Two Years. 56 Starts Later. I'm Happy To Only Have A Card

There are times when you hear the news of your team signing or trading for a player and you just know that it is going to turn out really bad.  As a Cardinals fan I have seen it a few times over the years.  Players like.....

Tino Martinez not being able to hit outside of Yankee Stadium.  Lots of double plays and he always got subbed out at the end of games so that Pujols could play first base. Kerry Robinson, or So Taguchi, would come in and play left field.  I always took it as having Kerry Robinson or Taguchi in the field was worth more than Tino batting.  Let's not forget that he cried a bunch about St. Louis not being New York.  Pretty sure Tony LaRussa was not amused.  Tino was traded to the Devil Rays, Cardinals fans rejoiced.

Wiggy.  First, he went to the light blue Carolina school.  Sure, he ended up transferring.  In many cases I can live with people once they leave Chapel Hill, like Diamond DeShields, but I have a hard time viewing Wiggy as a UNC-Asheville grad.  He signed a two year contract, but only last half a year.  Wiggy managed to play in every tiny, or thin aired stadium, in the years leading up to playing in St. Louis.  Orioles, Rockies, and Phillies. Bandbox, altitude, and bandbox.  Wiggy was eventually released.  Cardinals fans rejoiced.

Actually in the case of Wiggy I was surprised he never showed up in the International League in the role of crafty old guy on a Triple A team.

Which leads to Mike Leake.  During the 2015 Playoffs the Cardinals lost to the Cubs in the first round.  You knew there was going to be some sort of turnover.  David Price?  Nope.  Johnny Cueto?  Never in St. Louis.  I remember the day clearly.  My wife and I had just worked our last day at school before Winter Break.  We loaded up the car with the little man and started driving towards my in-laws house in Northern Michigan.

Little guy was craving some lunch.....

so we stopped at the Wendy's in Princeton, West Virginia.  The backseat was less crowded in those days.  I looked at my phone at the restaurant and I saw the Mike Leake signing all over Twitter and Facebook.  There were a lot of "he's an innings eater, we need Mike Leake" sorts of conversations taking place.  I was hoping that this was going to be one of those deals where it never quite gets finalized and the player just leverages the Cardinals to get paid somewhere else.  Happens all the time, don't laugh non-Cardinals readers.  

The Cardinals actually signed him.  So disappointed to see this.....

With all bad vibes signings/trades I always have to ask myself how far I want to go on finding cards of that player.  There have been other times in where I have had a bad vibe about players and they have turned out to be fine.  Troy Glaus comes to mind.  I was pretty sure he was going to break at some point, but he did have one good season before it happened.

He's got some pretty sweet baseball cards, but I waited to actually watch him play before taking that dive.  This was my favorite.  It's like a signed trash bag or something.....

which is what I imagined the fences at Anaheim Stadium would have been made out of prior to it being renovated.  The remodel happened after Fleer made this card.

So how deep did I go on Mike Leake?  This deep.....

that's it.  The only reason I got this card was because it was really cheap on COMC and I figured I had to get one autograph since he was on the Cardinals.  Luckily after 56 starts all of us Cardinals fans are free of Mike Leake and his incredibly hittable pitches.  I don't even care if they only got back an A Ball player who is hitting .220.  As a Cardinals fan it was hard to be at work and see the Mike Leake trade flash across my phone during my break.  I contemplated having a five minute celebration in the middle of my class, but my students this year are all college basketball people.  Surprise.  I rejoiced internally at the thought of Mike Leake not starting anymore games for the Cardinals.

Friday Five: Five Cardinals Players I'd Rather Not Have In My Collection

We are winding down on the 2016 baseball season and I have been waiting for a certain Cardinals player to turn around their season.  Do something positive for the team.  I reached a tipping point of sorts today, so I came up with my first Friday Five post in awhile.  These are always fun to write, and tonight, this one is going to help me blow off a little steam about my Cardinals.

