. And even though they took place 7 years apart, Alan Ashby was on base for both of them. The Astros won that game 12-3 with 18 hits. Nolan as 1-for-4 with 2 runs scored and 3 RBI. He would only get 3 more hits the entire year and finish the seaon 4 for 65 with 4 RBI.

Joe Sewell (1920-1933) struck out 114 times total in 7,132 career at-bats.
In 1925, he had 686 plate appearances (594 at-bats) and struck out 4 times. He
collected 204 hits , walked 64 times, and hit .336.

Between 1925 and 1929, he played at least 153 games a year (the season was 154 games long) and his strikeout totals were: 4, 6, 7, 9, 4. In 1932, at age 33, he had 576 plate appearances and struck out 3 times. In his final season, he had 606 plate appearances and struck out 4 times again. His career high in strikeouts in a year was 20 in 1922, a season where he hit .299. He had a career batting average of .312, hit 436 doubles, and made the World Series twice, with a 1 strikeout in45 plate appearances.

I had heard of Joe Sewell but was amazed to learn this about him. It made me want to do some further digging. Some tidbits from his Wilkepedia page:

He was Ray Chapman's replacement for the Indians after Chapman became the first and only mlb player to be killed in a game. He wasn't called up until Sept. 1, too late to be included on the post season roster. But Brooklyn's manager agreed to a waiver because of the Chapman situation. Can you imagine that happening today? The Indians won the WS that year.

He played football and baseball for Alabama. He coached their baseball team in the '60s and their baseball stadium is named after him.

He has the record for most consecutive games without a strikeout at 115. I wonder what Joey Gallo's personal record for that is? Two?

Considering how seldom he struck out it's surprising that he used a 40 oz. bat. But the most incredible thing is that he used the same bat for his entire career. I'm not sure I believe that but that was reported by the NYT in his obituary. And that was back when the Times cared about getting facts right. It said he seasoned the bat with tobacco juice.

He was voted into the HOF but not until 1977. Fortunately he lived to see it.

And while his numbers speak for themselves, consider that his career in the AL overlapped Walter Johnson's by 8 years. Teams played 22 games against each other then and with the four man rotation it's likely he faced the Big Train, the undisputed strikeout king for over 50 years, in about 40 games total. Not ideal if you're trying to not strikeout.