Although that trade netted Chicago Keith Foulke, Bob Howry, and a few other players, fans of the team were pretty angry that day.
Anyway, before Darwin's nice performance with the Astros, he put together a very solid decade in the 1980s that went pretty much unnoticed.
Over the 1980s, only 12 pitchers had at least 1500 innings pitched with at least a 110 ERA+:
Rk | IP | GS | GF | Tm | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Bert Blyleven | 113 | 2078.1 | 288 | 1 | PIT-CLE-TOT-MIN-CAL | .689 |
2 | Mike Boddicker | 110 | 1574.1 | 228 | 6 | BAL-TOT-BOS | .697 |
3 | Danny Darwin | 111 | 1663.1 | 184 | 127 | TEX-MIL-TOT-HOU | .684 |
4 | Charlie Hough | 112 | 2121.2 | 282 | 22 | TOT-TEX | .682 |
5 | Rick Reuschel | 113 | 1616.1 | 241 | 7 | CHC-TOT-PIT-SFG | .679 |
6 | Nolan Ryan | 111 | 2094.0 | 314 | 0 | HOU-TEX | .601 |
7 | Mario Soto | 111 | 1614.1 | 213 | 11 | CIN | .639 |
8 | Dave Stieb | 127 | 2328.2 | 331 | 4 | TOR | .659 |
9 | John Tudor | 124 | 1622.2 | 235 | 5 | BOS-PIT-STL-TOT-LAD | .676 |
10 | Fernando Valenzuela | 111 | 2144.2 | 287 | 5 | LAD | .646 |
11 | Frank Viola | 110 | 1858.0 | 271 | 0 | MIN-TOT | .719 |
12 | Bob Welch | 113 | 2082.1 | 311 | 0 | LAD-OAK | .658 |
Side note: neat to see two other guys from the countdown here--Soto and Stieb.
Darwin is probably the worst pitcher of this group, but that's still saying something as it's a select club.
Here's a different group of a dozen pitchers who were the only in the 1980s to have at least 3 seasons with 100 innings pitched and an ERA+ of 130:
Rk | Yrs | From | To | Age | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Orel Hershiser | 5 | 1984 | 1989 | 25-30 | Ind. Seasons |
2 | Dan Quisenberry | 5 | 1980 | 1985 | 27-32 | Ind. Seasons |
3 | Roger Clemens | 4 | 1986 | 1989 | 23-26 | Ind. Seasons |
4 | Dave Stieb | 4 | 1982 | 1985 | 24-27 | Ind. Seasons |
5 | Bret Saberhagen | 3 | 1985 | 1989 | 21-25 | Ind. Seasons |
6 | Greg Harris | 3 | 1985 | 1988 | 29-32 | Ind. Seasons |
7 | Frank Viola | 3 | 1984 | 1988 | 24-28 | Ind. Seasons |
8 | Bert Blyleven | 3 | 1984 | 1989 | 33-38 | Ind. Seasons |
9 | Kent Tekulve | 3 | 1982 | 1987 | 35-40 | Ind. Seasons |
10 | Bob Stanley | 3 | 1982 | 1988 | 27-33 | Ind. Seasons |
11 | Dave Righetti | 3 | 1981 | 1986 | 22-27 | Ind. Seasons |
12 | Danny Darwin | 3 | 1980 | 1989 | 24-33 | Ind. Seasons |
Darwin had a pretty good career in the 1980s, and then posted two different seasons with at least 5 WAR in the 1990s!
The card featured is from Upper Deck's first set in 1989--card #97. These Upper Deck cards were beautiful. The front had a simply & clean design, with an unobtrusive but cool feature resembling the first base line of a baseball diamond. The backs were sweet, featuring not only second photo but a very large photo at that. The only downside was the limited space for stats--but it's a reasonable trade-off, especially when compared to many the the 80s Fleer sets that simply left tons of blank space on the back.
Special note: this post features a hint about one of the 3 remaining players on the countdown, aside from the mention of Stieb who we already know will appear.