Every baseball fan has a player, or players that they wish their team had never ever touched.  The Cardinals are no exception.  While they have been good of late, there have been a few less than stellar signings over the years.  One of them took place this year.  Luckily Jason Heyward and his .630 OPS is not on the team, or there would have been two of them from this year's squad on my list of five.

Without further delay: Five Cardinals Players I'd Rather Not Have In My Collection

5. Bob Horner - 1988

Horner was a fixture for the Braves infield for much of the late 70s and early 1980s.  After finishing the 1986 season in Atlanta he opted to play a season in Japan with Yakult where he hit .327/.423/.683 with 31 home runs and 73 RBIs in just 93 games.  The Cardinals had lost Jack Clark at the end of the 1987 season to the Yankees, so Horner seemed like a good option to fill his spot at first and give Whitey Herzog his token big bat in the middle of the line up.  Horner lasted just 60 games with the Cardinals and hit a whopping 3 home runs in almost 250 plate appearances.  The 1988 Cardinals ended up trading for a few power hitters in season to compensate picking up Tom Brunansky from the Twins and Pedro Guerrero from the Dodgers.

4. Adam Kennedy Part II

Kennedy was originally a Cardinals prospect and number one draft pick.  The team called him up at the end of the 1999 season and then packaged him up with Kent Bottenfield in a trade with the Angels for Jim Edmonds.  Kennedy was sort of an average player for the Angels for the seven years he was on the team, but he also famously went Reggie Jackson in Game 5 of the 2002 ALCS...



For some reason nobody has yet to figure out, the Cardinals brought him back to the team in 2007 where he clashed with Tony LaRussa, played horribly, and ended up getting run out of town.  In fact, he ended up on the Durham Bulls.  Just an all around bad signing by the team who had the opportunity to retain Ronnie Belliard from the 2006 team.  While Belliard was not exactly an All-Star caliber player, he spent the next three seasons post numbers at, or above, the league average from second baseman and got paid less money than Kennedy.  Painful.

3.  Wiggy (Ty Wigginton) 2013

Wiggy got paid $5 million dollars over two years to be a bat off the bench for the Cardinals.  The problem is that Wiggy only made it 57 at bats into the two year deal.  In those 57 at bats he posted a slash line of .158/.238/.193 for an OPS of .431 and OPS+ of 21.  That's better than Bartolo Colon batting, but just slightly better.  On July 9th, 2013 the Cardinals kicked Wiggy to the curb and Cardinals fans rejoiced.

2. Mike Leake 2016

I had really thought about making Mike Leake first on my list this week since he is the inspiration for this post.  When the Cardinals announced his signing I was at a Wendy's in Princeton, West Virginia stopping to eat lunch on road trip to Michigan.  I remember tweeting out, hoping that something would hit a snag, and Mike Leake would not get a five year 80 million dollar contract from the Cardinals.  Welp, didn't happen.  Mike has an ERA of 4.54 and an ERA+ of 90.  I guess Mike has four more years to do something, but I wouldn't mind if he got lost in the bullpen or left in an airport on a road trip.  A lot of luggage gets lost in Denver, the Cardinals were just there, but apparently Mike made the plane to Chicago.  Sigh.

1. Tino Martinez 2002-2003

The Cardinals had Mark McGwire in 2001 for his last season and it was dreadful, so the team signed Tino Martinez to replace him.  Tino was a winner and there was some sort of personal connection to Tony LaRussa, seemed like a good fit until Tino couldn't hit home runs anymore.  In 2001 Tino hit 34 with the Yankees, 2002 he hit 21, and in 2003 he hit 15.  In the two years Tino played for the Cardinals Albert Pujols played left field, but frequently ended up at first base when LaRussa would keep Albert's bat in the lineup moving him to first, and playing a defensive outfielder as a sub for Tino.

I guess being double switch for Kerry Robinson and So Taguchi was not cool in Tino's book who told a New York sports reporter that St. Louis wasn't as good of a baseball town as St. Louis.  Not going to argue the point, but it's never a good idea to put down the city in which you are employed as a professional athlete.

I will give Tino some plus points, and the possibility of moving to second on this list if Mike Leake stinks all five years of his contract, for his fight with Miguel Batista in 2003.  Batista hit Martinez with a pitch during an at-bat early in the game.  Tino had a few words, went to first, and then was forced out at second later in the inning.  Rather than running back to the dugout, Tino decided it was time to charge the mound.  No video, but there is a picture of the fight.....

The Worst Card(s) of 2013

I have registered several posts so far this fall about my dislike for the Topps Update set and have had a variety of reasons for my negative opinion.  The most annoying thing about the Update set this year is the fact that there are almost too many varitation cards to count, but I suppose if you are going to go bad why not go for it with some gusto.

I liken the 2013 Topps Update set to the 2013 Houston Astros.  Sure, the Astros could have gone out and filled their roster with older free agents and players on one year deal, but they would have had a record of 70-92 instead of 51-111.  Topps could have just rolled out the usual Topps Update set with a few season highlights cards, thrown in a few All-Stars, and some players who were traded or free agent signings along the way.  BAM! You've got a Topps Update set.  If I had a piece of paper, an IPhone, and a Yuengling I could figure the set checklist out in twenty minutes.

Really, I have harped and bashed the set enough.  Let's get down to bashing two cards which have zero businesses being in the set.  ZERO.  Both of these cards are really bad, but one is slightly worse than the other.  It could really be a 1 and 1a scenario.  So, let's look at card number 1.

2013 Topps Update Daniel Bard 

 This card has so much going against it.  Let's just start with this: Daniel Bard is not on the Red Sox anymore, he's on the Chicago Cubs.  I understand that he was not released and claimed by the Cubs until early September, but that was almost 90 days before the set hit the shelves.  I understand that to some degree Topps probably had Bard on the original checklist and could not pull him before the cards were printed.  Fair enough, right?

Well, actually Bard had not been on the Red Sox since a relief appearance in late April.  That appearance was his second, and last, of the season with the Red Sox.  Was Bard hurt?  No.  He just completely lost what ever it was that he had and spent the season wandering around the Red Sox minor league system.  Nothing higher than Double A.

So why is Daniel Bard in the Topps Update Set?  I have absolutely no idea, but for a guy to appear for two games in April, disappear for an entire summer to the low minors, and end up in an Update set is a complete head scratcher.  Baffling.    It's not like Topps didn't have some other options to put into Bard's place in the set.  David Ross and Brandon Workman were two Red Sox players who had zero Topps cards during the 2013 season, but were key contributors to the team.  Why not include them instead of Bard?

2013 Topps Update Ty Wigginton

Wigginton is much the same as Bard.  If Wigginton had appeared on a baseball card earlier in the summer he would not be on this post.  The fact that he was a terrible player who was released in the middle of the summer and appeared on his first baseball card of the year six months after he was released makes this card terrible.  Wigginton made 63 plate appearance for the Cardinals after signing a two year contract with the team last winter.  In his 63 plate appearances he posted a .158 batting average and struck out 19 times.  The Cardinals sent him packing on July 9th.  On October 16th Topps released the Update set complete with Wigginton card.  Disastrous. 

Just like the Bard card, again, Topps has other options to put in place of Wigginton.  Shane Robinson appeared in almost 100 games for the team and has no Topps card this year.  Tony Cruz appeared in 54 games and has been on the team for three years.  No Topps cards ever.  Seth Maness appeared in 66 games and Kevin Siegrist appeared in 45 games as relief pitchers.  No cards.

Really the two worst cards for Topps this year were completely preventable with better planning and research on the part of the company.  I understand that both Wigginton and Bard have been apart of past Topps sets and have deserved have their moment on cardboard, but it's hard to argue for their inclusion in an end of the year set when both were basically out of the Majors after July.  Bard is clearly the worse of the two evils here, but Wigginton is not far away, especially given that Topps had more replacement options with if they just wanted a Cardinals player.  Quality control always seems to be their downfall.